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FireFox (Mozilla)

8/29/2013

Firefox OS

Firefox OS is an open source, Linux -based operating system for smartphones and tablet computers , which by the Mozilla Corporation is developed. The goal is the user interface and apps complete with web technologies (HTML, CSS and JavaScript to implement) and thus programmers but also to offer users the greatest possible openness and compatibility.

As of July 2013, Firefox has approximately 16% to 21% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, making it the 2nd or 3rd most used web browser, according to different sources. According to Mozilla, Firefox counts over 450 million users around the world. The browser has had particular success in Indonesia, Germany, and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 57%, 45%, and 44% of the market share, respectively.

History & Features
The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark problems with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project. In response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. After further pressure from the database server's development community, on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF. The Firefox project went through many versions before version 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004.

Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, smart bookmarks, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geo-location") based on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most locations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users. Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as Firebug.

Market Adoption
Downloads have continued at an increasing rate since Firefox 1.0 was released in November 2004, and as of July 31, 2009 Firefox has been downloaded over one billion times. This number does not include downloads using software updates or those from third-party websites. They do not represent a user count, as one download may be installed on many machines, one person may download the software multiple times, or the software may be obtained from a third party. According to Mozilla, Firefox has more than 450 million users as of October 2012. Firefox was the second-most used web browser until December 2011, when Google Chrome surpassed it. As of May 2012, Firefox was the third most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers. According to StatCounter, Firefox usage peaked in November 2009 and usage share remained stagnant until October 2010 when it lost market share, a trend that continued for over a year. Its first consistent gains in usage share since September 2010 occurred in February through May 2012 before declining again in June and July.

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Google Chrome

8/29/2013

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Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008. Net Applications has indicated that Chrome is the third-most popular web browser when it comes to the size of its user base, behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. StatCounter, however, estimates that Google Chrome has a 39% worldwide usage share of web browsers making it the most widely used web browser in the world. Before Chrome, Google had one of the most successful, most recognized Web apps around: Google Search. But except for a toolbar and paying companies like Mozilla to make Google the default search in their browsers, it didn't have a product of its own to promote the Web with. Chrome changed that, and is now one of Google's most profitable products.

Grabbing Market Share and Headlines
While Firefox had spent years slowly chipping away at IE's dominance, few people outside of Google expected Chrome to be a viable competitor. Chrome rocketed to more than 1 percent of the market just a day after its release, according to some reports. People were excited and ready for something new in the browser world. Google said that Chrome's focus was on speed and simplicity, and it worked.

Chrome's big selling point was its speed, but that wasn't enough to sell it initially. It shed nearly two-thirds of its initial market share before the end of 2008. Fast and simple were good selling points, but people also wanted a browser that wasn't going to crash on them, and that could be at least somewhat extensible. A few months later, with Chrome out of beta the browser began a rise that could be charitably described as "meteoric." Five years on, its market share still increasing on the desktop but much more slowly, and the browser is now used by nearly as many people who use Firefox. On the other side of the coin, Internet Explorer now sits around 56 percent of the market. It's doubtful that Chrome's gains are fully attributable to IE's losses, but many of them probably are.

Beyond Speed
The market share shift came about because Google was able to develop a browser that lived up to its hype. Chrome's initial emphasis on speed and simplicity rarely wavered, and was soon joined by a focus on stability and security. Google wound up challenging assumptions in all four of those areas, and in the process built a browser with phenomenal reach.

One feature that proved to be a game-changer was the six-week rapid-release cycle. Browsers had been receiving major updates annually at best before Chrome. When Chrome launched, it was on a quarterly schedule, but doubling that meant that the browser updated security and stability fixes twice as fast.

In mimicking a mobile app's seamless updates that just occurred without the user having to go download the new version, Chrome was able to accomplish several goals at once. Not only did it become less noticeable when Google shipped those pesky but important security and stability fixes, but fans got accustomed to regular updates, and Chrome's own engineers were able to focus on introducing new features like the private browsing "Incognito" mode, automatic page translation, sandboxing, Native Client, and supporting the messy and unfinished alphabet soup of next-generation Web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, newer JavaScript APIs, WebGL and WebRTC with relative ease.

As it stands today, Chrome is a leader in pushing for future-tech Web technologies, and thanks to Chrome OS, which runs the browser as the operating system and the Web is the only platform available, Google has become even more heavily invested in developing the Web to compete with the native code that powers proprietary operating systems.

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Mac OS (Apple)

8/29/2013

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Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The original version was the integral and unnamed system software first introduced in 1984 with the original Macintosh, and referred to simply as the "System" software. The System was renamed to Mac OS in 1996 with version 7.6. The System is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface concept.

