Skeptico Machina

I just recently discovered Boat, a less well-known browser for Android. Only 6,283 reviews as of writing this post, compared to the least popular of the major Android browsers — Firefox, with 58,303 reviews.

Boat has a nice clean interface, with tabs inspired by the desktop version of Google Chrome and bottom part similar to Opera mobile or perhaps SkyFire. Skyfire was my first thought based on looks alone, but I think it’s more similar to Opera in what the available functions are: forward, back, favorites, tab management, and more options buttons.

I’ve previously complained about chromish tabs on phones on Dolphin HD, but I’ve discovered its’ really it’s really all in the shape. Boat’s tabs are wider and easier to hit right on my fingers — on Dolphin I tend to close tabs I mean to select and vice versa. Others may not have this problem. Other SCREENS may not have this problem. Maybe on my next smartphone (assuming it is Android) I might love Dolphin and hate Boat.

Boat browser doesn’t have the maturity of the Dolphin browser, and doesn’t have all the features like Dolphin’s Sonar voice control. Its biggest advantage is that  it’s quite fast, faster than dolphin and all the other browsers on Android 2.3 that I have used,  except, perhaps, the default browser which I never use.

I tend to use Dolphin as my go to from habit as, despite my tab problems, it’s been the best browser that I knew of for a while. However, I really like Boat’s speed and interface. It’s a good browser and deserves more love.

Firefox updated to version 11 yesterday.

I haven’t actually used it yet, owing to the fact I use Ubuntu as my primary OS and it hasn’t hit the repos yet. Also owing to the fact that firefox for android only received a point release to Firefox 10, originally released six weeks ago.

Firefox has said the new native interface for Android, a feature still in development, is what is slowing down major updates to the android version of the browser

This shows that rapid release cycles, where incremental changes are made frequently, retard big changes when necessary. Firefox for Amdroid developers cannot focus on getting the next batch of increments out the door and getting that big change ready.

If you don’t need to make a big change, this isn’t a problem. But in this case, Firefox for Android is just too slow right now to compete in the android browser space. It needs this new interface.

I have been trying this interface since it entered the nightly of Firefox 11. It’s good, definitely a major speed improvement, and visually appealing. While some of the things I do like about the current firefix mobile interface are changed, I do think it is an improvement.

But it’s not ready for prime time. Not where it sits now in the Firefox 12 Aurora, though it has improved since it was not included in the firefox 11 beta. It still needs more development, and the only way they’re going to get it done is by.ditching the rapid release temporarily. I couldn’t say for certain, but I think They’re experiencing the same problem with introducing a speed dial to the desktop version. I don’t see a speed dial as necessary, but I do think it’s not out yet because the rapid release cycle necessarily.

Google will face the same problems Mozilla has with Firefox for Android if they ever need to make big changes to Chrome

Rapid release cycles in general are a good thing. But as Mozilla has basically done with Firefox Android, they sometimes need to be suspended to focus on big, necessary change.

I love TweetDeck.

I think the interface on TweetDeck is a lot better than the interface at Twitter.com. The desktop app for Windows is excellent, as are the Chrome and web versions. I also need TweetDeck’s post scheduling to do my real job. The one I get paid for.

I use the TweetDeck web application instead of the Chrome or desktop application, because it plays nice with LastPass. The problem is that TweetDeck is currently only supported in Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari browser. Firefox is out, which is the thing that is bugging me right now. I really would prefer to use Firefox to Chrome, but until I can use TweetDeck, I can’t have Firefox as my primary browser

All is not lost, I thought. When I need TweetDeck, I’ll just spoof the user agent on Firefox temporarily. When I tried this, I got both graphical and functional problems that rendered the app impossible to use in Firefox. I also attempted this in the Opera browser, just to see: it wouldn’t even display the login page at web.tweetdeck.com

Chrome and Safari use the Webkit rendering engine, as do all browsers for Apple’s iOS (iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, including third party browsers like Opera that normally use their own rendering engine), the default Browser app for Android and most of the smaller browsers for Linux.  Webkit is based on KHTML, the rendering engine used in Konqueror, the web browser for the KDE Desktop Environment for Linux. For those who don’t know, a browser’s rendering engine decides how the HTML and CSS code that makes up a website will display on your screen.

