Archive for the 'Safari' Category

Opera Mini and S60 Browser – both not quite there yet

October 17, 2008

On my N82: spent some time with Opera Mini after a while – had been using Nokia’s built-in S60 Browser exclusively over the past few months.

Here’s a list of peeves and loves about each browser.

Opera Mini Good

Faster page load times
Snappier controls
Smoother scrolling
Slightly better font rendering (all of above relative to S60 Browser)
Address TLD auto-complete: (type www.opera. and a drop-down list appears with opera.com, opera.org , opera.net)
Speed Dial-like shortcuts for bookmarks

Opera Mini Bad

No support for multiple tabs
“Small” font too small, “Medium” too big
Screen does not occupy entire width when phone tilted (in portrait mode). I don’t think the browser is accelerometer-aware
Not possible to copy URL

S60 Browser Good

Does not ask for permission to connect; allows selection of default access point. This is because, unlike Opera Mini, which is a Java app, the S60 browser is a native S60 app.
Page overview – a shrunk view of the current page which you can quickly scroll around on.
Attractive Back/Forward implementation. Page previews flip forward and back, like moving your mouse across the OS X dock.

S60 Browser Bad

Supports multiple tabs but cannot open new one!
No “top”, “bottom”, “pgup”, “pgdn” keypad shortcuts
Tedious process to copy URL. Bookmark current page, navigate to Edit bookmarks, copy URL, delete bookmark.

Conclusion

Opera Mini’s a better browser, the S60 Browser is a better application. Goes to show that you can’t get the best of both worlds. If only Opera and Nokia would learn from one another. Finally, now that Nokia is shipping phones with reasonably high resolution screens, it really, really needs to improve font rendering. Mobile Safari kicks ass and sets the standard.

What else

Haven’t had a chance to check out Skyfire yet; the founders have decided, in a sadly common blinkered move, to limit launch to the US. A mobile browser from Mozilla’s been “just around the corner” for a while now (and won’t show up on S60 first). Google’s promised a mobile version of Chrome, but my guess is that Android will get it before S60 does. I don’t see mobile Safari on S60 ever. And it hurts to even speak of mobile IE.

Why Safari won't matter

March 19, 2008

Apple released Safari 3.1 today, and has claimed that it is “the world’s fastest browser”.

“Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers…”

Having used it since it was first released last year on Windows, I think this is more than just twisted statistics. Forget those measurements (down to decimal points, for god’s sake), but Safari definitely feels faster than either Firefox or Opera. Safari’s UI needs a post to itself, but it puts both IE and Firefox to shame.

Apple could put more muscle behind promoting Safari on Windows (for reasons I outlined last June), but I don’t see it giving either Firefox or IE a serious run for their money. My prediction is that Safari’ll be locked in an inconsequential battle for third place with Opera (also a fast, snappy alternative).

IE will always be number 1 because it’s pre-installed with Windows (and is un-installable). The vast majority of the installed base won’t switch to anything else (both home and business users). IE’s good enough. ‘Nuff said.

Firefox is the poster boy of the power-user crowd because it’s so customizable. But there’s an upper cap to the market share it can gain (see IE above).

Safari’s USP is speed and simplicity. Speed isn’t enough for the IE crowd to switch. And Safari’s simplicity (which implies non-extensibility) is a deal-killer for the Firefox crowd. Opera faces the exact same problems.

Between these massive masses of users, both of whom have diametrically opposite views on what a browser should be, are the miniscule 4-5% who use either of Safari or Opera, regardless of how good/fast/simple/snappy they are. Pity.

Footnote: Hark back to my June 2007 article about why Apple wants Safari on Windows – it’s got to do with the iPhone. Opera, with its large mobile push, probably has the same strategy too.

Misguided iPhone/Safari strategy analysis

June 22, 2007

More iPhone strategy from Bob Cringely. While he’s spot-on with most of his columns, I don’t agree with his line of thought in this week’s column.

In a nutshell, Cringely believes that forcing developers to develop Safari-compliant AJAX applications will aid simlilar Safari-compliant applications on the iPhone (now that Steve Jobs has declared that third-party applications will be overwhelmingly web-based):

With the AJAX economy dictating that browsers with big market share like IE and Firefox get most of the effort, that leaves Safari as a second-class browser and, potentially, a liability for the iPhone.

Whaddayado? Introduce a Windows version of Safari, get a million people to download it in the first week, and scare developers into moving Safari customization higher on their AJAX priority list.

