SRWare Iron 3 – Like Chrome without Google

The German company SRWare uses the sources Google offers of its Chromium browser to compile a clone of Chrome but with quiet a few modifications. The new browser is called Iron.

Iron gets rid of the unique client id, timestamp, suggest, alternate error pages, error reporting, RLZ tracking, Google updater and URL tracker. But it not only throwing things away it also adds features and updates stuff in the core. Iron uses the newest Webkit engine, adds an easily configurable adblocker and an option to alter the user-agent string permanently.

The Iron Browser is available for free as Open-Source for the Windows OS (Vista, XP) over here.

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Chrome 3 Beta version available

Google employee Fiona Chong of the Google Chrome team announced the immediate release of Google Chrome 3 beta. Its main advantage is the speed improvement in its JavaScript core.

As always, we continue to focus on speed, and this beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release. We’ve also improved two of the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome: the New Tab page and the Omnibox. Plus, we decided to add a little bit of style by allowing you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns, and images.

Read the blog post A New Beta: Why slow down when you can speed up? for all news on the new beta version of the Chrome browser.

Google Chrome available for Linux and Mac OS X

Early builds of Chrome for Mac and Linux are available on Googles Chromium blog.

The blog post says the releases are only aimed at developers because they are incomplete, unpredictable and the software might crash.

Most of the features known for the Windows build are available which the exception of flash video, privacy settings and printing facilities. Google has promised that a beta release will be available in the foreseeable future.

There is also a version of the iron browser available which has no unique id and is not sending requests to Google search for faster search results.

Newsflash: Songbird 1.1, Firefox 3.5, IE Windows 7, Firefox Fennec

Songbird 1.1

The final version of Songbird 1.1 is available for download. Songbird is an open-source customizable music player based on Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Firefox 3.5

Rumors of a version jump for Firefox from 3.1 to 3.5 have been confirmed.

Beef about IE bundling

Google and Opera’s CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner demand that there is a choice of browsers even though Microsoft confirms there is an option to switch IE 8 off completely.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 with native JSON support has been released last week.

Fennec

A first beta – the twelfth milestone – of Fennec a mobile browser from Mozilla has been released. As this is a very interesting user agent I will write a follow-up with detailed information.

If Browsers Were Women

Internet marketer Zee has posted a fun article with a woman a browser what he thinks a women would look like if it were a browser. Have a look!

Chrome browser for Mac OS X and Linux

Google productmanager Brian Rakowski confirms rumors that Google is actively developing a Chrome port to Mac OS X and the Gnu/Linux OS. Google switched to a self-developed HTTP-library for Chrome 2.0 to be independent from Windows and one its system libraries which was used before.

Chrome 2.0 developer version available

Google’s browser Chrome is now available as an early preview for developers. The software is open-source so anyone can look at and modify the sources.

The update brings five new features / major updates: New version of WebKit. Form Autocomplete. Full-page zoom. Spell-checking improvements. Autoscroll. There are many more minor changes. See the release notes for details.

If you are already using the Chrome 1.0 you can update to Chrome 2.0 by updating your channels to one of the three available options: Stabel Channel, Beta Channel and Developer preview channel. See the Chromium Developer Documentation section Early Access Release Channels for details.