ExitReality has today released a plugin that allows users to surf the web in 3D. This will allow surfers the chance to walk through their favourite websites as if they were playing a computer game.

The 3.5MB plugin will turn any normal website into a compelling virtual room.

The idea from ExitReality’s founder Danny Stefanic has been in development for 13 years.

Mr Stefanic says “It is the entire web in 3D – making 40 billion virtual worlds – and it will instantly transform 2D content into 3D“.

Flickr can be turned into a virtual art gallery, while YouTube can be turned into a virtual cinema. It’s second life for every day people.

Currently, the browser plugin only works on Windows and is compatible with both Internet Explorer and Firefox. The plugin can be downloaded from the ExitReality website.

Google has just opened up Chrome’s dev channel. The dev channel gives early access to new features and bug fixes. Google promises to release Chrome updates to the dev channel frequently, providing webmasters the ability to test their sites and script with the latest version of the Chrome browser.

Google does warn however that dev channel releases are prone to be less stable than their Beta cousins released on the main Google Chrome website.

To subscribe to the dev channel, you simply need to download and install the Google Chrome Channel Chooser. Full details and installation instructions can be found on the dev channel website.

Google has just released a new version of their Gears project which now has support for OS X and Safari.

Google Gears “is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser“.

With Gears, web applications can naturally interact with your desktop, JavaScript performance is increased, and you can store data locally in a fully search-able database.

Gears-enabled websites include Google Docs, WordPress an YouTube Video Uploader.

A full run down on new features can be found in the Google Gears Blog, and you can download a copy of Google Gears from http://gears.google.com/.

Opera has released a beta version of its next generation web browser. The browser includes some fancy new features, including Link It. Link It allows you to synchronise searches and typed history across multiple computers. You can read a full list of changes in their changelogs.

Included in the release is a new version of Opera Mail. You can download the new beta software from the Opera Software website. Happy testing!

There are many cool little Firefox tweaks that users often don’t know about, all hidden away and editable from a special link within Firefox. These following tweaks will make your Firefox quicker and more efficient for today’s broadband connection.

To get to this special menu, in the address bar type about:config and then press enter. Firefox 3 presents you with an extra button asking you to “promise and be careful” which you can safely click.

Now you should be presented with a list of options that you can change to improve Firefox’s performance. Below are some common settings that can be changed. Simply click on the filter box and search for the following settings and change their values as below:

• network.http.pipelining → true
• network.http.pipelining.firstrequest → true (Not in Firefox 3)
  
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests → 32
• network.http.proxy.pipelining → true
• nglayout.initialpaint.delay → 0 (Not in Firefox 3)

These little gems will help your Firefox fly faster. Pipelining allows multiple HTTP 1.1 requests to be sent before any responses are received from the browser, hence allowing you to ask for more data at once. Give it a go and try it out – you’ve got nothing to loose!

With the release of Google Chrome, John Resig has performed JavaScript benchmark tests on a wide variety of browsers on both Windows Vista and XP. These browsers include:

• Chrome 0.2
• Safari 4
• Safari 3.1.2
• Opera 9.5.2
• Firefox 3.1
• Firefox 3.0.1
• IE7
• IE8 Beta 2

Testing, using three benchmarking tools; SunSpider, V8 Benchmark, and Dromaeo, has produced some interesting results. Results show that Google Chrome is ahead in all but one benchmark test – very impressive for a browser that is still in its early beta stages. It shows the performance of the new V8 JavaScript engine and the power of the WebKit rendering engine found in both Chrome and Safari.

You can read the full JavaScript Performance Rundown article to see the other (not-so)surprissing results.

Google Chrome browser in action

Google has just thrown a huge spanner into the browser war with the release of their new web browser, Google Chrome. According to Google, “Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.”

Early testing seems very promising, and I have found the browser to be fast and responsive, even though it is still in beta at version 0.2. There still seem to be a few rough edges, but I would think we will see these ironed out as we see new releases.

Built on WebKit technology, Google Chrome includes some useful new features, including:

• Address bar under each tab
• Individual windows are in their own “sandbox”
• Thumbnails of your favourite sites
• One search bar for searching and typing URLs

In the next few days I plan to give a more indepth review of Google Chrome as I have more time to play with the browser. If you haven’t already, you can check Google Chrome out at http://www.google.com/chrome/.

How have you found Google Chrome so far?

Welcome to Browser Watch. I aim to keep you updated with the latest in web browser technology news. Stay tuned for more articles.