Firefox does not use Webkit. It uses Mozilla’s own Gecko engine. In most other browsers I have access to that use webkit, Tweetdeck web displays perfectly. It is fully supported in Chrome and Safari. The official web browser for the Gnome desktop environment for Linux displays it perfectly without modifying the User Agent String.

It seems clear that however TweetDeck is currently constructed, it runs best in Webkit, and if I’m going to continue using it I have to stick with a Webkit browers like Google Chrome, Safari, or Gnome’s Ephiphany browser (currently in the process of being renamed to “Web” on Gnome systems. While Webkit is great and all, Firefox is my first (web browser) love, was my first taste of the power of open source and I would vastly prefer to use it.

The W3C said last month that Webkit’s dominance in the browser space is damaging the web. For my own little piece of it, that much is true.

There really aren’t any good browsers for Android, at least that I have found. At least, none of the popular browsers really work for me.

The stock browser almost seems embarrassed, always asking if you’d like to use a different one every five seconds. Also, it has no tabs, instead using “windows” which is a pointless metaphor for a 4-inch screen. Dolphin had terrible tab management, attempting to put chrome style tabs on a 4-inch screen (they are still attempting, and failing).

Firefox for Android has some good things going for it, but it’s just slow. A new native Android interface should speed things up, but it’s basically still in alpha right now.

The much nimbler Opera shares some of the things that make Firefox good, and interface-wise I think it’s the best Android browser. It also shares a flaw with Firefox: both display some mobile sites incorrectly, or they display an a version of the mobile site not necessarily intended for touchscreens.

This isn’t universally true, but facebook and Twitter display versions of their mobile sites that look a lot like the versions that would display on a dumbphone when visiting m.facebook.com or m.twitter.com.

The current Facebook mobile site can be reached at touch.Facebook.com in any browser. Firefox and Opera display this site mostly ok, but not as well as iOS browsers or those Android browsers that use webkit. Other mobile sites such as the beta mobile versions of cheezburger network sites display best when viewing on browsers that use webkit.

Now, m.facebook.com displaying a different site is not in the rendering engine. I’m guessing that the version of facebook at m.facebook.com is designed to know what browser is viewing it.

browsers that don’t use webkit aren’t able to properly display some mobile sites, because most mobile sites are designed with webkit in mind, Because most mobile browsers use some version of the webkit rendering engine.

With almost any computing platform and any purpose but especially on , we are spoiled for choice. Web browsers are no different. Even Firefox for Android, as slow as it is right now, has some good things going for it. But as it improves its speed, will it be left behind because it can’t view anything on a webkit-prioritized mobile web?

I have recently entered the heady world of smartphone ownership. I am now in possession of a Samsung Mesmerize on the US Cellular network. Here are the major browsers I found available and my thoughts on them.

“Browser”

This is the default on my Samsung Mesmerize, and as far as I know it’s also the default on other Android phones. It’s pretty quick and very integrated into the platform. If you don’t do a lot of web browsing on the smartphone and only look at the occasional website, this is the one for you. There are a few things that I have needed this browser for, like easily adding a bookmark to a home screen. But, there are no tabs.

Dolphin Browser

This browser has tabs. It also have a start screen where you can put commonly visited websites. In many ways, Dolphin imitates Google Chrome’s look on the desktop. This is Dolphin’s downfall: Chrome’s tabbing is not properly designed for mobile. The speed is still good, but Dolphin’s biggest problem is that the tabs and “speed dial” buttons are both too small to effectively touch, at least for my epic manly fingers. The one really really awesome thing that Dolphin does is let me use the volume button for scrolling.

Firefox Mobile.

Firefox is the only browser where I felt that it was actually slow…it still wasn’t bad on speed, just noticeably slower. Firefox’s biggest draw was the fact that it comes with a lot of the cool things that the desktop firefox has, like personas and addons. Well, while the personas just seems pointless on a tiny screen, addons was something I found interesting. However, there was basically nothing interesting in the addons. And then of course there was the fact that the browser’s interface, while better for mobile than dolphin, was still annoying to use.

