How Web Browser Updates Work

Internet Explore. Oh well, Internet Explore eight Beta. We thought we'd talked a little bit today about web browsers and specifically kind of some updates that have happened over the summer of two thousand eight. It's kind of the summer of web browsers in a way. Yeah, I think about it. Yeah,

there have been a lot of browser updates. Yeah, which, you know, it's pretty i don't know, maybe less than exciting topic for a lot of people, but you know, actually has brought a lot of advancements, right and considering that most of our worklies on Internet browsers for us, it's really interesting. So we're going to infect you with our enthusiasm and interest in this topic. I think I'm glad you said enthusiasm and interest. I'm glad that. In fact.

All right, let's move on to Internet Explore. H ally, Yeah, so this has been out for for a little while. Yeah, um, you know it's uh, the newest version of Internet Explorer. It's got it actually has brought some some different changes colored tabs and wow, you know, but that can actually be pretty, you know, pretty useful in being able to figure out which piece you were just looking at you.

Oh yeah, it's a great one. Yeah yeah, we joke about it, but really, these these things that seem pedestrian do actually have some uses. One of the the updates in the Internet Explore eight uh really was just behind the scenes stuff that you might not notice immediately but will make a big difference in your browsing if that's what you use. Um, they updated, they improved their HTML reading capabilities and other markup language reading capabilities so that

websites look the way they're supposed to look. Um. As the web grows and evolves, it's become a lot more complex. Like originally back in the day, they were all kind of text files almost when the occasional picture and if you're really lucky, a MIDI file that would have absolutely no control and you play over and over as you

looked at a website, but now they're far more complex. Yeah. Well, you know, the web was never really meant to do what we're doing with it UM, so you know, it was originally used for basically for academic use and for research, so it wasn't supposed to have all these flash files and you know, sound files embedded in them, and e commerce and all these other things. So the web browser has had to evolve to take advantage of this stuff. It's actually, uh come a long way a very short time,

just ten fifteen years. But so that's that's kind of where these updates come into play, is to make sure that you can actually you know, see and take advantage of all these cool things that people are doing, because if you don't update your browser, then you know, the browsers just browser doesn't know automatically how to access this kind of information. So that's that's what I E. Eight is kind of doing. It's it's updated so that you can see the best and newest stuff that's out there

on the Internet. But there are a lot of other updates that went along with it as well. For instance, UM sixty four bit downloads that doesn't sound that exciting, but actually it means that now the Internet Explorer, you can you can download files that are in excess of four gigabytes in size. Yeah, well that's a big thing.

That is a big thing, especially well, you know, we've talked about cloud computing a lot on here, but you know, as people store more files online and larger files online, you know you're gonna see fewer software programs offered on the shelves of stores because they're you're basically going to put your credit card in and get your file download directly to your computer. Hey, you know, fast, easy, and very very large. So that's it. They're getting ready for that.

When when we get into the point where where uh, entertainment is digital is through digital downloads. Like if you wanted to download an HD movie, that's gonna be a big file size, you're gonna need a browser that's capable of handling that. So yeah, they are looking ahead and that's a good thing because I think, well, in my opinion, digital downloads are the future of of media distributions. So they're kind of getting ahead of that before. You know,

they don't want to lag behind. Good good plan. So but there are other things as well, there's the in private browsing, which has another another common term on the net. Yeah you wanna, you wanna say, You're gonna let me say I it's horn mode. Ground wow. Wow, Oh I feel so dirty right now. Right in in private browsing

just limits the number of cookies and tracking information. It really cuts down on all of that so that you can use your browser to look at websites and not necessarily worry about being tracked everywhere or someone Like let's say you're sharing a computer and well, well, let's not even talk about the porn. Let's just say that it's for something perfectly innocent, like I'm shopping for my wife for for an anniversary gift, and that would be that

would be a legitimate use for it. Exactly a legitimate use for the in private browsing. I want to shop for an anniversary president. I don't want her to be aware of it. We're sharing the same computer. I might turn that on so that I can look around, and that way there's no real trail there, so she's not gonna know that I'm buying her a something. I can't say it because she listens to the podcast A right then, Okay, but you know, is it is it functional? What do

you know? Have you heard anything about how that will now? Not the king, I mean there have been some Internet Explorer. It is still in beta, right, so it's got some issues. Right. Beta's test phase, it's not and it's it's none its final format is what beta means, So it means it's some things may not work the way they were intended to work. Right. Basically, when a new software program is UH first launched, it's an alpha phase, which means that lots of stuff is not going to work the way

it's opposed to, and it usually is internalized. It's not. It's very rare that a company will will release an alpha build two external users, but it does happen. It does happen, and UH, but you're more likely to see a beta, which means that if you install this, it could you know, behave weird it could you delete your entire hard drive contents there, It could be completely incompatible with like three other programs that are on your computer. Or if you've downloaded XP Service Pack three and you

have two of Internet of Explore eight, you'll have them forever. Yes, you will not be able to uninstall them, which is just one of those kinds of things that happens when you try out new software, which we do a lot of. But after beta, once it's it's passed through the beta stage and it's gone through testing, that's when they launch it publicly. There's no Gamma. I don't think I've heard of any Gamas anyway. No, there's just the Omega, the

