Webcliq Rant Technology, Communications and Marketing on Mallorca

Know Your Future Browsers

One of the easiest ways to get the jump on your fellow developers is to keep a close eye on upcoming versions of your favorite browsers. Here are three important browsers to watch:

• In November we learned that the Internet Explorer team had started work on IE9, which is great news. In a blog post, the team revealed some sneak peeks at what’s inside the latest iteration of their browser: huge improvements in JavaScript performance, hardware acceleration for graphics (check out this nifty video from Channel 9), and some promising signs on the CSS3 support front. Chances are slim that IE9 will appear on desktops before 2011, but in the meantime, I’d hope that we can all look forward to plenty of updates from the IE team as they work on the latest version.
• Firefox 3.6 beta is available to test right now, and it’s full of lovely new bells and whistles. According to the release notes, we can expect to see some great new ways to deal with background images and gradients, support for HTML 5’s local file access API, and improvements for Firefox add-on developers. Firefox 3.6 was originally slated for a late 2009 release, but has yet to reach release candidate status — so keep a close eye out.
• Google Chrome Extensions are finally here. Will this help Chrome chip away at Firefox’s market share in 2010, especially among those of us who love our Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug? We put this to our Twitter friends and responses were mixed indeed: some people absolutely can’t wait, while other friends are fairly loyal to Firefox. One thing’s for sure — in 2010, as more extensions appear, there’ll be more incentive to try Chrome. (We reproduced selected tweets in last week’s Community Crier, if you want the full scoop.)