Portable Browsers

Are you a webdeveloper,
or do you need to run some sites in a specific version of Internet Explorer (or Firefox or ... )

Or do you just want to try a new browser version without installing it?

Earlier I put up an article about IETester which allows you to run Internet Explorer 6 (and others) on Vista.
Now I found a new (and better) way to run different browsers without the need for installation :


http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

Currently they have the following browsers :
- Internet Explorer 8, 7, 6
- Firefox 3, 2
- Google Chrome
- Opera
- Safari

From the site :

Xenocode WebApps do not require any software to be installed and allow multiple application versions to run side-by-side on any version of Windows.

So they should run on any version of windows (not yet tested, only on vista).

Have fun!
It works fine here, and I have

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2

Microsoft has opened up the second beta for Internet Explorer 8

Some new features are :
- Accelerators : Select some text and a new Icon pops up, allowing you to search it with Google, mail it, ...
- Search bar improvements : Sizable, and it can show the first result for seaches on eg. wikipedia
- Web Slices
- Stability : Crash recovery and each tab has its own thread, so crashes should close only one tab.
- Tab groups : When opening a link from a tab, both tabs will get a color, indicating at a glance which tabs belong together.
- Inprivate Browsing (a.k.a. the porno modus) : When activated IE will not remember any cookies, or leave traces from the sites you have visited.
- And more (click here for the tour)

I installed it on vista, and it seemed a little faster (maybe my perception). Tabs groups seems very nice and useful. The first look is very nice, better than IE7, but I guess it will not yet replace my Opera :)

You can download the beta :
Here for XP
Here for Server 2003
Here for 64 bit XP/Server 2003
Here for 32 bit Vista/Server 2008
Here for 64 bit Vista/Server 2008

Enjoy :)

It's finally here. Opera 9.5

It's finally here.

Opera 9.5 Alpha has arrived, and of course i had to install it. 

Just for safety I installed it separate from my 9.23 installation.

 
 When I started it I was pleasantly surprised, it is even faster than 9.23,

And this for an alpha build, this promises for the release build :)

 

Some new items are :

• Performance
  
• Full history search (quite usefull)
  
• Improved site compatibility
  
• Access for everyone
  
• Improved platform integration
  
• Preview of bookmark and Speed Dial synchronization (very nice )
  
• Magic Windows build number (very important of course ;-) )

For some statistics that it is indeed fast :

http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/ 
 

If you want to play with a new browser , or read about the new features:
http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/

 

Beware, it is an alpha build !

I have one problem and it crashes when I want to save a webpage to an mht file,

Otherwise I have no probems found yet, I will post if I find more.