Omega build. Yeah, so uh so, Yeah, that's one of the things that that i'd heard was a problem with it. And I also heard um that the newest version of Internet Explorer Beta too, um actually uses twice the system memory and creates six times the process or threads as the newest build of Firefox, which means it's using quite

a bit of system resources. And you probably will see when they finally release Microsoft finally releases the final version, I'm assuming that they're probably going to take care of that, and they'll have to scale it back some because otherwise, if you have multiple applications open, you run the risk of either owing to a crawl or actually crashing your system as your computer says, hey, I just don't have the resources to run all the stuff you want me

to run, or maybe your old just to your computer, go, yeah, I might have the little wily kyote moment and sweat drops over your top of your monitor. And and the reason we're talking about Internet Explorer first is because it's the most popular browser on the Internet right now, for now, for now. Part of that might have something to do with it being pre installed on almost every PC that you can buy. Um, I'm just saying, yeah, well, that's true.

And a lot of people don't even know that they are alternatives out there, right so let's let's go ahead and inform them. Let's talk about one of those alternatives. And we'll talk about the most popular alternative to Internet Explorer, which is Firefox. I. Firefox has its roots in the

Netscape browser. If you're a long time Internet user, you've probably used a copy of Netscape and you might have thought it had completely gone away, Well, you know a O. L. Bottom a few years ago, and actually just before that Netscape release. They're the source code, basically the code that they used to write the program um the guts if you will, um to the public and said, hey, do

what you want to with it. And Firefox is one of the results of that that source code release, an open source, free web browser and uh, this summer they had the Firefox Download Day when they released the Firefox three build. Um. Firefox three, of course being the the latest version of the browser as of this recording. I'm assuming that this will go out before Firefox four comes out,

since that would be record turnaround time. But they actually they had a Firefox had a Firefox Download Day where they tried to get as many people to download the browser within a twenty four hour period um as they possibly could, and more than eight million people downloaded it. Now, granted there was there was no pre existing record, so they set the record set the honestly say that they But Firefox three, Uh, it's it's got some nice little updates,

which we talked about in another podcast. But we can we can do a quick rundown here. Um, the bar is awesome, Yes, the awesome bar. Yeah, the awesome bar is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, the awesome bar which will sort of figure out what you're going to try and type as you type it. Uh. I actually do like that feature. Yeah, it took a little getting used to it first. I think I think a lot of people kind of resisted at first, but but it's it's not bad and it's

in fact awesome, but Fairefox three. It's based on the get Go one point nine web rendering platform, the web rendering platform that that kind of tells you a lot about how fast your browser is going to go, because it's how fast the browser can can convert data into the images that you're looking at when you're when you're viewing a web page. Yeah, so how fast the web page actually pops up after you tell it to the load? Right? Right? It has, you know, a lot to do with the

speed of your connection. This be to your processor memory and your computer, but it also has to deal with the software you're using to do this, and and if you're using Firefox three, uh, it's gonna pop up a lot faster than if you had been using Firefox too, right. And other things that we're new in the Firefox browser include security. Um, there's some more security uh applications built

into the browser. For instance, now, if you go to a site that uh that Firefox knows has malware on it, malware being malicious software, a warning will pop up and tell you, hey, this is a this is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. I just thought they're a little star wars n Old school. UM. So yeah, the the malware issue, that's that's definitely helpful. And there are other ones as well that that tells you, um, you know, if if there's a security concern, it'll pop up and

alert you. It also, um is proactive and alerting uh anti virus software about problematic web pages. So it's it's Firefox is really doing its part and trying to make the Internet a safer place. Yeah. And um and I have to uh to throw in my little pet browser project here, um, which sounds like I'm belittling it, but I'm not another branch on the Firefox family tree. It's never really from the Mozilla Foundation. It's from a group

of people call who call their browser flock. But it uses the same source code and they have a new data out of their flock too. Um. The one for regular version is still on one at this point, but you can download the second version. And the thing is it's basically it's basically like what you would see from Firefox. It's you know, it has the same version of the

awesome bar it uh. It also you know allows you to plug in add ons, which is actually a new thing for Internet Explore eight although that's still you know, they're still working that out in data, but you can

