It only took me one hour of playing with Google’s new web browser, Chrome, to realize that its just a web browser. I already have 2 web browsers installed on my machine (on good, the other not so much) so why do I need a third? The very short amount of time trialing Chrome was enough to give me a good feel for what Chrome is. To conclude here, I like the browser, but it just doesn’t offer me the same experience I get from Firefox, or the experience I expect from a traditional web browser. Although I have to say, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The things I like about Chrome is the way it manages tabs. Each tab is a new process. This is something I wish my main browser had so I can figure out what is causing it to use all my resources on the machine, and also protect the other pages I have open in case one causes a crash. Another thing I like about Chrome is its speed. It works pretty fast, although after importing my bucket loads of Bookmarks and History, it did effect the way Chrome handled, which could be why I have trouble with Firefox at times.

To be honest, I don’t really feel this as a true competitor in the browser space. I feel this is a spec browser which is to force Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and whatever to adopt Google’s features to make the browsers better. Google’s platform is the internet, so pushing out their vision of an ideal browser which enables access to their services makes sense that they want to make it a good experience from both the access program and the web service.

Even though I love Firefox and will continue using it as my primary web browser, I will still keep Chrome on my system. This is a perfect secondary browser for when you just want to quickly access a webpage without waiting for your browser to load and the two dozen tabs that come with it. Just click, wait a second and you’re all ready to zap onto a page. It’s really that fast and simple, which makes it the perfect quick and go browser. Other than that, it’s going to be interesting to see what else they will bring to the table.

The latest release of the best browser ever has just come. The Mozilla crew have done a top job with this version of their Firefox web browser and there are many features that make you all warm and gooey inside. If you need some convincing, carry on reading, otherwise get out of here and go download Firefox 3! You have less than 24 hours to download it to be part of the World Record that Mozilla are trying to achieve, most downloads in 24 hours. Here goes a few reasons why the new Firefox Rocks.

Places - They have completely revamped the bookmarks and it is really fast due to the fact it is stored in a database. History and Bookmarks are accessible from here and are easy to manage in folders and even tags. They have also separated the bookmarks into Bookmarks Menu, Toolbar and Unsorted. I really like how they have done this.

Smart Bar -The address bar isn’t just a standard address bar anymore. It is a lot more powerful. You can type in terms and it will show you where they are, whether its at the start of an address URL or page title, or in the middle or end, wherever the term is, it will find it. It it very good and getting the page you want up there so its very easy to access past pages and sites you have been to with the smart bar.

User Interface -Now, no matter what Operating System you use, Firefox 3 looks unique in all 4. They have made Windows XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Linux all have different themes that make it match the system better. The browser looks more integrated visually with the operating system than looking like something thrown on top of it. It may not be a huge thing feature wise, and may not make the browser work any better, but the refreshed looks is still a big deal.

There are lots of other great features but those are 3 of the most noticeable and wonderful ones. If you are a current Firefox user, its a no brainer to upgrade to 3. Memory management is hugely improved for starters and the whole browser generally is faster and is more solid. Firefox 3 is the future so upgrade as soon as possible, upgrade now!

I had been using Minefield since Alpha 8 which was quite a long time ago. My Firefox profile has been used by Firefox 2 since I last reinstalled Windows on my computer and it had bee used by multiple Alpha and Beta builds (lots of nightlies) and during all the updates, my profile had become a mess and full of information from various versions of Firefox/Minefield. When Firefox 3 RC1 came out, I decided that it was time to start my profile again, except I will save my load of bookmarks I have collected over the years.

The process of backing up my Bookmarks was really simple. Using the new Places manager, exporting the database was simple. I needed a way of getting the saved passwords so I had them on record incase I didn’t know a password and didn’t want to get that information emailed to me. I managed to find a cunning way of backing up and accessing them if needed. After that, I went into the application data folder and renamed my profile. I didn’t delete it straight away in case something when horribly wrong and I wanted to turn back.

This is where the first problem arose. I couldn’t open Firefox because it kept telling me it was still open and in use. It clearly wasn’t due to it not showing in the process manager. I renamed the profile back to its original name and Firefox opened fine. I renamed it back and again Firefox had trouble. What I needed to do was open Firefox with the profile manager so I could create a new profile from scratch. Peppery found it and told me over IM how to do it. It was relatively simple.

