19 March 2009

I thought I'd post about browsers since I just downloaded two of them.

One I'm extremely happy about. And the other I'm totally indifferent about.

Let's start with Internet Explorer 8. Yes. I'm indifferent. I downloaded the Release Candidate (RC1) just to start preparing myself for the change. I don't use IE anymore except for a few things where IE is the only browser that will work. I'm just not that interested in what new things IE has to offer anymore since there have been so many letdowns in the past.

At this point I'm more concerned about web standards. Hopefully IE8 will bring the major browsers that much closer to displaying content consistently and correctly. As a designer/developer I've played the game for so long I'm used to it. But what if you could build a website in a standard format and expect that all browsers would render it the same? What would that be like?

I'll play around with it a bit to see what the new "features" are all about but I'm not holding my breath...

The other browser I downloaded is called Fennec which is the alpha release of the mobile browser built by Mozilla (makers of Firefox).

Now Fennec isn't available yet for your mobile phone (unless you own a Nokia N810). But I downloaded it to my desktop just to play with it.

I'm totally stoked about this browser and how it could revolutionize the mobile browsing experience. It displays full websites with ease, has flash integration and can even install some of the extensions popular to the full version of Firefox.

In this walkthrough video you can see how a touch screen coupled with physical keyboard makes for a happy surfing combination :)

If I truly wind up with a Palm Pre (which means I physically picked one up and didn't hate it), I think this would be the perfectly matched browser for everyday use.

We'll see!