Written on 19th June 2009
113 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Look, I know the majority of people reading our blog are geeks on some level and probably early adopters.
While we try not to, I’m also aware of the fact that occasionally we report on stuff your average Joe won’t understand/appreciate. But, I’ve got to be honest, I never for a second thought that this many people had no idea what a browser was.
Written on 19th May 2009
1 COMMENT Srikanth AD, Web Designer, Search Engine Optimizer and Google Devotee
The Mozilla Labs Design Challenge Summer ’09 is looking for creative solutions to reinvent browser tabs.
These days 20+ parallel sessions on a browser are quite common. The browser is more of an operating system than a data display application. And tabs don’t work well if you use them with heterogeneous information.
But, looking at the brighter side, this solves the problem of having multiple browser application windows which usually clutter the task bar. However, having tabs across the top of the application window doesn’t make that much sense, especially as the number of open pages increases.
The Question
Reinventing Tabs in the Browser – How can we create, navigate and manage multiple web sites within the same browser instance?
To participate in the design challenge you need to create a mockup of your proposed solution. A mockup can be anything from a wireframe, a drawing or a polished graphic. You also need to create a video explaining your idea(s), presenting the mockup and showing how your idea works.
To get you started, to inspire your thinking and to give you a faster insight, check out this presentation on visualizing browser tabs by TabViz
To check out further details on the design challenge click here.
The problem with many sites that do useful things is that you have to go there to use them. That’s why things like our own TwitterCounter and Twitter Remote (see below right), in being so portable, have also become so popular.
Today, Digg, recognising this trend, has created an instantly activated toolbar that works from any browser, instantly. But it’s not a toolbar you need to download – it’s far cleverer than that – and quite brilliant, in my view.
The key: It’s stunningly simple to invoke – just type ‘digg.com/’ in front of any URl in your browser – for example
and the Digg toolbar is invoked, along with creating a shortcut URL to whatever content you are viewing. Logging in to Digg through the toolbar keeps you at the same reference point, and you can share via Facebook, Twitter or Email with the option to see a random ‘Dugg’ page – and of course you can Digg content. Or just click [X] and it’s gone. Try it.
This makes Digg nine characters away from any URL – just type ‘digg.com/‘ as a prefix and you’re there. Clever. Easy. Simple. Memorable. Powerful. Well done, Digg.
Just yesterday Microsoft announced the latest, safest and coolest new version of Explorer. According to Steve Ballmer Explorer “gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”
Is that so?
My original plan was start a countdown here until the first reports of Explorer 8 vulnerabilities. Life is stranger than fiction, again, as Explorer 8 has been shown to be vulnerable to hacking attacks within less than 24 hours after its release. ZDnet reports how a hacker named Nils ‘performed a clean drive-by download attack against the world’s most widely used browser to take full control of a Sony Vaio machine running Windows 7′ at the CanSecWest Pwn2Own content. the same hacker also managed to hack into Safari and Firefox.
The exploit that ‘Nils’ used is not published and Microsoft’s Security team was there to witness the whole thing. Expect an update soon.
Truth is that no browser is really 100% secure and lots of people will greatly enjoy this new version of Explorer 8. So go and get it now and let us know how it works for you.
Here are some of the new (untested) features Microsoft talks about that might be interesting for you:
Accelerators
Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.
Web Slices
Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.
Visual search suggestions
The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.
Written on 16th December 2008
14 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
If you’re still looking for a reason to finally switch loyalty from Internet Explorer over to one of many competing browsers, trust me, this is it.
A major flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that allows hackers to gain the password details of the user has been revealed.
This is not a rumor, it has been confirmed by Microsoft who in fact announced the discovery themselves admitting a “vulnerability in Internet Explorer” that “could allow remote code execution.” Not Good.
Still think this is over hyped news? Think again. Even the BBC has picked up the story with commentary from a number of industry analysts. (more…)
In an amazing turn of events Google seems to be working on their own open source version of a full fledged webbrowser. Although unconfirmed by Google the details presented by Google Blogoscoped are detailed and exciting.
We will post more details as they come available but in the mean time go and visit Blogoscoped and check out the specs and illustrations.
UPDATE: Now confirmed by Google on the official Google blog. More detailed reviews and first impressions can be found on Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb and the official Chrome website (oops, down again).
Allen Stern over at Center Networks writes about the launch of Gloss, a custom edition of the Flock social web browser. The customized editions comes with pink flavors, a new set of badges with lipstick on them, and custom pre-filled content mainly around the topic of entertainment, gossip, celebrities and fashion.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Flock Gloss is targeted primarily at women. Launch partners include Glam Media, Glamour, The Budget Fashionista, TMZ, Cosmo, DesignerApparel, PopSugar, iVillage and others.
I think these customized versions are an excellent way of introducing Flock to users who’ve never tried an alternative browser before. Previously, Flock created a German edition of the browser and an environment-friendly Eco edition. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they’ll come up with.
On a personal note: I used to live Flock once but was repeatedly disappointed with the memory resources it consumes, the lack of speed, and regular crashes. It has led me to conclude that Flock may actually not be for internet power users, but rather for regular users who like to interact with each other socially on the web.
This is a live screenshot from a Turkish television show where the host wants to type in ‘Youtube’ (on a story about hidden camera recordings of some government officials) but gets a few unfortunate suggestions from his browser Auto Complete feature:
On-line research institute XiTi has published a study about Firefox’ market share in Europe. I think I speak for most web developers, if I say that the more Firefox users, the better. Well, ‘we’ won some more souls:
After a period of stabilization from June to September 2007, Mozilla Firefox’s visit share, for the average of European countries of the XiTi perimeter, is again growing at the end of the year. Thus, over a one year vision, it gains 5 points in order to reach 28% in December 2007.
The growth isn’t spectacular though and in some countries the user rate of Firefox is actually shrinking. In Denmark, Firefox usage falls back with 0.6 percent. In Ukraine this is in 0.3 percent and in the country where The Next Web Blog is based – The Netherlands – it’s 0.1 percent. To make it even worse for me and my fellow Dutch developers, we’re the country with the lowest user rate. It’s only 14.7 percent.
Maybe web developers should move to one of the three leading countries in Firefox share: Finland (45.4%), Slovenia (44.6%) and Poland (42.4%). Or the Internet community should try to create a ‘Spread Firefox‘ revival. It would save us all lots of time:
Written on 19th June 2009
113 COMMENTS 
Written on 19th May 2009
The Mozilla Labs Design Challenge Summer ’09 is looking for creative solutions to reinvent browser tabs.
Written on 2nd April 2009
Written on 19th March 2009
Just yesterday 
If you’re still looking for a reason to finally switch loyalty from Internet Explorer over to one of many competing browsers, trust me, this is it.
Written on 23rd July 2008
Allen Stern over at 
Written on 30th January 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