Opera Mobile

This is the one that I eventually went with. The interface much better translates the opera experience that I enjoy on the desktop into a mobile form. Its speed dial features are much better than Dolphin since the buttons are nice big squares. It’s also nice on speed, and the other controls are also very touch-friendly. It’s just very easy to use on my phone with gigantic fingers. Another thing that Opera does well is automatically wrap text when you zoom in for easy reading. The one thing that would make Opera perfect would be the volume button for scrolling.

Lunascape is a web browser for Windows, created by a Japanese company. From the website:

“LUNASCAPE is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. It has been downloaded over 20 million times and it’s available globally in 12 languages. Try it for yourself the new kind of speed and versatility.”

Based on a brief scan of Twitter mentions, it seems quite popular in Japan.

The thing that makes Lunascape stick out is the ability to quickly and easily change the rendering engine that determines how the HTML and CSS are to be parsed. This can effect the way a web page displays. Lunascape has the ability to use Webkit, currently used by both Google Chrome and Apple Safari, IE’s Trident, and Mozilla’s Gecko.

By default, only Trident is enabled; Gecko and Webkit must be installed on first use. I cannot think of any good reason for this except perhaps to limit the size of the installer, but it was rather annoying. Once this is done, you can switch between engines with a single click.

Lunascape should be very helpful to web designers for testing browser compatibility. Normally, if I want to test browser compatibility, I open up three or more browsers and “flip” through them to determine if they’re all displaying the same thing. Lunascape does this with a single click.

Lunascape touts another big advantage that sounds really cool: The ability to use the addons from two major browsers: IE and Firefox, in addition to Lunascape’s own addons. While I could in fact install Firefox addons, I could not figure out installing IE addons at all (I do not normally use IE, though I have found that IE9 is less painful to use than previous versions). The big problem comes from the fact that it isn’t possible to use both sets of addons at the same time. The proper rendering engine must be activated. This severely limits the advantages from being able to install both sets of addons.

In general, lunascape works about as well as any other browser, and I have no problems to report on it…the rendering engines all seem to work properly, and the ability to switch rendering engines will give advantages to some web designers. I will be keeping it on my computer but not in the taskbar.

Firefox recently announced the Aurora channel, the next phase in its plan to catch up to Google Chrome’s breakneck pace of browser updates.

Essentially, Firefox now follows a slightly slower Chrome-like schedule using four channels. There is a daily (or in Firefox’s case, nightly) channel where all the latest features appear for initial testing. There’s a ‘development’ channel (Aurora for firefox), which features a middle ground of new features and stability, a more polished beta channel and a final, stable release. Firefox plans to bring out a new final every 6 months.

Chrome updates every 6 WEEKS.

Obviously, 6 months is not the same things as 6 weeks, so Firefox will still not be updating as fast as Chrome.

On the other hand  Chrome’s feature changes between stable versions are incremental and virtually unnoticeable for average users. If you are not a power user or a web developer (in which case you have every major browser installed anyway), when Chrome releases new versions you  may not notice anything new. Chrome also doesn’t hype new versions, so the only way to even know it’s updated is to go and check the about page.

Mozilla’s strategy will be successful, I think, because the changes will be visible. Firefox’s new changes and new version number will be hyped. Every time the stable channel updates, Firefox should continue to make a big deal of it and announce new changes. This will get in people’s minds the idea that this is a browser that is constantly improving.

The changes in new versions of Firefox will also be visible. Firefox 4 came with User Interface changes from Firefox 3. If UI changes match changes ‘under the hood’ end users will take notice. They try it because ‘ooh shiny’ and then notice that it runs faster, or plays youtube better, or whatever. I don’t think that many non-techy users necessarily notice changes consciously. I think that the aggregate of performance improvements causes people to eventually notice that it just ‘works better.’

Performance improvements and UI improvements are both needed to win the day, and Firefox’s schedule is plenty fast enough to keep people interested.

Joshua Vail can be reached at j.vail@skepticomachina.com

User experience is a concept that is not widely understood. It’s something that I didn’t necessarily understand, and I want to write about it.

So, I hit up Alex Faaborg, one of the lead designers of Mozilla Firefox and a noted expert in UX design.

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