Microsoft has released Silverlight 3, after being in beta testing since March 2009.
Silverlight 3.0 includes over 50 new features, including graphic processing unit (GPU) acceleration, 3D support, H.264 video support and out-of-the-browser capabilities to Silverlight.
A full list of features can be read on the Silverlight website. Silverlight 3 is available for Windows and Mac OS X today.
Google has released software called O3D which aims to bring accelerated 3D graphics to the web browser.
O3D is a plug-in available for all major browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
The technology works by allowing developers access to a computers 3D hardware simply by using JavaScript.
The plug-in is available from Google today, and the website includes live demo’s and a video showing off the technology.
Apple has released Safari 4 beta to the public.
The release is incredibly impressive, with over 150 new features, including support for some HTML5 elements along with improvements in the rendering engine.
Safari 4 also scores an impressive 100/100 in Acid 3 which tests a browsers standards compatibility. Opera 10 alpha and Safari 4 beta are now the only two main web browsers to reach this feat.
Safari 4 includes a new JavaScript rendering engine called Nitro. It’s claimed to be 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1 and 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. Benchmark results should be out soon.
Users can download Safari 4 beta for both Windows and Mac today.
Google Chrome on Mac
Google’s Mike Pikerton has posted the first screenshots of the Mac build of Google Chrome.
Apparently things are coming along nicely, with tabs now able to properly render web pages.
Mike comments that there is still a “very very long way to go” and a release date is still impossible to predict, although a July release date has been hinted at previously.
After news that Google Chrome is no longer using WinHTTP libaries in alpha versions of its web browser, Google now hopes to relese its browser for both Mac OS X and Linux before the first half of this year.
Chrome’s product manager Brian Rakowski said Mac and Linux versions are progressing. “That team now is able to render most Web pages pretty well. But in terms of the user experience, it’s very basic”.
“We have not spent any time building out features. We’re still iterating on making it stable and getting the architecture right.”
The status of the Mac OS X version can be tracked on the Google Chrome Dev Channel.
With all the news that Google Chrome’s market share has droped since it’s release, I thought it was only fitting to add some more statistics to the fire.
On another technology site that I run, browser stats were as follows for the month of September:
Browser Market Share for September
Through the month of September, Chrome’s usage has dropped around 30% from its release. Usage seems to have stabalised since then.
Of interesting note, is that Google Chrome has still gained a larger market share than Opera. It should also be noted that Chrome is still only available on Windows. Perhaps it’s market share will again increase when offical Mac and Linux versions are released.
Perhaps Google Chrome hasn’t shaken up the market as much as everyone predicted. Did you try Google Chrome and are you still using it?