Non. That’s shockingly naive. The bottom line is that Safari just doesn’t matter. A million downloads in the first week (and projecting forward from there) isn’t even a microscopic scratch on the total number of IE and Firefox browsers surfing the Internet. Half of Google’s applications don’t work well with Opera yet – and it’s a browser which has a substantial number of users, most of whom are more likely to be heavy users of Google’s application services.

Besides, how long has Safari for Windows been around? 3 weeks? And it’s about another week to the iPhone launch. That’s simply not long enough to gain traction. For Safari to make any sort of difference, it’d have to be launched at least a year ago, and promoted heavily by Apple, a la
the community effort by the Firefox junta.

So why launch Safari for Windows after all? It’s simpler than most commentators are making it out to be. Hark back to my post last Friday. The iPhone is cool enough for developers to want to develop applications for it anyway. Safari for Windows gives them a browser to test compatibility on with without having to invest in iPhones and/or Macbooks. Jobs stressed in his Walt Mossberg interview at the D conference about the OS and browser being the same Mac applications:

.. It’s REAL Safari, REAL OS X. We put a different user interface on it to work with a multi-touch screen… it’s an amazing amount of software.

It’s about dramatically lowering the entry barrier for developers to write applications for the iPhone, not compelling them to be compliant with Safari on Windows.

More on Safari for Windows

June 16, 2007

This time by John Dvorak, on Dow Jones’ Marketwatch:

First, Dvorak’s take on the browser strategy is the same as mine (read yesterday’s post):

“… this particular browser is necessary if anyone wants to develop applications for the iPhone. Apparently, third-party iPhone applications will be nothing more than browser-based applications running on the Safari browser… Apple seems intent on locking down the iPhone to real application development, where programmers can actually go into the phone’s software and fiddle with whatever they want. The company is keeping all that power to itself.”

He also offers another interesting perspective on why the Search era could have opened up a new revenue stream for browser makers:

In the upper right-hand corner of a Firefox browser, for example, you’ll find a little search box. Look at the Safari browser; it is there, too. That little box brings the Mozilla organization, the developers and promoters of the Firefox browser, more than $50 million in income — free money. This number has been jumping substantially over the years as people get used to typing casual searches into the little box. The search then goes over to Google (or other engines that users can select), and if that search translates to a hit on an advertisement, Mozilla gets a cut.

Scoble is not an idiot…

June 15, 2007

… but he doesn’t seem to have gotten things bang-on either, with regard to the supposed “closed” nature of the iPhone.

Steve Jobs admitted at the D conference that Apple was rather cagey about allowing developers to write third-party apps to run on the iPhone:

This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. We’re working through a way… we’ll find a way to let 3rd parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can’t compromise the security of the phone.

That caused an angry wave of comments condemning Apple for alienating developers all over again (remember, lack of developer support is now the “accepted” reason for the failure of Apple’s original Macintosh computers). Scoble points out that Jobs “is not an idiot”, and that, in time, Apple will open up its iPhone:

So, what do I think will happen? Oh, I can see the Steve Jobs keynote in 2008 right now. “We’ve sold eight million iPhones, more than we expected” and “remember how I said iPhone apps needed to be done with JavaScript and HTML? Well, we heard from all of you that you wanted to play games on Pogo.com so we added Flash. And we’ve been working on our own iPhone applications for more than a year now and we’re sharing the developer tools we use internally.”

)

But he’s probably wrong there. Steve Jobs is betting heavily on the Web. And Safari. Take a look at these comments from his interview with Walt Mossberg at D5:

The second reason (why Cingular invested in Apple’s iPhone) is more profound: they have spent and are spending a fortune to build these 3G networks, and so far there ain’t a lot to do with them. People haven’t voted with their pocketbooks to sign up for video on their phones. These phones aren’t capable of taking advantage of it. Youv’e used the internet on your phone, it’s terrible! You get the baby internet, or the mobile internet — people want the REAL internet on their phone. We are going to deliver that. We’re going to take advantage of some of these investments in bandwidth.

and, if that wasn’t enough,

… It’s REAL Safari, REAL OS X. We put a different user interface on it to work with a multi-touch screen… it’s an amazing amount of software.

Clearly, (notwithstanding Cringely’s comments today about AT&T’s bandwidth crunch), Jobs is encouraging developers to build web-based applications for mobile Safari making use of the high-speed 2.5G and Wifi networks that are near-ubiquitous in the US now (and Europe. And far-East Asia). That way, Jobs gets to have his cake and eat it too. And now you see the reasoning behind the strange release of Safari on Windows. (Getting developers to get their application services render well on Safari – REAL Safari, remember?)