Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

Yesterday, Google launched their own Web browser. Since this is pretty big news, I decided it was worth posting network-wide. Do we really need another browser? Before yesterday, my answer would have been no - I'm a very satisfied Firefox user, and Internet Explorer 8 is shaping up quite nicely. But after watching the 90 minute Google Webcast yesterday, I was very interested in with what Google had created. There's a great online comic that walks you through why Google created the browser, and what kinds of things were important to Google when creating Chrome. I think this comic is also how the browser was leaked before Google was ready to announce it. Read more...

"Firefox Mobile, as outlined in the video above, doesn’t look quite as revolutionary but it does look like it will fill some holes currently found in comparable offerings such as Nokia’s S60 Browser and Apple’s mobile Safari. The GUI looks very cool, though raw, and Mozilla appears to be on the right path toward optimizing user experience and accommodating for small screen sizes."


Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

The only thing I can say is...I want! The browser wars seem to be making a comeback - Opera 9.5 last week, Firefox 3 tomorrow, and the mobile versions coming soon. If there's one thing that could really ignite mass-market adoption of smartphones (for those of us without access to an iPhone that is), it'd be a decent web-experience on a mobile device. I like the idea of panning and the bookmark/tab canvas, but I'm holding comment as to how it'd work on a "real" device - my instinct tells me it'll be resource intensive. Still, Firefox Mobile really breaks away from the traditional browser/user interaction in some ways, and it'll be interesting to see how this will pan out.