Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on June 25, 2008 by CyberNet.

Some of you were disappointed to hear a few weeks ago that Google doesn’t have any intentions of updating the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox 3. The eagle-eyed Ars Technica has given us reason not to give up all hope quite yet though. Google, believe it or not, has posted the source code for the extension up on Google Code. Heck, they even have instructions on setting up a development environment for working on it.

There’s been no official mention from Google about Firefox 3 support for the extension, but this almost makes it seem like they want the community to help make the extension functional once again. They have setup a todo list that says they want to figure out how to integrate it with FIrefox 3′s new bookmarking and history system. That list also says that they want to figure out a way to allow multiple computers to be online simultaneously, and continuously sync the data between each. Could that be like collaborative browsing?

I’m sure many of you are wondering how this extension couldn’t be modified previously since the source code of all Firefox extensions can quickly be seen by anyone. When Google bundled up the extension they compressed the JavaScript code which stripped out any commenting, and renamed variables in a hard-to-understand fashion. So it wasn’t impossible to do before, but it was more work than anyone would have likely wanted to go through. The new open source version contains the Google Browser Sync source code that is uncompressed and has all comments in tact.

Now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that Google won’t pull down the servers needed for the hosting at the end of 2008 like we originally heard. Otherwise any effort spent trying to get the extension to work would be for nothing.

Thanks to Cory for the tip!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Another day, another CyberSearch release. 😉 Over the weekend I had some time to work on a new CyberSearch feature that I’ve periodically received requests for. Like most features I had to think this one through to ensure that it wouldn’t interfere with the built-in Firefox keyword system.

So what have I added? In CyberSearch 1.0 you might recall that I added an entry onto the bottom of every search results list that would take you to the Google results page. Now we’re making it even easier for you to pull up the Google results page!

When CyberSearch recognizes that you’ve typed in a keyword or domain followed by the Enter key (or Go button) it will instantly take you to the Google search page that shows the same results you were looking at in the address bar. Obviously if you select a result from the drop-down list this feature will be ignored, but pressing Enter without selecting an item from the menu will pull up the Google results page.

This option comes enabled by default, but can quickly be disabled in the settings. You’ll find the option in the General tab:

Keywords that have already been assigned in the browser’s search box will take precedence over any of the ones from our extension. The extension, however, does not look at the keywords you’ve created in your bookmarks, which means CyberSearch will override any of those. For that reason we recommend transitioning your bookmark keywords over to the search box, and I’ve found that the Add to Search Bar extension is useful in doing just that since it will let you add any search box from any site.

Get CyberSearch

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

We’ve been asked for quite awhile to provide a performance comparison of the different mainstream browsers out there, and so today we are going to show you the stats from several different areas that users generally find to be the most important. Things like memory usage, page load time, and JavaScript performance will all be covered below.

One thing that you need to remember with these tests is that the results are all relative to each other. Each browser is running on the exact same machine so that the comparisons are accurate. What we heard the last time we did tests like this is “such and such browser performed a lot better/worse for me.” We appreciate hearing what your results are, but for the sake of accuracy they can’t really be compared to what we get.

Notes:

• All of these tests are performed on the same Windows Vista SP1 machine, and is wired into a network to minimize the effects of wireless disturbances.
• To test both IE7 and IE8 Beta I ran all of the tests in IE 7, installed IE 8, and then reran all the tests again.
• All browsers started with a clean profile and no add-ons/extensions installed.
• Caches were cleared before each test was run.
• Only one browser was open at a time and no other applications (other than standard Vista services) were running.
• Internet Explorer 8 was always used in the native rendering mode (a.k.a. standards compliant mode).

–JavaScript Tests–

We’ve previously run Apple’s SunSpider JavaScript tests, but there was apparently some controversy of using that because people felt that it could be a little biased. We wanted to pick a test that used tools you’ll find in sites you visit everyday. That’s why we went with the MooTools SlickSpeed test which checks the browser against different JavaScript libraries: Dojo 1.0.2, JQuery 1.2.3, MooTools 1.2B2, and Prototype 1.6.0.2.

