Articles about Browser

In a major blow for privacy advocates and individual rights, the US Senate has voted to permit ISPs to sell or share customers' data -- including their browsing histories -- without consent.

The vote overturns a Federal Communications Commission rule that banned such activity. While there are still legislative hoops to jump through before the result of the vote is ratified, ISPs will be rubbing their hands in glee at what the Senate has done.

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Relying on a Linux distribution as your full time operating system can be great -- until it isn't. While there are many quality packages and applications that are compatible with the open source kernel, every once in awhile you will run into something that simply isn't available. When this happens, it can be very frustrating.

For a while, Netflix was not available for traditional Linux-based operating systems, meaning users were unable to enjoy the popular streaming service without booting into Windows. This was due to the company's reliance on Microsoft Silverlight. Since then, Netflix adopted HTML5, and it made Google Chrome and Chromium for Linux capable of playing the videos. Unfortunately, Firefox -- the open source browser choice for many Linux users -- was not compatible. Today this changes, however, as Mozilla's offering is now compatible with Netflix!

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Chrome isn't the most energy efficient browser around, but Google has been working hard to make things better. The latest improvement focuses on background tabs, which are now said to use less power.

The lower power consumption in background tabs is actually one of the main changes that are part of Chrome 57, which Google released earlier in March. The latest version of the popular browser also gained WebAssembly support and dropped the ability to disable plugins, to name a few.

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Microsoft is pushing out an update to its Skype extension for Chrome, bringing a host of new features to a range of online services. The update means that you can add Skype call links to emails, calendar events, and social media postings with a single click.

With support for Gmail, Google Inbox, Outlook.com, Google Calendar and Twitter, Microsoft is clearly trying to cover a lot of bases. Twitter is arguably something of a strange choice, but by embracing rival Google services, Microsoft is clearly keen to make Skype more accessible for as many people as possible.

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Mozilla has released Firefox 52.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux, with Firefox for Android 52.0 due imminently.

Firefox 52 now supports syncing tabs to specific devices, makes various improvements to the Downloads button and introduces a raft of security, developer and other enhancements. It’s also the final release for Windows XP and Vista users.

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Thanks to its Unix foundation, macOS is a rock-solid desktop operating system. While it is not infallible, there are far fewer malware threats for Apple's OS compared to, say, Windows 10. With that said, Microsoft's desktop offering is more targeted due to its monstrous market share.

As more and more consumers buy Mac computers, evildoers will have increased incentive to write malware for macOS. Luckily, users of Apple's operating system that choose to use Google Chrome for web surfing will soon be safer. You see, the search giant is improving its Safe Browsing initiative to better warn macOS users of malicious websites and attempts to alter browser settings.

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Vivaldi 1.7 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s the brainchild of Opera co-founder Jon S von Tetzhner, and makes a good claim to be the most customizable web browser out there.

The new release debuts some significant new features, including a fully functional built-in screenshot tool, more flexible options for muting sounds across multiple tabs and a host of other minor tweaks and enhancements.

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Opera Software has released Opera 43 to the stable channel with enhanced performance-boosting tools and a welcome productivity tweak.

Instant page loading is a pre-rendering technology which attempts to predict URLs as you type, and starts to load the site in the background before you even hit enter.

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Bundling Internet Explorer in Windows 95 was enough for Microsoft to win the "browser wars" and consign Netscape to history, but a lot has changed since then. Bundling Edge in Windows 10 has had negligible effect on Chrome and Firefox’s dominance. After a year and a half, Microsoft Edge still only has a little over 5 percent share, according to NetMarketShare.

It didn’t help that Edge was only partially baked when Windows 10 debuted. Why swap your existing browser for one missing core features and with a far-from intuitive interface? (How to change the default search engine in Microsoft Edge quickly became one of my most viewed stories here). Microsoft is promising a wealth of new features for Microsoft Edge in Windows 10 Creators Update, but will that be enough to persuade users to give the browser a second chance?

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There is a curious phenomenon on iOS -- Google's apps are often better on Apple's mobile operating system than on Android. It is for this reason that users of the search-giant's services can be perfectly content using an iPhone or iPad.

Google Chrome is a very popular web browser on iOS, with many folks choosing it over Safari. I prefer Apple's own browser, but I digress. The Chrome browser is largely open source, as it is based on the Chromium project -- except for the iOS variant, that is. Today, for the first time ever, the iPhone and iPad version of the browser is open source too.

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The way people access the internet is changing, with a shift towards portable devices, and that in turn has led to a shift in the software they use.

Independent testing company AV-Comparatives has conducted its annual survey focusing on which security products (free and paid) are employed by users, along with their OS and browser usage.

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With web browsers being among the most frequently used pieces of software out there, it's little wonder that there is so much concern about security surrounding them. Browser plugins can be a major security worry, and with Chrome 57 Google has taken the strange decision to block users from disabling them or changing their settings.

While this is not the same as preventing users from changing the settings for extensions, or removing them, it still has important implications -- particularly if a security problem should be discovered in a plugin Google bundles with Chrome.

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Have you ever been extremely dissatisfied with the refresh/reload performance of your web browser? Yeah, me neither. Quite frankly, I never gave much thought to it. Google has noticed, however, and it has improved the reload performance with Chrome 56.

The search giant did not discover the deficiencies of the reload feature on its own, as Facebook apparently tipped Google off to it. You see, the social network noticed that the Chrome web browser was less efficient compared to other browsers, and now Google has rectified it.

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There are endless Chrome extensions which replace your new tab page, typically to give you gorgeous photo wallpaper or equip your browser with productivity-boosting tools.

Tabby Cat has a simpler aim: it generates and displays a cute new cat on the background of every tab you open.

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It’s barely a week since we looked at the WayBack Machine’s simple Chrome extension, but it’s just had a major update which makes the add-on much more useful.

Clicking the WayBack Machine icon now displays buttons to show the first or most recent archived copies of the current URL, as stored in the WayBack Machine -- perfect for seeing how a site has changed over time.

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