FluidApp is what's called a Single Site Browser and is a great way to pull key websites you use throughout the day out of your primary browser and onto your Mac dashboard as standalone applications. It's super easy for anyone to use. The service has a thriving community of users - I have 10 Fluid browsers running on my computer right now and wouldn't want to work without them. In fact, I'm writing this blog post from Movable Type inside a Fluid Browser. In a quiet mid-December move, FluidApp developer Todd Ditchendorf put "most of the code behind Fluid" up on Github under an open source license. That's very good news - new developments are already coming fast and furious. If you haven't checked out Fluid before, now is a great time. Sponsor There's something magical about the way single site browsers let you use different web apps. They don't get lost in tabs. They don't fall prey to browser crashes. You can put a handsome icon in your doc to jump over to them. Windows users looking for a similar experience should check out Bubbles or Mozilla's Prism . Now that Fluid for the Mac is open source though, it will be very exciting to see what features are added next. Creator Ditchendorf says he has some more exciting plans under his hat but nothing to show off yet. Watch this space. What's your favorite Fluid App? One of my favorites is LazyFeed . Next: 15 Fluid Apps You Can Build For Your Business . Discuss

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I Run 13 Browsers At Once; 11 of Them Just Went Open Source

Opera just released the first pre-alpha version of Opera 10.5. While most users generally only think about Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome as the major players in the current browser wars, there can be no doubt that Opera is working hard to push browser development forward as well. This latest alpha version shows that Opera has worked hard to speed up the browser. Carakan , the new JavaScript engine in Opera 10.5, is up to 7 times faster than Opera's current engine. The new version of Opera also adds a number of new features like an enhanced private browsing mode and a new graphics engine that can be hardware accelerated. Sponsor The new alpha is currently only available for Windows and OSX users - a Linux version will follow soon. Download links can be found at the bottom of this page . New Features New Features: private browsing better integration with native systems notification messages are now non-modal improvements to the search box and the address box new and improved highlighting new inline page search and password manager Besides the focus on speed - an area where Opera used to lead before WebKit based browsers like Safari and Chrome became popular - the company also included a number of other enhancement in this early version of 10.5. Windows 7 and Vista users, for example, will notice that the browser is now closely integrated with the desktop environment and makes use of features like Aero Glass in Vista and Aero Peek and Jump Lists in Windows 7. On the Mac, Opera can now make use of multi-touch gestures like the 3-finger swipe and Growl notifications. Other new features include a new "private tab" and "private window" mode that actually works far better than similar features in other browsers. You just have to right click on the tab bar and select "private tab" to start the private browsing mode in this new tab, for example. Opera also updated the look and feel for the browser's inline page search and password manager. It's All About Speed The focus here for Opera, however, is clearly not so much on bringing new features to the browser (the current Alpha doesn't even support O pera Unite , for example), but on testing the new JavaScript engine. When we spoke to Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner about the state of the browser during LeWeb earlier this month, he stressed that the company was very focused on improving the speed of the browser. He did stress, however, that the JavaScript engine was only a small part of this effort and that the company was also looking at other bottlenecks that are slowing the browser down. The fact that that new image rendering engine is already pre-wired for hardware acceleration is a good example for this (though the feature isn't turned on yet). We will bring you more of our interview with von Tetzchner after the holidays. In our own tests, Opera performed remarkably well and this new version clearly shows that it would be unwise to underestimate Opera in the browser wars. We should note, however, that this is still a very early alpha version and that the browser is likely to crash occasionally. Discuss

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Opera Feels The Need for Speed: Releases First Pre-Alpha of Opera 10.5

Firefox hit a new milestone today, as version 3.5 overtook Internet Explorer 7.0 with nearly 22% of the browser market, according to statistics from web analytics service StatCounter . This comes on the heels of statistics we saw earlier this month , which showed Firefox overtaking IE for overall usage in Germany. Sponsor While IE still dominates the browser market - with 55% of people using some version - all combined versions of Firefox occupy 32% and have been steadily gaining ground. Released at the end of June, version 3.5 of Firefox has quickly climbed the charts. IE 8, on the other hand - which was first released in beta more than a year earlier, with a full release in March 2009 - now holds a similar 20% of the market to that of Firefox 3.5's 22%. It would seem that a majority of Firefox 3.5 users were already using 3.0 and upgraded, as the 20% drop in 3.0 use almost directly correlates to the 22% increase in 3.5. Discuss

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Firefox 3.5 Takes the Top Spot Worldwide

Google Chrome may be the best browser on the market. It's faster and more stable than Firefox and today began opening up to user modification with the availability of more than 300 browser extensions . Official Mac and Linux versions were just made available today as well. Can Chrome remain so much stronger than Firefox once a pile of extensions or added on? That's the question and now is your chance to start finding out the answer. It's been more than a year since Google launched Chrome , but today is a big day for the browser. Sponsor The one bit of bad news is that neither the official Mac version nor the developer version we've been testing for months - called Chromium