add you know, customization to your browser. Um. But the thing about Flock that makes it so different is it's sort of a social networking thing because you can it's got built into it a chance to uh network with your flicker, your Facebook account, your MySpace, Twitter, and all kinds of other accounts, and it's built right in along with the mail. So a lot of the add on ones that you would put into Firefox are already built

into the Flock interface. Um. So it's kind of cool and it's very very much if you've already been using Firefox, you will find Flocked to be very very similar. And it is also free, so you know, I just add that on because you know it works so well with Firefox. You know. Of course, there's Safari has a new update from Apple, and uh, you know, Opera actually has a new data out along the nine point five. I've lost track of which nine point five it is, but I've

always enjoyed the Opera browser. It is also a free browser from a software company in Norway, and they also have browsers for mobile phones and for the Wii. Actually, if you have a Nintendo Wei and you access the Internet. Opera is a software you would use to that, and I think that's all the browsers. Wait wait, wait, first of all, first of all, let me let me just say, in the interest of full disclosure, Uh, Pallette and I have a fundamental disagreement on whether or not Safari is

a good browser. But we were not going to tell you who who's who believes what? You aren't just gonna let me throw Safari. No, I wasn't gonna let Safari go with a wait no, I think I just took my hand. Think you all right? I'm not a big Safari fan. So that's why I have Firefox on my Mac at home. I do have a max so but uh, Safari actually from Apple does also use the Gecko rendering engine. Um, and it is. It is quite fast. A lot of people enjoy the fact that it is very uh scaled down.

That's I think that's the one of the biggest things that Johnathan has a problem with is that it is very minimalistic. There's you know, afford and back and reload and pretty much it. There's not a lot of you can add add ons, but it's kind of tricky to do that, and some of them charge. You know, ad blocking is not uh something that's free. You can you can down download a free add on for Firefox or

for Flock that does a really great job of blocking advertising. Um, but the best one I know of for Safari, pith Helmet, actually is a shareware, so you have to pay a small fee to use it and add it to your your Safari account, but you can try it for free. It just starts saying, you know, hey what, okay, fine, no, I'm just trying not to use a pun Okay, that's fine with pith helmet. I know, Okay, the temptation is too great. Let's let's well, so we are overlooking a browser, Chris.

I'm not surprised you haven't heard about it because it really kind of slipped under the radar. But recently a little web company by the name of Google entered the browser field. Yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah you might, you know, search around in your memory, you'll probably find it. So Google has come out with Google Chrome, a brand new web browser, and it's fast. Yeah, it's it's really fast. Actually, it reminds me of Safari in a way because it is very it is also it is also very minimalistic.

It is you know, it's not fancy. It doesn't have lots of flashy stuff. Well, if you think of the Google web page, right, yeah, Google dot Com, it's it's sort of like that. It's very function this is what it's for. This is how it works right now, No, no, we should we should say that first of all, Google Chrome is in beta mode, beta phase. But then again, everything Google does kind of beta face. Gmail has been out for a couple of years and it's still beta.

So I don't know that we'll ever see an homegap version of Google Chrome. But it's it's a it's interesting. It's it's rendering him engine is the WebKit engine, right, So it's it's lightning fast when it's pulling up web pages. It's you know, if your connection is good, you're gonna have a fast browsing experience with Google Chrome. Now, there have been people who have reported that not every web page loads or displays correctly, but it is still in beta.

It's a brand new browser, and and they actually had to release it a little ahead of schedule because information about the browser leaked out, which it's actually amazing it it took so long to leak out because they've been working on this for a couple of years and no one had heard of this at all until September one of two thousand and eight, and then suddenly it's all over the internet and everyone has to have it. And

they on September two, they held a press conference. Google held a press conference, and in the middle of the press conference, Google Chrome went live. Um. I downloaded Google Chrome as the press conference was going on. Installed that. The whole thing took maybe a minute and watch the second half of the press conference on Google Chrome. It was so fast. Didn't it didn't crash, didn't have any

problems like that, and uh, it's got some neat features. Um. One of my favorites is you know, often when I when I get a browser, the very first thing I'll do is I'll change the homepage. You know, I don't want the generic homepage usually. But Google Chrome what it does is for its generic homepage, it pulls up nine sites that you visit the most and presents them in thumbnail. Uh, in three rows of three, and you can see the

thumbnails all in one view. And you can click on any of those nine and go straight to that, So you don't you're not limited to one homepage. You now have nine home pages right there, and it's the nine sites you go to the most I can tell you've never used Opera. No, I have not used Opera. The most recent version of Opera has a similar feature where you can but you actually can tell it which ones you want to. Yeah, you can. You can fiddle with the Google ones. Okay, so you can actually tell yeah,

you have to. You have to kind of dig around a little bit. The underneat thing is that in Google the Google Chrome, it's tabbed browsing, just like with Internet Explorer and Firefox, but each tab is its own process, which means that there's this that if you close one, if one's giving you a lot of trouble, you can actually pull up a tab organizer, see which tab is really draining your resources and close it without affecting the rest of your browsing experience, and you should see a