Mac OS releases have existed in two major series. Up to major revision 9, from 1984 to 2000, it is historically known as Classic Mac OS. Major revision 10 (revisioned minorly, such as 10.0 through 10.9), from 2001 to present, has had the brand name of Mac OS X and now OS X. Both series share a general interface design and some shared application frameworks for compatibility, but also have deeply different architectures.

Design
Apple's original inception of the System deliberately sought to minimize the user's conceptual awareness of the operating system. Tasks which required more operating system knowledge on other systems would be accomplished by intuitive mouse gestures and simple graphic controls on a Macintosh, making the system more user-friendly and easily mastered. This would differentiate it from then current systems, such as MS-DOS, which were more technically challenging to operate.

The core of the system software was held in ROM, with updates originally provided free of charge by Apple dealers (on floppy disk). The user's involvement in an upgrade of the operating system was also minimized to running an installer, or simply replacing system files. This simplicity is what differentiated the product from others.

Versions

Early versions of Mac OS were compatible only with Motorola 68000-based Macintoshes. As Apple introduced computers with PowerPC hardware, the OS was ported to support this architecture. Mac OS 8.1 was the last version that could run on a "68K" processor (the 68040). OS X, which has superseded the "Classic" Mac OS, is compatible with only PowerPC processors from version 10.0 ("Cheetah") to version 10.3 ("Panther"). Both PowerPC and Intel processors are supported in version 10.4 ("Tiger", Intel only supported after an update) and version 10.5 ("Leopard").

The early Macintosh operating system initially consisted of two pieces of software, called "System" and "Finder", each with its own version number. System 7.5.1 was the first to include the Mac OS logo (a variation on the original Happy Mac startup icon), and Mac OS 7.6 was the first to be named "Mac OS". Before the introduction of the later PowerPC G3-based systems, significant parts of the system were stored in physical ROM on the motherboard. The initial purpose of this was to avoid using up the limited storage of floppy disks on system support; given that the early Macs had no hard disk (only one model of Mac was ever actually bootable using the ROM alone, the 1991 Mac Classic model). This architecture also allowed for a completely graphical OS interface at the lowest level [clarify] without the need for a text-only console or command-line mode. Boot time errors, such as finding no functioning disk drives, were communicated to the user graphically, usually with an icon or the distinctive Chicago bitmap font and a Chime of Death or a series of beeps. This was in contrast to computers of the time, which displayed such messages in a mono-spaced font on a black background, and required the use of the keyboard, not a mouse, for input. To provide such niceties at a low level, Mac OS depended on core system software in ROM on the motherboard, a fact that later helped to ensure that only Apple computers or licensed clones (with the copyright-protected ROMs from Apple) could run Mac OS.

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Windows (Microsoft)

8/29/2013

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Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of graphical interface operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft.

Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUI). Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. As of September 2013, the most recent versions of Windows for personal computers, mobile devices, server computers and embedded devices are respectively Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Windows Server 2012 and Windows Embedded 8.

Windows 8, the successor to Windows 7, was released generally on October 28, 2012. A number of significant changes were made on Windows 8, including the introduction of a user interface based around Microsoft's Metro design language with optimizations for touch-based devices such as tablets and all-in-one PCs. These changes include the Start screen, which uses large tiles that are more convenient for touch interactions and allow for the display of continually updated information, and a new class of apps which are designed primarily for use on touch-based devices. Other changes include increased integration with cloud services and other online platforms (such as social networks and Microsoft's own SkyDrive and Xbox Live services), the Windows Store service for software distribution, and a new variant known as Windows RT for use on devices that utilize the ARM architecture

Windows Interface
Windows 8 uses a new graphical user interface (long known as Metro ) named Modern UI . This environment is based on a brand new splash screen consists of dynamic tiles, similar to those found on the operating system Windows Phone . Each tile represents an application, and may have no practical information you enter in the application. For example, the Messages application shows the number of unread messages so that the Weather app shows the temperature depending on the location of the user. These applications are launched in full screen, and are able to transmit information between them. Applications in the new interface are developed with the new platform Windows Runtime, using various programming languages such as C + +, Visual Basic, C #, and HTML combined with JavaScript.

The traditional office environment is accessible from a tile. The start button on the taskbar has been moved to the charm bar, accessible by plating the cursor / finger at the bottom left of the screen. This opens the start screen, hotspot Windows 8, rather than the traditional start menu.

The applications developed for this new environment were previously referenced as applications for Metro style development; they allow the user to stay in the same environment as the main office with a design in this whole system

Goals
During the development of Windows 8 Microsoft were to include the following objectives:

Increase the usability of Windows on touch-screens through integration of a new user interface
Improve clarity by removing the glass effects the Aero interface
Increase the stability and speed

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FireFox (Mozilla)

Google Chrome

Mac OS (Apple)

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