The PC Report

Google Chrome, which turns a happy second birthday today, has celebrated by releasing version 6 to the world. The most noticeable change in Chrome 6 is the slightly revised user interface, which has been made simpler through merging of the two menus into one, removal of some unnecessary interface features and a brand new color scheme that is now a grey instead of blue.

Other than the user interface update, Chrome 6 brings improved syncing tools with new support for syncing of web form data and extensions along with bug fixes, patched security holes and speed improvements. Google claims Chrome’s JavaScript performance is three times faster than it was in 2008.

Why the Chrome team has decided to release a major version number Chrome update (5.0 to 6.0) with relatively minor changes is odd. Usually version number schemes leave the first number for major versions and subsequent numbers after decimal places are reserved for minor changes and bug fixes.

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Microsoft Russia has made a major blunder today after posting a screenshot of the upcoming interface of Internet Explorer 9 – the next big revision of Microsoft’s infamous browser. So far Microsoft has teased us with some platform previews showing the JavaScript and HTML5 power of IE9 through the new Chakra engine, but no interface has been revealed.

The image in question, as you can see above, has since been pulled from Microsoft Russia’s press website but they weren’t quick enough for blogs around the internet to download the image and re-post it. Futhermore, Neowin claims to have confirmed the screenshots as real after coercing with sources close to the project.

This single image tells a lot about Microsoft’s direction for IE9. The user interface team has removed the chunky and clunky interface present in Internet Explorer 8 in favor of an ultra-minimalistic design similar to that of Firefox 4 and Chrome. Microsoft has moved tabs to the top area, removed the large Favorites bar to a button on the right hand side along with Home and Settings, removed the search bar and slimmed down the UI as much as possible

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In a follow up to our previous post on HTML5 we now have a video showing a speed comparison between Firefox 3.7, Internet Explorer 9, Opera (unspecified version) and Chrome 6. The latest test preview of IE9 utilises hardware acceleration as well as a new JavaScript engine and better HTML5 support. The Firefox 3.7 Alpha also uses hardware acceleration that matches IE9′s in terms of performance, and Chrome 6 tries to use its engine but ultimately fails miserably.

Most notable from the video below is that Firefox 3.7 actually beats IE9, which recently has been shown to be a speed demon, by around 5%. Both IE9 and Firefox 3.7 used the least CPU power during the test as well. As these browsers are in testing phases one would hope that by a final version things would be even smoother and faster and hopefully with interface improvements (*cough* Firefox *cough*).

It’s quite surprising to see Chrome in last place when it comes to browser speed considering that it was the fastest browser around when it was released and consistently beats non-beta Firefox and Internet Explorer versions in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark. This could be due to (as stated in the video) an early implementation of hardware acceleration or it could mean that Firefox and IE9′s devs are just better at coding these features into their browsers.

We wait in anticipation of the full releases of all these browsers

Somewhat overshadowed by the release of the iPhone 4 today at Apple’s WWDC, Apple has announced and released Safari 5 for both Mac and Windows. The new browser aims to be more compatible with the latest web standards as well as faster overall and more secure for the users. On the improved speed, Apple claims that the new “Nitro” Javascript engine in Safari is 30% faster than Safari 4 – we’ve put that to the test below.

Also on the list of new features is support for signed extensions in the browser. As of today we haven’t been able to find any extensions to test but rest assured that over the next couple of months you should start to see a trickle of them come in. Safari 5 also brings a new “Safari Reader” feature that turns the website’s content into a well formatted and easy to read layout when the Reader button is pressed. More on these new features below.

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Google Chrome has been updated to stable version 5, and it marks the first stable version for Chrome for Mac and Linux (of course there is a Windows version available too). One of the main features added in Chrome 5 is syncing of almost every setting in Chrome including themes, web settings, startup settings and more across multiple computers.

Other features included in Chrome 5 are more HTML5 features, extensions in incognito mode and a better bookmark manager. If you haven’t been auto-updated to Chrome 5 you can download a copy from here 

Firefox 4 is set to be quite a big release as it includes an entire user interface (UI) overhaul, and today we’re getting some updates on the progress of the new UI set to be included. This new theme is supposed to reflect a modernized browser as well as retaining visual integration, a streamlined UI and cross-platform consistency where possible.

The theme is still a work in progress, but below we have some new screenshots of what you may see in the next iteration of Firefox for Windows, Mac and Linux as well as current progress on features.

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In a quite interesting move, Google has decided to remove the http:// preceding the website URL from display in developer builds of Google Chrome. This could present users with issues especially when needing to copy and paste URLs from the address bar, however Google has said that this issue is addressed by Chrome adding http:// to the front of all URLs when copying them to the clipboard. This feature is currently broken in many instances.

Another issue is the use of other domain preceders such as https:// and ftp:// (generally the only other ones that people encounter). Apparently Chrome will still add these to the front of URLs if encountered, but this could look inconsistent if http:// is removed. OSNews suggests that an easy to recognise icon such as the RSS icon should replace http://, https:// and ftp:// and personally I think that this is a great idea and should be implemented once the copying issues have been ironed out.

Google has confirmed via the Chromium Blog that they will be in fact integrating Adobe Flash Player into Google Chrome, eliminating the need to install and update the plugin… ever. The aim for this move is to increase the security of web browsing by removing outdated software and to improve the current state of web browser plug-ins. For this project, Google is working closely with both Adobe and Mozilla – which should mean that we’ll see Flash integrated in the same way in Firefox.

Thanks to the integration, Flash Player will be updated through the auto-updater seamlessly which should remove the risk from having outdated software. Of course the problem with this is that if a flaw or vulnerability is found within Flash and Adobe doesn’t patch it promptly, Chrome users will be wide open to an attack if they don’t disable Flash. Hopefully though Adobe will patch any exploits as soon a possible and thanks to the auto-update everyone will be secure without having to do anything.

If you’re desperate to try out Chrome with integrated Flash, you can download it now through the Chromium developer channel.

If you have poor quality internet you might run into trouble when you attempt to download large files. Almost any time I download a file larger than 50 MB the download will get cut off and tell me the connection to the server has failed. If I click retry it tries to download the entire file again.

I thought everyone knew how to resume a broken download but it amazed my friend when he saw me do it so now I’m sharing this with everyone here.

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Opera Software has just announced that their latest version of their browser is ready for consumption. Opera 10.50 now touts itself as Windows’ fastest web browser, and some of the performance benefits seen come from a brand new JavaScript engine called Carakan and a new graphics engine called Vega. Opera now also supports HTML5 and CSS3 for the latest in web technology support.

You may notice from the image above that the Opera interface has changed for the better. There is now full Windows 7 integration including Aero Glass, Aero Peek and separate taskbar entries for each tab which comes in handy. They have also chucked tabs on the top, similar to Google Chrome, and there is also the option to have large tab previews as seen above.

Opera 10.50 is now available from the Opera website to download, or for EU users you can grab it from the browser ballot. You can head below to see our Sunspider JavaScript benchmark results in Opera 10.50

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