market improvement in in system performance overall, like with Firefox, Internet Explorer, the older versions. Anyway, you couldn't necessarily do that. You you'd be browsing and suddenly everything slows down. You're not sure which tab is causing the problems, like with Firefox. It was usually if it had a lot of flash on it. Flash pages cause Firefox issues. Um Sometimes you can only play like the first couple of seconds of

a flash video and it just stops. And it's because there's too much flash on the page and it just can't process it. Um and And both Internet Explorer and Firefox also had problems with memory leaking, where you know, the more tabs who had opened, the more memory it was consuming, and eventually your your system would grind to a halt if you were browsing all day long. Yeah. Firefox too, you know, had a huge Yeah. Yeah, Firefox three is is better. It's it's not perfect, but it's

much better than it used to be. Well, Google Chrome is trying to address those issues head on. And also it's it's kind of meant to be a platform for all the Google apps and web based applications that are out there. It's it's kind of they built it with the thought that the Internet has evolved and that we're moving to this cloud computing model. Why we just love

saying that, don't we. But we're moving to this cloud computing model where everything's on the Internet, So that means the browser has to be robust enough to be able to handle these kind of applications, and that's kind of what Google Chrome is supposed to be. But the uh that actually brings up a web content brings up the

problem that most people have had with it. And I'll quote here a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free, and non exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modified, translate, published, publicly, performed, publicly, desplate, display, and distribute any content which you submit, post, or display on or through Google Chrome. Why would you have a

problem with that? Well, why do you hate America? Well, this language actually came from the original version of the End User License Agreement or LA that came along with Google Chrome. So if you downloaded Google Chrome during the press release announcement and installed it without looking at this, you might have gone back and gone, wait a minute, what did I just say that I could allow Google to do with my content? Are you suggesting that I didn't read the entire LA before? I don't, Well, you'd

be right. I I didn't know. I didn't know, and and a lot of people don't a lot. But the people like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, they had yeah, and they had a problem with this because um they said that what what Google meant by this was, hey, we own all your content. Anything you post through this this

web browser belongs to us. Um And as one lawyer pointed out, it could actually violate the terms of your employment agreement with your company if you were to say, go to your web mail program and uh, you know, send email and you're not supposed to share your email with anybody else. Basically you're saying, I own the rights to my email. Well, if you're using your company email, maybe you don't. So you know, there there were some issues. Now Google has backed off of that and they said,

you know, this is not what we meant. We're just saying anything you we want to be able to display the information that you were saying. So if you post to your blog using Chrome, you're saying, it's okay for us to take this inform put it on your blog. Right. But so many people have caused a stink. I've read that Google has said, Okay, okay, well, this isn't what

we meant. Let's clarify that. Yeah, the Internet's really made made the whole intellectual property uh argument much more complex, and we're probably going to see a lot more of these kind of little hiccups down the road, possibly from Google, which uh and other companies as well. Right, you know, do I need to scare you? Hey, so far he's got a new update. You didn't even ask for it. There we got that'll work. Um, but I guess, uh, I guess that's a good round up for the web browsers,

don't you think. I'm sure that by the time this goes alive, someone else will have come out with anybody. I'm sure, there's no doubt. I mean, well, and it'll be interesting to see if if Google Chrome will have any staying power or well, there's such they've got such backing that it's uh, you know a lot of people have been asking, especially the Mozilla Foundation. They're saying, well, you know, what do you think is this going to take you guys out? And uh, you know, to their

credit they've said, well, you know, bring it on. Well not only that, but I think I think it will push for innovation and all the other browsers as well, and then we may we may see that you know, all browsers are supporting this kind of web based application model and they move away from being browsers into more like web based operating systems, and uh, I think that that would suit Google just fine. Well, I guess that wraps this up. If you'd like to learn more, you

can read our article on how Firefox works. We also have articles on the other browser systems. We will soon have an article on Google Chrome, and that's all going to be on how stuff Works dot com. Now stay with us to find out which of our articles Google is really interested in. So it turns out one of our articles um actually makes a cameo appearance in a

recent Google document. Really that well, the you know, we were talking about Google Chrome, and one of the ways that Google announced Google Chrome was they released a comic book which went into great to tail about the browser right right by Ascot d Yes exactly. And on page nineteen of this comic there's an illustration of a couple of different screens. It is supposed to show tabbed browsing. One of those shows a How Stuff Works article Why

do Kangaroos Hop? So, if you want to find out why Google is so excited about this article, I suggest you go to how Stuff Works and you read why do Kangaroos Hop? That's going to make that leap of faith, Yeah, the hop skipping a jump. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you