Browser News Round-Up

While I'm still busy changing my passwords, I'm noticing several browser related news popping up in my RSS feed reader. So what's going on today? Several websites report that the first beta of Firefox 5 was released, and while it certainly looked that way on first glance, it turned out be a beta labeled Aurora build to test the beta channel's functionality.

The real beta of Firefox 5 is expected to be released on May 17th. You can read more information about the decision on Bugzilla. John mentions there that the release, which he refers to as fake beta, is "not beta quality code" but "an early copy of aurora quality code".

So, if you are waiting for Firefox 5 Beta 1 you need to wait a tad longer. Aurora users on the other hand need to make sure to switch back to Aurora in case they have switched to that fake beta release.

Google Software Engineer Mike Belshe announced yesterday the release of a modified version of the SunSpider benchmark. This modified version runs each test of the SunSpider benchmark 50 times instead of just once, which according to Google should return preciser results. A quick test by Conceivable Tech has shown that Google, who comes last in the standard test, is leading when their modified version of the benchmark is used for testing.

Back to Mozilla. Edward Lee, the guy behind the AwesomeBar HD extension has updated the add-on. The update addresses one of my main points of criticism: Lack of space for the website address. Edward has removed the "go to a website" link in the address bar, the protocol and configured the extension to only show up when a user "starts navigating". While that is a step in the right direction, it still proves to be inflexible. Options to configure your own set of search actions would resolve that issue, but that is still not possible.

Opera Software has released Opera Dragonfly 1.0, a built-in web development and debugging tool. Opera users find a feature overview and documentation on the Opera web page. Oh, and yeah, there is video as well.

And that's it for today's browser round-up.

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