Posts Tagged: chrome

Well, it’s been a busy few days in the web browser world! We’ll try and summarize what’s been happening for you!

Internet Explorer 10 Updated

Internet Explorer 10On Thursday, Microsoft released Windows 8 Release Preview. Along with it came an update to their Internet Explorer 10 browser. This is the browser that will ship when Windows 8 is fully released later this year. Sadly, IE10 isn’t currently available for Windows 7, but we very much hope it will be before too long, as IE10 sees some significant leaps forward for Microsoft’s browser.

Firefox 13 Out Now

Firefox 13The latest version of Firefox – version 13 – is now available to download from Mozilla (even though it’s not “officially” released until tomorrow!). Notable changes in this version, according to Mozilla, relate to the “Home” and “Tabs” pages. The “home” page can now be customized with bookmarks, history, sync, and previous session data. The “new tabs” page has also seen a feature introduce that has been knocking around in Chrome and Opera for a while. This feature shows thumbnails of recently/commonly viewed pages

Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer

Chrome more popular than IEStatcounter also reported recently that Google Chrome has now overtaken Internet Explorer in terms of market share. According to StatCounter, Chrome now accounts for 32.76% of the worldwide browser market. This compares to 31.94% for Internet Explorer and 25.47% for Firefox. This is the first time that a browser other than Internet Explorer has commanded the largest share of the browser market. Ok, so it’s not a massive lead – in fact, Chrome’s lead is only 0.82%. Still, this is quite an achievement for a relatively new browser, which was first launched less than 4 years ago!

Facebook to purchase Opera?

Opera 12It’s also been rumored this past week that Facebook may be gearing up to buy the Opera browser!
That’s according to a report from Pocket-Lint.com. The article claims (via unnamed sources) that Facebook is looking to purchase Opera Software. Opera Software are the makers of the long-running Opera web browser. Details are sketchy, but the story claims that Facebook is looking to compete in the web browser war that already has Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla among its big players.

The Opera web browser has historically always had the smallest market share of any of the 5 major desktop browsers. That said, Opera has gained some ground most notably in the mobile web browser market. Facebook is currently very focused on the “mobile” side of their operations. This is due to an increasing number of users regularly using Facebook on their mobile devices. So, Facebook could be about to purchase Opera Software as a shortcut towards making a browser that could compete in the smartphone and tablet space?

The Facebook purchase could actually be very good for the Opera browser. Such a move has the potential to become much more of a “threat” to the other 4 browsers. This in turn will likely see increased development, competition, and a race to strive to produce the fastest, most “standards compliant” browser.

We’ve been closely monitoring Opera developments in recent months. Opera Software are about to release Opera 12, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far from the nightly developer “snapshots”. Opera 12 is a substantial improvement on Opera 11 – it’s faster, and far more standard-compliant

MIDAS: Booking Software for ALL major browsers

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully supported on Internet Explorer (including on IE10 in Windows 8), Firefox (including v13), Opera (including v12), as well as the current versions of Safari and Chrome.

…and there’s still time to take advantage of our very special Diamond Jubilee discount!


Google Chrome 19 Released!

Google Chrome 19The Google Chrome team have today announced the release of Chrome 19 for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

As part of our ongoing commitment to MIDAS, the latest version of our scheduling software is also fully compatible with this new release of Google Chrome!

If you’re an existing Google Chrome user, you don’t need to do anything! One of the great things about Chrome (which other browsers are now starting to implement too!) is that it silently updates itself with no user interaction (other than a restart!) required. This ensures that you’re always using the most stable, secure and up-to-date version of Google Chrome!

We also test our web app in pre-release builds “developer” builds of Google Chrome! Testing in these builds (which right now are for Chrome 20!) helps us to identify as early as possible any potential incompatibilities. This means you can be sure that whenever a new version of Chrome (or any of the 5 major browsers) is released, MIDAS will be compatible with from the get-go!

In other Chrome-related news, rumors are currently brewing that a version of Chrome is in the works for iOS. So if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you may soon be able to use Google Chrome on your device!

Business Insider reports that Chrome could be released for iOS devices as soon as the end of June, but definitely sometime by the end of 2012. As yet, neither Apple nor Google have confirmed this report.

However, if the reports are true, this will undoubtedly be welcome news for iOS users, who so far have had little choice but to use the default browser on their iOS devices – Apple’s own “Safari” browser. Giving users the option to use a different browser is a big step forward – but so far it’s unknown if Apple will allow an iOS version of Chrome to actually be set as a “default” browser for the iPad/iPhone.

…and whilst we’re still on the subject of touch-enabled devices, such as the iPad, read about our upcoming improvements to support for touch screens


Firefox 9In what’s now becoming an almost monthly event, the Mozilla team have released yet another major version of their web browser, Firefox 9! …once again, we’re able to bring you this news “hot off the press”, so much so that Mozilla have yet to update their Release Notes for Firefox 9 yet!

It’s looks like the browser war between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome is really hotting up now too! Less than a week ago, Google also released a major update Google Chrome 16. In the same week, Microsoft also announced that in 2012, Internet Explorer will keep itself up-to-date – just like Firefox and Chrome already do!

…and if that wasn’t enough web browser news, if the reports over the numbers over at StatCounter are to be believed, Google Chrome 15 is now the “world’s number one browser”!

Google Chrome 15 StatCounter claims that in the last two weeks of November and the first week of December, Chrome 15 was used by 24 percent of web browser users worldwide compared to only 22.9 percent for IE8. It was the first time ever in StatCounter’s history that a web browser not developed and released by Microsoft had reached the top spot on its stat numbers.

These results show that Google’s Chrome web browser is definitely gaining more and more users worldwide. Just a couple of weeks ago, StatCounter claimed that Chrome overtakes Mozilla’s Firefox to become the world’s number two web browser in terms of cumulative web browsers rather than specific versions.

So it looks like there’s going to be some fierce competition between the 5 main browsers in 2012, and you can expect version numbers to continue incrementing at an ever increasing rate as that all important market share is hotly contended for!

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully compatible with the very latest versions of ALL 5 main browsers, and we will continue to work hard during 2012 to make sure that whatever new browser versions the 5 main vendors put out, MIDAS will run in all of them!


Google Chrome 16 Released!

Google Chrome 16Hot on the heals of the news that Chrome overtakes Firefox to become the number two web browser just a week or so ago, there’s no sign of development of Google’s “Chrome” web browser is slowing down any time soon!

Yesterday, they announced the arrival of Chrome 16 for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. According to the Google Chrome team “Chrome 16 contains some really great improvements including enhancements to Sync and the ability to create multiple profiles on a single instance of Chrome”

You can read more about Chrome 16 via the Google Chrome Releases Blog

As part of our ongoing commitment to MIDAS, the latest version of our scheduling software is also fully compatible with this new release of Google Chrome!

We also test our web app in pre-release builds “developer” builds of Google Chrome! Testing in these builds (which right now are for Chrome 17!) helps us to identify as early as possible any potential incompatibilities, so that we can address them before the next major browser update is released!

If you’re an existing Google Chrome user, you don’t need to do anything – one of the things we love about Chrome is that it silently updates itself with no user interaction (other than a restart!) required. This ensures that you’re always using the most stable, secure and up-to-date version of Google Chrome!

If you’ve not yet tried Google Chrome, why not give it a try!?