Browsers have come of age as Google launches Chrome 66

One great thing about aging is that time flies past so fast. For example, if you are 60 years of age or older, two years goes like a wink of an eye; you hardly notice it. Meanwhile, in the life of an infant, two years is like eternity. For my first 13 years of using […]

One great thing about aging is that time flies past so fast. For example, if you are 60 years of age or older, two years goes like a wink of an eye; you hardly notice it. Meanwhile, in the life of an infant, two years is like eternity. For my first 13 years of using the computer, there was no world wide web and no operating system that was based on a graphical user interface (GUI). So, back then, all your access to the computer was via the command line. Remember DOS Prompt? Though preceded by the UNIX command line, DOS Prompt is more memorable from popular computing perspective, as it was the immediate precursor to the graphical interface that basically democratized computing:  the much celebrated Windows 95. 

I actually jumped ahead of myself in the paragraph above! When I learned to use the computer in 1976 at the University of Ibadan, our programs were written on punch cards. That is, to ask the computer to carry out instructions for you, you had to punch holes into a deck of cards, and feed the cards into “IBM” machines that interpreted the instructions for the central processing unit of the computer. This was in fact also the case when I first arrived in the U.S. in 1981. It was the year after that that my university in the U.S. (Cornell University) changed to a system that allowed you to type your computer program using some kind of word processor. (Cornell awarded the first doctoral degree in electrical engineering in the U.S., of course way before I came there.) Giving directives to the computer to execute what you typed was then done on a command line. Various clones of the AT & T-developed UNIX operating system were the vehicle.

The invention of the Internet brought with it the search for a user-friendly way to give commands to the computer and use the Internet – even if you are not able to type. The English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He wrote the first web browser computer program, called WorldWideWeb, in 1990 while employed at CERN in Switzerland. The browser, which was later called Nexus, was developed for the NeXT computer, and demonstrated to Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple), who was then working at NeXT, in 1993.

Also in 1993, as an employee of the U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Marc Andreessen developed the world’s first popular browser called Mosaic, which made the World Wide Web easy to use and accessible to non-programmers. Andreessen founded his own company, Netscape, and released the Netscape Navigator in 1994. Netscape became the world’s most popular browser, controlling over 90% of all web use at some point. However, Microsoft came up with Internet Explorer in 1995, which basically killed Netscape, accounting for over 95% of web traffic by 2002. Google Chrome was launched on 2 September 2008.

Today, there are more than fifteen web browsers, but the leading ones, by market share are: Google Chrome (66%), Mozilla Firefox (11.9%), Internet Explorer (7.3%), Apple Safari (5.9%), Microsoft Edge (4.1%), Opera (2.4%), and others.

At any rate, over the next few weeks, the latest version of Google Chrome, Version 66, will be rolled out for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS – basically for all the OS’s that are worth their salt. One of the most important changes in Chrome 66 is that the auto-playing of contents (videos) when you open a site has been switched off. That is, if you have upgraded to Chrome 66, you will notice that, for example, a YouTube video will no longer be played automatically when you open the links that contain the video – unlike in previous versions of Chrome. 

Needless to say that the unexpected media playback in older Chrome browsers consumes data and power, not to mention the annoyance factor associated unwanted noise while browsing.  In the latest Chrome, there is also the option to “export” passwords. To do this, follow these steps: Settings > Advanced > Passwords and forms > Manage passwords > Saved Passwords menu if you have already upgraded to Chrome 66, or else the last command will show: “Saved passwords will appear here,” to let you know you’ll get the capability when you upgrade. To export passwords, Chrome may of course need to verify your identity, as in passcodes, facial recognition, fingerprint scan, or whatever.

Also in the works is a major re-design of Gmail to bring new features to this immensely popular email service. It’s rumored that the new Gmail will be launched in the coming weeks. Although Gmail introduced some cool functionality into email service, I personally don’t like the way the program organizes emails; often making it extremely difficult, if not sometimes frustrating, to locate particular emails. Hopefully the new Gmail will be cleaner and less cluttered. The anticipated “Smart Reply” capability in Gmail will instantly allow you to select from three automatic responses based on what Google makes of the contents of an incoming message. 

You will agree with me that the best technologies are those that simplify things for us.