The D3D Blog

It’s been more than 4 years since I began creating this new web browser, Dolphin3D.  It was a crazy idea to program this whole thing by myself.  Crazy.  But 16,000 programming hours later it’s almost ready, and I believe that a respectable percentage of users who try it will get hooked on any number of its cool, powerful, out-of-the-box features.  Dolphin3D is “100%” Internet Explorer compatible which means that web designers won’t have to sweat over any redesigns as users begin adopting it in droves.  : )

Check back every few days because Dolphin3D will be available for download very soon.  The day I put the download link up on www.dolphin3d.com I’ll also post a link to a complete feature list so you can decide whether or not you’re going to try it.

As a side note, it was interesting to observe the launch of Google Chrome in September.  Its minimalist approach is certainly a great idea for users whose focus is web apps.  And faster java is always good.  And if it was Google’s intent to spur more conversation about and interest in their web apps I believe they succeeded.  In fact, with Microsoft’s recent announcement regarding online versions of MS Office, the race to supply users with more full-featured online applications is heating up.

With my hat tipped to Google (love their stuff), you can think of Dolphin as the ‘UnChrome’.  Most of our private beta users love Dolphin’s numerous client-side features: “The more useful power gadgets the better”, I say.  (Although many super-hacker-power-user types may spurn Dolphin - and that’s totally OK - I believe a lot of active web users are going to love what Dolphin offers - and that’s OK too.)

Now, how about a few test marketing slogans:

• “Dolphin makes you smarter”
• “Dolphin is quicker”
• “Dolphin is more fun”
• “Dolphin is safer”
• “Teach your old web some new tricks”

Well, there’s the tease.  Check back soon and give it a whirl!

As usual I’ve been feverishly working through my list of priority issues, making final tweaks and preparations for Dolphin’s public beta release.  I’m considering adopting the idea of ”perpetual beta” as Dolphin’s normal public release state, as I intend to offer Dolphin users new web browser releases every 2 to 3 months.  I also plan to invite users to submit and vote on ideas for features and tweaks through some type of democratic mechanism accessible within the Dolphin online community.

For those of you early adopters and gadgeteers interested in new web browsers with cool feature sets - you’re going to have a lot of fun with Dolphin.  (Think swiss army knife for the web.)  At this point you might want to keep coming back here every few days to make sure you’re one of the first to give it a ride.

As far as the exact timing of the public beta - I’ve learned from experience and observation that it’s a very bad idea to establish hard deadlines when working with complex software projects.  That said, my goal is to achieve good momentum with a respectable user base before the end of summer so we’re primed for the word to spread rapidly among students and others… blah blah blah… to quickly achieve our goal of benevolent world domination… blah blah blah… you get the idea.  : )

DolphinMaster

Hi everybody - Dolphin’s public beta is coming soon.  I’ve begun to expand our private beta user base to a much wider group.  Thanks to all who have participated so far - your feedback has resulted in many improvements and bug fixes.  Keep it coming!