The Evangelist

It's been a while since I mentioned Opera in a post. The browser has a mere 1.50% of marketshare according to Wikipedia, coming in behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. Considering Opera's quality as a browser and how many features it has pioneered before other browsers, it is surprising how little marketshare Opera has.

Google has been developing an open-source plugin for Internet Explorer dubbed "Chrome Frame" that allows web pages to be rendered by Google's Chrome layout engine rather than the one built in to Internet Explorer.

This affords the user a number of benefits. Perhaps most importantly to Google, Chrome Frame enables the draft HTML5 standard in IE. This will be required for the use of Google Wave, Google's new powerful communication and collaboration tool.

In addition, Chrome Frame can also offer better Javascript performance thanks to the Chrome layout engine.

The only caveat is that, as of when this article was written, web developers have to add a tag to their web pages in order to render Chrome tab. It is my hope that Google extends the Chrome Frame capability to all pages at the user's discretion, allowing users who are familiar with the Internet Explorer interface to take advantage of Google's excellent layout engine.

Potential downloaders should also keep in mind the fact that Chrome Frame is, as Google describes it, in an "early stage." This means that there still might be some bugs and some glitches with the software.

Those who are interested should visit Google's page on Chrome Frame for more information.

Yet another new web browser has entered the fray, this time by a Tokyo, Japan-based company by the name of Lunascape Corporation.

Lunascape, while not open-source, is freeware. While it has been around in Japan for a little while, it is just getting started in the United States with an english release now that the company has an operation in San José, California.

The browser is based on Microsoft's Internet Explorer platform, so it only runs on Windows. There is a reason for this, however, so don't give up on it yet. Lunascape can switch between the Webkit (Chrome and Safari), Trident (Internet Explorer) and Gecko (Firefox) layout engines with ease. This doesn't make it a combination of the browsers listed above (so it isn't necessarily the fastest because one of the above is considered the fastest at the time) but instead a capable web browser for viewing different sites which may render better or faster using a certain layout engine instead of the other two. This could also make Lunascape a capable platform for web developers to test their site's compatilibity with a number of different layout engines all with one browser.

The company claims that the browser has the world's fastest JavaScript rendering engine.

Lunascape has several other innovative features including podcast aggregation, RSS "news-flashes," and mouse gesture capabilities (which can already been found in Opera). The browser also promises to be compatible with many Internet Explorer add-ons and Firefox plugins alike; an amazing feat.

The browser also sports the now nearly ubiquitous tabs feature as well as a built-in RSS reader.

I'm looking forward to trying out Lunascape for a while, and I'm hoping that the browser makes some waves in the market. New competition can only serve to encourage innovation, and there's nothing wrong with that.

For more information or to download Lunascape, you can visit their website at http://www.lunascape.tv/.

In the so-called browser war, we are always hearing of the battle between Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox. Alone, IE version 5, 6 or 7 has less marketshare than Firefox. Together, they have about 50.6% of the browser marketshare according to w3schools, while Firefox only has 43.7%. Apple's Safari browser has 2.6 percent of the marketshare. Opera, on the other hand, only has 2.1% of the marketshare.

Opera is a fast and memory-efficient web browser with many innovative features that gets far less attention than it deserves. Being a user of Firefox myself, I can say that Opera has features that even Firefox doesn't have (while conversely Firefox has some features that Opera lacks, such as find as you type).

Quick Find is a nifty feature that allows you to search the content of sites you have visited in the past to help find something on a page even if you forgot which website it was at. With Opera Link through the My Opera Service, everything gets synchronized across Opera browsers over multiple PCs, allowing you to keep your bookmarks and settings no matter which computer you are on. Speed Dial, which is much like the speed dial feature on a phone, brings up a list of up to 9 user-defined websites instead of about_blank when a new tab is opened. Mouse gestures are an alternative to clicking buttons in the browser or using key commands, which can be useful for some users who like to use the mouse. The download manager is comparable to the one in Firefox 3, plus it has Bittorrent capability, a big plus. The browser also has widget capabilities as well as a jumble of other features that I won't mention here because both Firefox and IE7 already have them.

What is also interesting is that Opera is working on a set of developer tools for creating websites and web applications known as Opera Dragonfly. This is an interesting move for Opera to release a set of tools for developing web pages and then make sure they are compatible with the browser. While other companies have made similar moves, they have never to my knowledge taken it this far.

Overall, my experience with Opera has been a good one. The browser behaves as one would expect it to for the most part, and it has some great features. While many of these can be attained in Firefox through other means including add-ons, Opera has really gone far to make an original browser, and has really come far from earlier versions.