No, it’s not Explorer. Microsoft wanted first to order browsers from left to right, in order of market share. That meant Explorer was going to go first, then Firefox, then Safari, Opera and Google’s Chrome. The EU objected, so Microsoft complied and offered the only possible option: Alphabetical order.

That puts Apple Safari in the number one position, followed by Google Chrome, Microsoft Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Looks good enough to me, but Jenny Boriss—a Firefox user experience designer—disagrees:

This ordering is about the worst option possible. Microsoft wrote in their proposal that ‘nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser’, but this is exactly what the current design does. Windows users presented with the current design will tend to make only two choices: IE because they are familiar with it, or Safari because it is the first item.

“The disproportionate advantage to Safari is what really makes this design poor,” she said, citing several studies that claim first position in a ballot gives an advantage, in part because Western voters scan from upper left to lower right when they read.

She goes on and on and on about this, but her basic message is: If Firefox is not first, this design is BAD. She timidly proposes a random order every time the selection screen opens, but she argues that this is bad because it “unfortunately does not provide users with any information about what browsers are preferred”.

Then she shows her true colours, proposing the order according to market share—what Microsoft proposed—but excluding Explorer from that ordering and leaving it to the last position. Wouldn’t that be unfairly helping Firefox and putting Safari, Chrome and Opera in a bad position? And why discriminate Microsoft Explorer too?

Finally, she also proposes probability ordering by market share excluding Internet Explorer, which again gives Firefox the advantage over the rest 50 per cent of the time.

In other words, Microsoft and the EU should help Firefox to become the new monopolistic browser, no matter what. Jenny, please: Stop. Saying. Words. [Boriss' Blog via Computer World]

Peter-Paul Koch at Quirksmode devised a battery of tests to see how different WebKit browsers measure up, and ran every browser from desktop Safari 4 to Mobile Safari 3.1 to the Pre’s browser to S60V5 through a CSS and Javascript compatibility course, and found that some WebKit browsers are hardly WebKit browsers at all — especially on mobile. Some surprises? Android browsers aren’t so hot, nor is the Pre’s. And Nokia, which has had WebKit browsers forever, can’t seem to make a good one.

There are really two culprits here: older versions of WebKit, which cripple browsers like S60v3’s, and developers’ need to pare their software down to make it run smoothly on mobile devices — in other words, some of these browsers have been stripped of HTML, CSS and Javascript rendering capabilities on purpose. What’d be really interesting is to see the above chart compared speed and performance, because as (apparently) bad as the Android G1’s browser is at rendering CSS text shadows and :focus elements, using it is a far sight more enjoyable than struggling with the unconscionably slow Iris. Full methodology and test list at [Quirksmode via IntoMobile]

Seeing as laptop users have a browser open pretty much at all times, AnandTech ran exhaustive tests on Windows machines, Intel and AMD, netbook and notebook, to see if switching browsers made any difference in how long batteries hold out. And hey, it does! In some tests, there was a 30% advantage between the worst browser—always Safari—and the best—Internet Explorer 8. Seriously.

In fact, Microsoft’s browser came in front across the board, even inching out Firefox with Adblock by a few percent. It’s hard to say why IE8 is so power-thrifty, but the most processor-intensive operations a browser does, outside of running Flash content, are in rendering Javascript, which IE8 kind of sucks at. So, mystery solved, maybe! Firefox, Chrome and to a lesser extent Opera held up fine, but depending on what kind of laptop you’re running, and how willing you are to ditch your browser, there are quite a few sweet battery minutes up for grabs here. Full breakdown at [AnandTech]

These numbers are based on Javascript benchmarks, which don’t give a total view of a browser’s speed but do tell us how adept a browser is at dealing with intensive code. Chromium scored 657ms on the test to Safari’s 886ms. Firefox scored 1508ms and Opera 10 Beta 3 (my personal browser of choice) lagged way behind with 5958ms. Keeping in mind that Chromium is pre-alpha and thus better seen as a fun dev project than an actual candidate for a primary browser, we’re pretty excited. Once Google irons out the bugs and gets some damn extensions, Chrome on Mac is going to be a stiff challenger to Firefox. [CNET]

Apple Releases Safari 4 – The World’s Fastest & Most Innovative Browser

SAN FRANCISCO, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today released Safari® 4, the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser. Available for Mac® and Windows PCs and introduced as a beta in February of this year, Safari 4 features the Nitro engine which runs JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Safari 3.* Safari 4 makes browsing more intuitive and enjoyable with innovative features, such as Top Sites, Full History Search and Cover Flow®, and support for modern web standards like HTML 5 and advanced CSS Effects.

“The successful beta release helped us fine tune Safari 4 into an even better, faster version that customers are going to love,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari is enjoyed by 70 million users worldwide and with its blazing fast speed, innovative features and support for modern web standards, it’s the best browser on any platform.”

Safari 4 is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari 4 includes Top Sites, for an incredible visual preview of frequently visited and favourite pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; and Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks. Other innovative features include Smart Address Fields for automatically completing web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions; Search Fields, to fine tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches; and Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.

In Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™, available later this year, Safari runs as a 64-bit application, boosting the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent.** Snow Leopard makes Safari more resistant to crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process, so even if a plug-in crashes, Safari continues to run and the user simply has to reload the affected page.

Pricing & Availability
Safari 4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download atwww.apple.com/safari. Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® v10.5.7 or Mac OS X Tiger® v10.4.11 and Security Update 2009-002, a minimum 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire®. Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at www.apple.com/safari.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML benchmark based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

**Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Testing conducted by Apple in May 2009 comparing prerelease Mac OS X Snow Leopard v10.6 with shipping Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.7. Testing was conducted on a shipping MacBook® 2.0 GHz system and a shipping iMac 2.66 GHz system, both configured with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmarks based on the SunSpider Performance test comparing Safari running in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

[Giz Liveblog]

Pull up Safari on your iDevice, punch in menu.apple.com, and you’ll get a beautiful web app explaining what’s cooking at the Caffè Macs at five different Apple campuses. Tonight at Infinite Loop: grilled snapper and pork carnitas, plus vegetarian pizza for the Jobs wannabes. [Thanks Tomhut!]

It’s not exactly the same as letting you buy Kindle books through the Kindle iPhone app, but it’s useful: iPhone users can now shop for Kindle titles through a store optimised for iPhone Safari. [AppleInsider]

Security researcher Charlie Miller hacked Safari in just 10 seconds, then used a remote-execution exploit to take over the up-to-date MacBook and make it do his dirty bidding. Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 fell within a few hours to Nils, a master’s student who busted all three browsers wide open. They each won $US5000. Day 2 will offer more $US5000 prizes for discovering new bugs in Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Mobile phone OS’s will also be part of the event, with $US10,000 for cracking any of the five majors: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android. Care to take bets on which one will go down first? [Pocket Lint]