The browser wars are back on!

Remember the browser wars of the late nineties? Half the online population thought “Netscape” actually was the Internet and Microsoft was just starting to take the Internet seriously.

Of course, Internet Explorer emerged the victor and whether you’re in the camp that faults Microsoft’s heavy-handed tactics or the camp that recognizes Netscape’s failure to innovate, there’s probably some truth in both.

But now the war is back on. Except it’s not a browser war, it’s a “rendering engine” war. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft's Bing

Microsoft has launched its answer to Google in Bing, its replacement for Live Search. This latest go at a search platform has some interesting quirks, including instances of single results on the SERP (search engine results page) for keywords it’s certain have a single destination site.

On the homepage, Bing layers a pleasing image behind the search box, with your standard Images, News and other options down the left-hand column. The image has discoverable hotspots, which both fits the theme of searching and could be a very interesting way to integrate ads onto the most visited page at Bing. Read the rest of this entry »

Search engines

The top search engines have collectively agreed on a solution to a problem that has long vexed web developers and web site owners.

Google, MSN, and Yahoo have announced support for the use of a "canonical" link tag as part of a page's markup to help identify duplicate content. The three have a combined search market share of over 90 percent, according to several independent rating surveys. Read the rest of this entry »