Firefox Loses Browser Share Third Month Running

Meanwhile, Google's Chrome continued its climb for the 16th straight month and Microsoft's IE hit yet another record low in browser share

Mozilla's Firefox lost share in February, the third consecutive month that the browser has slipped, according to metrics data published today.

Google's Chrome, meanwhile, continued its climb for the 16th straight month.

Firefox lost about 0.2 of a percentage point last month to end with a usage share of 24.2 percent. It was the third month in a row that Mozilla's browser fell in the rankings posted by Web measurement vendor NetApplications.com. Previous dips in Mozilla's share were one-month blips; this is the browser's first sustained decline in NetApplications' numbers.

Since the end of November 2009, Firefox has dropped nearly half a point, representing a fall of 2 percent of its total share.

NetApplications is not the only metrics company to note Firefox's slump. The most recent data from Irish vendor StatCounter, for example, shows an even larger drop of 1.2 points -- or 3.6 percent of its total share -- since November.

The slide came even as Mozilla converted a sizable chunk of its Firefox 3.5 user base to the newer Firefox 3.6, the upgrade that shipped in late January . Last month, Firefox 3.6's share surged by nearly 4 percentage points to 5.1 percent. Meanwhile, Firefox 3.5's share fell 2.5 points to 14.6 percent, and the even older Firefox 3.0 dipped by 1.6 points to 3.6 percent, its lowest share since the month it was released in 2008.

As Firefox slid, Google's Chrome again boosted its share, although the increase was smaller than in the two months before. Chrome ended February with a 5.6 percent share, up 0.4 of a percentage point. Chrome has doubled its share in the last six months.



Internet Explorer (IE) lost a half percentage point last month to finish with a share of 61.2 percent, yet another record low for Microsoft 's browser. The upside is that IE's decline in February was under its 12-month average drop of 0.6 of a percentage point, and the smallest in a year. Microsoft may, in fact, find some comfort in NetApplications' numbers: IE's slide may be slowing. In the last three months, IE lost 2 percentage points, while during the three-month period immediately before that the browser slipped by 3.4 points.



Apple 's Safari posted a slight decline to 4.4 percent for February, while Opera Software's desktop browser essentially remained flat at 2.4 percent.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft's nearly-nine-year-old IE6 again fell in NetApplications' usage measurements, ending last month at 19.8 percent, down 0.2 of a percentage point. The newer IE7 lost more than four times more share, falling 0.9 of a point to 13.6 percent. IE6's decline was well under its torrid pace of the previous four months, when it lost more than a point per month.

But IE6 continues to get the hook from notable Web sites. Last week, YouTube announced it would stop supporting the aged browser starting March 13; as of that date, the popular video site won't guarantee that new features will work in the browser.

On Thursday, a Denver Web design firm will hold a funeral for IE6 . Aten Design Group was forced to change the location of the mock event after it received more RSVPs than its small office could accommodate. "Even more people want to see IE6's cold, dead body than we imagined," the company said on the ie6funeral.com site it set up.

IE8 captured only a sliver of its siblings' losses: IE8 ended February with a share of 22.5 percent, up just 0.1 of a point, the smallest increase since January 2009, two months before the browser's official release, and at a point when only a release candidate was available to the public.

When NetApplications accounted for IE8's "compatibility view" -- a feature that lets users display sites as rendered by the older, and often Web standard-incompatible IE6 and IE7 -- Microsoft's newest browser owned a 25.8 percent share, making it the most popular single edition of any browser by a six-point margin.

IE's losses could pick up this month with the broad introduction of a browser ballot in the European Union beginning this week. The ballot was mandated by an agreement Microsoft reached last year with EU antitrust regulators nearly two years after Norwegian browser maker Opera filed a formal complaint. The ballot appears on Windows PCs where IE is set as the default browser, and lets users download and install rivals, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and others.

Although Firefox has traditionally been the browser to reap the most reward from IE's persistent decline, Chrome now occupies that place. Over the last 12 months, Chrome has outgained Firefox by more than 2:1, posting an increase of 4.1 points to Firefox's 1.7 points. If Chrome keeps up the pace of the last three months, it will break the 10 percent mark in October, 11 months ahead of a goal it set last year.

NetApplications.com measures browser usage share by collecting systems data from the computers that visit the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients.

Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/firefox-loses-browser-share-third-month-running-205?page=0,0

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Google Lays The Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome

Google is getting ready to offer widespread support for extensions in Chrome, launching a program which will allow third-party developers to add features to its browser.

The company released more details about its new Chrome Extension Gallery Tuesday. Developers can now upload their extensions to the Chrome Extensions Gallery, in effect publishing their extensions even before the browser officially supports them. Support for Chrome extensions is available in the current developer release, but they will probably arrive in the browser for all users before the end of the year.

At the moment, there isn’t much to see in the Chrome gallery — it’s just a form for developers to upload their extensions. However, Google is clearly hoping Chrome will one day support an extension ecosystem similar to the one Mozilla enjoys with its highly successful add-ons community for Firefox. The site will offer the ability to search and browse for extensions, and Google is encouraging developers to upload videos and screenshots explaining what each extension does.

The company has also posted guidelines outlawing things like copyright infringement, hate speech and any extension to “enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media” — which means we probably won’t see extensions for ripping videos from YouTube.

To that point, Chrome extensions will be reviewed before they become publicly available. The Chrome Blog says that, for most extensions, “the review process is fully automated.” However, if your extension plans to use low-level components or access file:// URIs, Google will require a manual review and may ask developers for additional information before such extensions end up in the gallery.

Source:

http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/Google_Lays_the_Groundwork_for_Extensions_in_Chrome

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Google Chrome Beta Gets Bookmark Sync

The test version of Google's browser will let you save your favorite sites, and access them from multiple computers

The latest beta version of Google's Chrome Web Browser is making it easier for you to keep track of all your favorite Web sites across multiple computers. The search giant introduced bookmark syncing this week as a feature of Chrome's latest trial version. Google started testing bookmark syncing earlier this year on developer builds of Chrome, and its release on the beta channel means bookmark syncing is one step closer to becoming a standard feature of Chrome's stable version.

Bookmark SYNC

Once you've downloaded the Chrome beta, you can access the new feature by clicking on the wrench icon on the far right side of your browser window. Then select "Synchronize my bookmarks," and a pop-up window should appear asking you for your Google Account information. Sign in, and Chrome will store your bookmarks in your Google Docs account. To sync your bookmarks across multiple locations, just download the beta version of Chrome on each computer you use, and repeat the steps outlined above.

When you add, delete, or edit your Chrome bookmarks on any device, those changes will be updated across all your computers. You can also add bookmarks from other Web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer by importing the data into Chrome, and the new additions will be automatically synced with the file in your Google Docs account. Google does not allow you to edit bookmarks directly from Google Docs.

Other Alternatives

If Google Chrome is not your thing, but you like the concept of bookmark syncing, you can also get the same functionality on other popular browsers. Internet Explorer users can download the Windows Live Toolbar to store and sync bookmarks with Microsoft's online storage service,

SkyDrive.

Firefox users can download the Xmark add-on that allows you to synchronize your bookmarks and passwords. And Opera users can get in on the syncing action through Opera Link, which stores bookmarks, speed dial entries and more. You can also access your Opera Link data within competing browsers at link.opera.com. If you don't want to be tied down to a specific browser brand, try out Delicious, the social online bookmarking site.

Speed

Google says the latest developer build of Chrome is thirty percent faster than the browser's current stable version. Chrome's new speed claims come on the heels of similar statements from Mozilla, which released the beta version of Firefox 3.6 on Friday. Despite the media attention heaped on Chrome since its initial release last year, the browser is still far behind in popularity compared to the two market leaders: Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.


Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-chrome-beta-gets-bookmark-sync-746

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Google Chrome Browser Snubs Windows 7

Google has pushed back plans to integrate its Chrome browser with Microsoft's new OS

Google has scrubbed plans to fully integrate its Chrome Web Browser with Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system.

The news follows an announcement by the Mozilla Foundation that Firefox 3.6, the next version of the open source browser, would integrate with Windows 7 features such as taskbar thumbnail previews and Jump Lists.

However, according to reports in The Register, Google's internal issue tracking system indicates that work on the features has been pushed back to version 5 of the browser. Chrome is currently on the 3.0 release, while version 4 is currently in development.

Despite the scaled back ambitions, work seems to be progressing on Google's Chrome OS. An early developer build of the operating system has been leaked onto Google's Web site. Stay tuned for more details.


Source:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-chrome-doesnt-integrate-windows-7-409

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