Firefox 3 Beta 5 Released
The fifth beta release of the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox 3 web browser is available with a slew of new features, updates and fixes. Many bugs have been worked out since the Firefox Beta 4 release but please note that release is only for testing purposes and there may be many bugs that have yet to be worked out. Download and evaluate the latest beta version of the popular open source browser in your native language at the Firefox website and be sure to read the official beta 5 release notes.
Release Notes Excerpt
Firefox 3 Beta 5 is a developer preview release of Mozilla’s next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only. These beta releases are targeted to Web developers and our testing community to gain feedback before advancing to the next stage in the release process. The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users. Users of the latest released version of Firefox should not expect their add-ons to work properly with this beta.
Internet Explorer 8 Beta Released
Internet Explorer 8 beta was release a few weeks ago and is intended to be used by web developers and designers to ensure that their web pages are compatible with the next release of the market leader in web browsers on Windows computer systems.
Internet explorer 8 intends improve on many of the faults of it’s predecessors, focusing more on increased security, web standards compliance and usability while adding new features to enhance the web browsing experience.
Internet Explorer 8 beta can be downloaded and evaluated from the off Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 page.
Alpha Version of Wikia Search goes Live
Wikia Search is the highly anticipated search service from the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales. Much is expected of the search engine as it’s creator has promised to shake up the search engine market and rival services by the major players in the search engine market.
Wikia Search ads open source software and wikipedia-like user editing to search and with this formula hopes to create more relevant and to the point search results for users, by users, free of any corporate influence. Wales noted that the Wikia search will need time to come into it’s own as volunteers help to refine the relevancy and quality of search results.
Netscape Browser Development to be halted
The Netscape browser was launched way back in 1994 and was for many years the leader in the web browser wars, but since being overtaken by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and then acquired by AOL in 1999 Netscape Navigator has slowly disappeared off the browser charts.
The latest browser usage statistics show that the once dominant Netscape now navigates less that 1% of internet traffic. Internet Explorer commands over 75% of internet traffic while the relative newcomer and Netscape Navigator’s spiritual successor Firefox has captured 16 percent of the internet browsing pie. Come February 2008 all support for Netscape Navigator will be halted.
Firefox 3 Beta 2 Released
The second beta release of the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox 3 web browser is available with a slew of new features, updates and fixes. Many bugs have been worked out since the Firefox Beta 1 release but please note that release is only for testing purposes and there may be many bugs that have yet to be worked out. Download and evaluate the latest beta version of the popular open source browser in your native language at the Firefox website and be sure to read the official beta 2 release notes.
Release Notes Excerpt
These beta releases are targeted to Web developers and our testing community to gain feedback before advancing to the next stage in the release process. The final version of Firefox 3 will be released when we qualify the product as fully ready for our users. Users of the latest released version of Firefox should not expect their add-ons to work properly with this beta.
Firefox 3 Beta 1 Released
The first beta release of the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox 3 web browser is available with a slew of new features, updates and fixes. Please note that release is only for testing purposes and there may be many bugs that have yet to be worked out. Also note that current Firefox extensions may not function with the Firefox 3 beta release. Download and evaluate the latest beta version of the popular open source browser in your native language at the Firefox website and be sure to read the official beta release notes.
Release Notes Excerpt
Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers.
Google Chopping Pageranks in Latest PageRank Update
PageRank is a link analysis and measuring algorithm created by the cofounders of Google Inc Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It measures the relative importance of a webpage on the internet by analyzing the links pointing to the specified page and then assigns a number from 0 to 10 to the page with 10 being a very important page and 0 being a not so important page. Google updates these rankings every couple months and many websites, advertising agencies and search engines put great value of the pagerank of websites. Over time however many websites have begun to abuse the algorithm by selling links on their high ranked pages to boost the rank of the buyers page or linking to webpages in a network with the main purpose being to influence a higher pagerank for linked pages.
October 2007 Updates
Before this month’s update, Google’s last update to pagerank scores came in April 2007 and many were speculating that Google would have lived up to it’s word of devaluing the links of offenders in the next update. This speculation became reality when Google began decreasing the ranks of many known link sellers or link farms, especially blogs and mainstream sites like Forbes.com, Engadget.com and the website of the Washington Post.
Coverage in the Blogosphere
Read more at popular technology blog Techcrunch.com and also visit Dailyblogtips.com who are compiling a list of major sites and blogs affected negatively by the pagerank update.
Caribbean Web Development Blog Online
We’d like to announce to the world that the Caribbean Development Blog is now online. Please stick around and watch us grow.