Many sites use those libraries, and even we use JQuery for things such as the AJAX commenting. By putting the browsers back-to-back with the SlickSpeed test, we’ll be able to find out exactly which ones will give us the better JavaScript performance (this is what really matters on a day to day basis).

Pretty much none of the browsers were able to complete all of the tests error-free, and so we’re focusing purely on the speed. We ran each test three times, totaled the runtime (measured in milliseconds) for all four libraries, and then averaged the results. In the parenthesis you’ll see the results of each test we ran before averaging them together (the overall smaller number is better):

1. Safari 3.1: 447.33ms (407,536,399)
2. Opera 9.5.9841 Beta: 502.00ms (523,456,527)
3. Firefox 3 Beta 4: 909.00ms (921,904,902)
4. Opera 9.26: 1036.33ms (992,1034,1083)
5. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 1507.67ms (1523,1472,1528)
6. Internet Explorer 7: 5944.33ms (5965,5998,5870)
7. Internet Explorer 8 Beta: 6690ms (6245,7206,6619)

It looks like the new Safari 3.1 takes the crown on this set of tests!

–Page Load Times–

I was trying to figure out what the best method would be to measure page load times in all the browsers. Sure some of the browsers report how long it takes for a site to load, but we wanted a universal way that would work across all of the browsers. We figured sitting here with a stop watch just wouldn’t cut it.

After some searching around I came across the Numion Stopwatch, which is a great tool for measuring how long it takes for a site to load. It’s entirely encased in a website so that there is nothing to install, and it uses JavaScript to notify you exactly how long it takes a page to load. From what I can tell it does a rather superb job!

We ran the page load test three times on two different sites so that we could really see what the results were like. We used the Official Google Blog and the Yahoo Search Blog for our benchmarks, and there are very good reasons that we chose those sites. Both of those serve up nearly the exact same content every time you load the site. If I chose a site such as ours we would run into the issue of different ads being served in the different browsers.

For each test the browser started with a cleared cache, and the three results were averaged together to get a single overall load time (measured in seconds). In the parenthesis you’ll see the results of each test we ran before averaging them together (the overall smaller number is better):

Note: I literally went and deleted each browser’s cache after each refresh just to remove any concern that a Control/Shift refresh was not deleting the site’s cache correctly.

The Google Blog:

1. Opera 9.5.9841 Beta: 2.498s (2.129,2.606,2.760)
2. Safari 3.1: 2.798s (2.619,2.963,2.811)
3. Firefox 3 Beta 4: 3.009s (3.167,3.347,2.513)
4. Opera 9.26: 3.360s (3.606,3.215,3.260)
5. Internet Explorer 7: 4.235s (4.402,3.800,4.504)
6. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 4.485s (4.852,4.258,4.346)
7. Internet Explorer 8 Beta: 4.602s (4.409,4.238,5.158)

The Yahoo Search Blog:

1. Safari 3.1: 1.411s (1.547,1.312,1.375)
2. Opera 9.5.9841 Beta: 1.599s (1.578,1.625,1.593)
3. Opera 9.26: 1.677s (1.547,1.625,1.860)
4. Firefox 2.0.0.12: 1.771s (1.797,1.844,1.672)
5. Firefox 3 Beta 4: 2.055s (2.430,2.143,1.591)
6. Internet Explorer 7: 2.594s (2.563,2.219,3.000)
7. Internet Explorer 8 Beta: 3.365s (2.875,3.750,3.470)

It looks like Safari 3.1 and Opera 9.5 both do really well in these tests, and I would consider it a tie between the two.

–Memory Usage–

This is probably one of the areas that interests most of you. Memory usage has become a big concern these days as we’ve seen some browsers (*cough* Firefox *cough*) use up insane amounts of our computer’s resources. So we took each of the browsers seen in the previous tests, developed a list of sites to open in each, and went at it.

