New browsers really making the web exciting - WebKit , Mozilla Firefox

Today I read a great article about the latest builds of WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, and it really is exciting days for the first time in nearly 10 years.First off according to Duncan Riley over at Seeking Alpha the latest build of Webkit build is so fast it is easily double the speed of the current stable build.  Let me make this relevant for some readers, WebKit is the code that runs Safari the browser Apple uses as standard on their Macs and now runs on Windows too.

I own a MacBook Pro and I will admit that Safari 3.0 does just blaze when compared to Firefox (FF) but plugins and customisations are a real pain in the butt on Safari.  I basically Safari without addons because the effort of setting them up is too much of a challenge.

Mozilla over the last few months has released two Beta’s of their newest FF browser 3.0 and as of tomorrow they are releasing their third Beta which is supposed to be their last developer release as the next release will be RC1 which is considered ‘typically’ stable enough to run for the majority of users that are not developers.

This new browser streamlines so many things such as:

• how graphics are being handled such as better support for SVG
• improved download manager
• ‘Places’ which is a total redesign of bookmarks and history which I like but also dislike, you will need to adjust for sure
• new APIs for lots of little things and a SQLlite database which is used in Places but could have many many different uses after all Google Gears uses the very same type of database… hmmmmm.

Also I cannot forget is that FF 3.0 will pass the Acid Test2 which will mean IE is the only browser not to meet that standard.

Mac users: one thing you will enjoy is the new theme Proto included with every install because it helps make FF look more at home in the beautiful OS X environment.

All in all things are really heating up in the browser space, what are your thoughts?