With a new profile, I felt lost. This wasn’t my browser! My browser has extensions and acts differently to this. I first went and downloaded a couple of extensions that I needed. After all that, I then went and changed some of the setting in the add-ons and in the program options. Now all I needed was my bookmarks, and my tabs. Restoring my bookmarks was just as simple and fast as exporting them. In a click or two, my bookmarks were all back, and from there, I could restore all my tabs.

Logging into all my sites was going to be a challenge. Because all my passwords were gone, I had to rely on my memory, and my cheat sheet, to assist me with logging on to websites and saving the passwords so I no longer have to remember, not that I have to remember, all my passwords. From this, I am reminded about one of the best features of Firefox 3, the simple password remember bar. It is a godsend compared to the old save password dialog box.

The only real problem I had with this is the address bar. In my old profile, I had 90 days of history and that really made the new address bar work great. It still works good with only bookmarks, but the thing that makes it a wonder, is the addition of history. The feature is definitely not as rich without it, and having no history made it quite useless. Although after a few weeks, it started to become useful again.

I do believe that a clean out was good, and I noticed a significant amount of speed improvements, but that was more likely due to it not having 90 days of history holding it back, and many unused extensions disabled. Even though I did lose history which was slightly annoying, I am very happy I did it and would consider doing it with the released of Firefox 4. I really love Firefox 3 and a clean out did wonders!

As some of you already know, I have been using Firefox 3.0 Beta, codenamed Minefield, for a few months now. I do think it is the best update so far and will be a must have for anyone, although Firefox should be no matter what version. Something I stumbled across today was a security feature that was implemented into Firefox, and that is blocking suspicious sites.

Today when I was doing the usual browsing of hundreds of different sites, I came across a site that was blocked by Firefox. I was greeted with a big red alert with a dark grey background, a page similar to the one when the server cannot be found. The page read the following, “The web site at <URL Removed> has been reported as an attack site and has been blocked based on your security preferences.” I was very intrigued and happy that I witnessed this and love Firefox for blocking bad sites. I wouldn’t have ever thought I would come across this screen when I heard about this feature, but I did.

I do think this is a great feature to have, and hope that they get all those bad sites on the list. This may not be a big feature for me because it is extremely rare I come across sites of the nature but for a lot of people I know, this feature would be a godsend, and also to me too because I won’t be required to fix their infected computer. This function alone is enough to switch your less computer illiterate friends and family to Firefox. Thumbs up to Mozilla for putting this much needed security feature into their browser.

Just a few days ago, a new Mozilla project came to my attention, Prism. Prism is an application that lets you take web applications out of the browser and run them directly on the desktop. You may wonder what is the point of running websites, or web applications if you rather, out of the web browser.  When using it, I mainly concentrated on the Google Suite of web applications, iGoogle, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Notebook and Google reader. These ran exactly the same as they normally would in a browser environment.

My first impressions of this were that it is simple to set up and works just as I would have expected it. I eventually questioned the need for having this. I eventually worked out why this is something for me. When using the browser, I always have at least ten to fifteen tabs open at a time, right from when I start the browser, right to the moment I close the browser. My default tabs are always there displaying websites I commonly use. If I am connected to the internet, this application does seem somewhat useless but if you needed to say, view your email and/or calendar without opening a browser and loading a dozen or so tabs, it is much more efficient to just open up the desktop app.

Another thing that this will be aiming for is offline web applications. Using the same conditions as before, instead of opening your browser and having all you tabs come up with the “page not displayed” error or having to even have all your tabs open in your browser, it is easier to access offline capable apps using Prism. I feel that the two main reasons they are developing something like that it to combine those two aspects, having the web application in its own environment out of the browser and to enrich the offline aspect of future web applications.

I can see future potential in this application and can see it being greatly linked with Google’s web applications as well as their Gear’s Offline application. All three of these things linked can make functionality of web applications greatly improve and be more accessible and useful when disconnected from the internet. What I personally would like to see is Google embrace this application to create a Google Web Suite application using Prism with tabs with access, online and offline, to all its web applications in its own environment out of the clutter of the browser and other websites. I can’t wait to see Prism blossom into something great and very useful.