We’re not going to list out all of the sites that we decided to visit, but they are all sites that are extremely popular. Places like MySpace, YouTube, CNN, and others were all included as we chugged through our four different memory usage readings:

1. Started the browser, and took a memory usage reading.
2. Loaded 10 predetermined sites in tabs, and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
3. Loaded 15 more predetermined sites in tabs (totaling 25 sites), and took a memory usage reading after all the sites finished loading.
4. Let the browser sit for 10 minutes with the 25 tabs open, and then took a memory usage reading.

And now for the results! The table below lists the different browsers and the result from each test mentioned above. The best browser from each test is highlighted in green, and the worst is highlighted in red.

For this round it’s clear that Firefox 3 Beta 4 walks away as the clear winner. Mozilla has obviously put some work into making Firefox 3 a more memory efficient browser than it previously was, and this is proof of that.

I can’t say that I was surprised that some version of Internet Explorer almost always did the worst, but I was quite taken back that Internet Explorer 8 shows little improvement over version 7. Apparently that is not the focus of Microsoft right now.

–Overview–

It took us about 6 hours to compile all of the results that you see above, and I would say that doing this on your own is not really for the faint of heart. Things like not being able to run IE7 and IE8 side-by-side is really a time killer, but we wanted to be sure to include both versions in our results. And surprisingly the only browser that crashed on us was Internet Explorer 8 Beta when trying to open the 25 tabs.

We’d love to hear any comments you may have regarding our results, but remember that what you’ll see on your computer will likely differ from what we see. The important thing to take out of the stats is how each of them relatively rank up against each other.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 RC2 today which is right on schedule, and that means we might still be on for a June launch of Firefox 3! It’s even possible that this could be the last Release Candidate before Mozilla shoots for their world record.

This time around there’s probably nothing that you’ll notice as being different from Release Candidate 1, which is a good thing. At this point they are focusing only on bugs that could keep the user from having a great experience with the browser, and if all looks well in this release it could be signed-off on to be the final version. *cue marching band*

Mozilla hasn’t officially made the Firefox 3 RC2 announcement yet, but it will be coming in the next day or so. That also means the automatic update to RC2 won’t be available until then, but they have posted the files up on their FTP. Just like with previous releases I’ve put together a downloader for those that want to give the new version a whirl right now. And don’t worry, it balances the load between all of the mirrors unlike some of the sites that post direct links to the FTP:

For those of you waiting for your favorite add-ons to get upgraded… hopefully you won’t have to wait too much longer! I do have to say that the add-on developers are much more attentive to the release of Firefox 3 compared to that of Firefox 2.

And once you get Firefox 3 RC2 up and running I highly recommend that you checkout the AwesomeSearch extension. It’s quickly become a must-have for me.

Thanks to Cody for the tip!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Way back in July we introduced a new Firefox 3 feature that focused on making users safer from phishing attacks. This is done using URL highlighting which puts more emphasis on the domain name, kind of like what the Locationbar² extension is used for.

Unfortunately this feature was backed out of the nightly builds shortly after it was put in. Apparently there were some problems getting it to work the way they expected it to, but it has finally made a reappearance in the latest Firefox 3 nightly builds!

Below you’ll find an animated image that show the current state of the Firefox 3 URL highlighting, and also one that demonstrates a tweak that I’m about to show you.

As it stands right now the URL highlighting is a bit basic, and I wanted to make it stand out even more than it already does. Using the Stylish Firefox extension we were able to make the domain name both bold and black, while the remaining portions of the URL were a lighter gray. To do this you just have to create a new style (pictured above) and insert the following CSS code:

#urlbar .formatted-url-domain{
   color: black !important;
   font-weight: bold !important;
}

#urlbar .formatted-url-contents{
   color: #777777 !important;
}

And finally here are two animated images that show the before and after:

How the URL appears before styling:

How the URL appears after styling:

I think that the styled appearance is much better, and those of you familiar with CSS will find a lot of different customization options that you can apply to the different portions of the URL. You can even go crazy and underline, add a background, or put borders around the domain name!

Kudos to WildcatRay over in the Firefox forum for pointing this out!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com