Firefox turns five today. For some, they remember what the Web was like in 2004 – Internet Explorer 6 was the dominant browser, and had not been updates in 3 years, web technology was stagnating because of it.

Now, browsers are faster, and doing more – new standards are coming out (HTML5, CSS3, AJAX libraries, and more) – and while the techno-babble means little to many, it also means everything.  It means websites that can do more, and do it faster.

It has also heralded other browsers becoming more popular.  Five years ago, there was no Chrome or Safari, now web surfers have options to surf the web – and the web is getting better because of it.

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• Firefox keeps Microsoft ‘honest’ on 5th birthday (theregister.co.uk)
• Happy 5th Birthday, Firefox (mashable.com)
• Firefox: new version planned for December as browser celebrates fifth birthday (telegraph.co.uk)
• Happy Birthday: A Look Back at Five Years of Firefox [Mozilla Firefox] (lifehacker.com)
• With Firefox 3.6, Mozilla Aims to Speed up Web Browsing (readwriteweb.com)

Popularity: 2% [?]

I’ve seen numerous posts where people have claimed that good clean HTML leads to better SEO rankings. I’ve even talked about the lie that of the link between SEO and valid HTML.

I’ve yet to see any studies done which verify this claim and in fact I’ve even seen evidence to the opposite effect being true. I pointed out how in some competitive markets, the higher the ranking for the site the worse the validation recently in another post. This does not mean that poor code relates to higher rankings – just that valid HTML code doesn’t correlate to better rankings as some people would like to say, just like good clean code doesn’t mean the site will look better to visitors.

Matt Cutts recently did a short video on why Google’s own code doesn’t validate. (video opens new window – not allowed to embed)

Now does this mean that you should only have your web designers write invalid code – not, but it does mean you shouldn’t waste unnecessary time on it either.

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• Google Says Pages That Validate Do Not Get Ranking Boost (seroundtable.com)

Popularity: 3% [?]

About a year ago, Google release their own browser, Chrome.  They been hard at work updating it, wanting to take more of the browser market share.

They built a good browser for power users, if you didn’t mind not having the extensions you’ve come to love and expect in Firefox.

Well now they are adding some of those extensions as well as other improvements. Read the official release here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Recently I wrote about a company who designed their website solely for users of Internet Explorer. Most research shows that on a typical day 20% to 25% of all web visits occur with another browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari for example). And not allowing your site to be viewable in other browsers, is just like it not allowing a customer in your store because of the type of car they drive.

Interesting research is being shown, that more and more users have multiple browsers installed on their computers, to the tune of Firefox is estimated to be on over 50% of all computers. Chrome is gaining popularity as well, and estimated to be on around 10% of all computers.

So make it easy for users to just use the browser they pick, and not have to switch to view your site.

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• Shiny Future for Chrome? (myventurepad.com)
• Google Eyeing 10% Market Share For Chrome. Mac Version Due By The End Of The Year. (techcrunch.com)
• Firefox: 1,000,000,000 Downloads (mashable.com)
• More Than Half of Computer Users Now Run Firefox (webworkerdaily.com)

Popularity: 3% [?]