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!

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Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8

Web Slices are a new feature in Internet Explorer 8. With Web Slices users can add little snippets of the web to the favorites bar and monitor their updates.

Program Manager Internet Explorer Ritika Virmani of Microsoft Corp. has written two articles in the IE blog about Web Slices. In the first article he explains Activities and WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8. In the second article he takes a closer look into Web Slices and explains how to Create a dynamic Web Slice in 5 minutes.

IE 6 Death – March 2009

German it news site Golem just put up an article with the title IE 6 shall die (roughly translated). Basically they name all the initiatives that want the IE 6 to be wiped out. Some of the highlights are:

This is all about the campaign to rid the WWW of Internet Explorer 6 that has devastated web developers and held back the evolution of everything that blocks the tubes for far too long. This can not go on any longer! Off with its head!

Source: IE6: Do NOT want!

It’s time to put a deadline on dropping IE6, and I say that time is now, and the deadline should be soon… say like, March 2009. That’s roughly a little more than 6 months.

Source: We *Like* Our Internet With a Side of Revolution

We totally agree with the call and support the extinction of the IE 6!

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1

Announced by the end of December 08 for the first quarter 09 the first release candidate of the new Internet Explorer is now available.

The user experience managers over at Microsoft might have had a closer look at the competitors when fine-tuning the last beta version. They improved the Search box which now reminds me of search done on Mac OS X. The Smart Address bar and the Favorites bar is similar to what can be found in newer Firefox releases. The pron modus InPrivate is now split up into two main functionalities: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Blocking. Among the other revised functions are Tab Groups, New Tab Page, Find on Page, Accelerators, SmartScreen Filter and Web Slices.

Find out more about the Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 in the article User Experience Changes since Beta 2 over at the IEBlog.

What kind of browser user are you?

12 different kind of browser users

Do you use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari or a completely different browser? Do you consider yourself a newbie, an experienced user or are you an obsessed user? Try to find yourself in the matrix above and let us know in the comments what kind of user you are!