This is pretty interesting, Google Japan created the video above to show how clean and simple the browser’s interface is. Google (US) received enough positive feedback for it to decide to run it as TV ads, something they usually don’t do very often – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Google ad on TV in Sweden and from what I gather there’s not much of it in the states either? Please correct me if I’m wrong though.

Anyway.. Let’s see if this stop-motion clip of wooden Arkanoid-ish play will help them gain in on the other browsers – I’m not sure that I’d install it by just seeing something like this myself though. For those who want more there’s a whole bunch of other Google Chrome-promoting short movies on the Google Chrome Youtube channel.

Read more on the Google Blog

So, expect the IE8 market share to grow considerably in the near future, and let’s welcome all those IE6 users who take their first staggering steps in a modern web browsing environment.

Microsoft.com: Internet Explorer 8 Home

I don’t know if the decision to use Ask.com as the default search engine in Opera is because of Google Chrome or if the developers just find it better, but I prefer Google myself.

If you’d like to switch Opera’s search bar and speed dial default search engine just head into Preferences and choose Search. Here you mark the search engine you’d like to use as default (Google in my case) and hit Edit. Click Details and make sure to check Use as default search engine and Use as speed dial search engine. Voilá, you’re done.

Now, while you’re at it you could add other search engines you use a lot here – it’s quite a time saver. For example, I’ve added Google Images with the keyword “gi”, iStockPhoto as “istock” and IMDb as “imdb” so whenever I need to find royalty free images of bananas (happens all the time) I just type “istock bananas” in Opera’s address field and I’m off to the result pages at iStockPhoto.com.

Here’s the addresses I’ve used for custom search engines:

Google Images:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=%s

iStockPhoto:

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?text=%s&action=file

IMDb:

http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=%s

PHP.net:

http://se.php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=%s&lang=en

According to StatCounter’s Global Stats Firefox has reached the impressive market share of 100% – in Antarctica. Oh yeah. One continent down, six to go.

It’s funny, Firefox started out as a lean, mean alternative to bloated browser suites like Mozilla/Netscape. No built-in mail or IRC clients, just a blazingly fast (and secure) browser. It’s still my default browser no matter if I’m on a Mac, Windows or Linux machine but lately I’ve started to notice that Firefox actually feels a bit sluggish compared to some competitors – mainly Opera and Safari.

Apple released the public beta of Safari 4 yesterday and I’ve spent a bit of quality time with it (on Mac only so far). Conclusion? I’m impressed. They’ve taken a bit from Google Chrome, a bit from Opera, a bit from Firefox and thrown in a whole lot of optimizing. According to Apple Safari 4’s new Nitro engine renders HTML almost three times faster than Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 as well as executes Javascript 30 times faster than IE 7 (3 times faster than Firefox 3). I tend to take numbers like that with a grain of salt but Safari 4 does offer a fast browsing experience. Really.

Safari 4 offers 150 features: Like Google Chrome the tabs now reside on top of the browser instead of below the address field. It takes some getting used to but I think that placement makes more sense – now each tab gets its own address field instead of the other way around. Another new visual feature is Top Sites, like Operas quick dial you get nine fields containing thumbnails of websites that you either pin-point manually or let be added automatically depending on your browsing. Also, browsing through your bookmarks and history now brings up cover flow (á la iTunes) if you want to. Windows Vista users will find that Safari 4 now has a Vista look and feel (anyone heard of they’re planning a Vistafied iTunes as well?).

Also, one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to (or been able to) let go of Firefox is the Firebug plugin, but the built-in developer tool (activated through the advanced preferences tab) actually looks like a decent alternative so far.

Apple.com: Safari Download

A couple of the largest and most popular websites in Norway (like Finn.no and VG.no) grew tired of the extra work MSIE 6 causes and added a warning at the top of the page, urging IE 6-users to either upgrade the browser or switch to alternatives like Firefox, Opera, Safari or Google Chrome (see a list and examples here). The trend started to spread and the warning is now added to major websites in Sweden (like Aftonbladet.se), Malaysia and Australia.

Microsoft Sweden noticed the campaign and decided to stand behind it, encouraging all users to upgrade and just let 6.0 rest in peace.

Now, most companies still running 6.0 probably do it because of other reasons than just having BOFH admins not allowing upgrades (internal systems not compatible with newer versions and so on), but it’ll be interesting to see what a campaign like this can do considering the fact that every single Norwegian or Swedish 6.0-user probably will notice it.

It might just be the thing that gets the ball rolling and we’ll get rid of IE 6 once and for all.