Firefox 16 is available -- get it NOW!
Ahead of its official unveiling, Mozilla has made Firefox 16 FINAL available for download. The latest version provides little in the way of major new features, and in some ways is more noteworthy for the features missing from this release, including the long-awaited inline PDF viewer (click here to find out how to switch it on manually) as well as a number of OS X Lion/Mountain Lion enhancements.
What is present in version 16 is initial desktop support for web apps, VoiceOver accessibility features for OS X, extra developer tools and enhanced garbage collection performance to prevent freezes and performance lags.
Firefox goes native Windows 8
Mozilla has unveiled its first public preview of how Firefox will look when run using Windows 8’s new tile-based interface. Firefox Metro UI Preview is based on an offshoot Nightly build of Firefox, codenamed “Elm”, and can be downloaded and tested now on PCs running Windows 8.
This early preview provides a fully functional web browser, complete with multi-touch support on compatible displays. However, as expected at such an early stage in its development, not all planned features have yet been implemented, while the Nightly tag indicates this is a largely untested build.
Chrome 23 Beta improves HTML5 video support
Google has updated both Beta and Dev pre-release channels of its open-source, cross-platform browser, Google Chrome to versions 23 and 24 respectively.
While Google Chrome 24 Dev is a minor update, Google Chrome 23 Beta introduces support for a number of APIs and HTML5 technologies that, while superficially of most interest to web developers, will improve both web-based video playback and real-time audio/video communications over the internet for end users.
For every 8 pageviews, one comes from phone or tablet
Americans still love their PCs for sitting back and surfing the web, but, hey, it's the post-PC era, baby and times are changing. In August, 13.3 percent of web pageviews -- from browsers, not apps -- went to mobile phones or tablets, according to comScore. That's double the number in a year.
Mobile phones accounted for 9 percent of pageviews and tablets 4.3 percent. The latter foreshadows the category's huge potential to disrupt the PC-browsing paradigm. Tablet install base is tiny compared to handsets.
Google Chrome for Android update paves way for Motorola Razr i
Most smartphone users wouldn't know if their device packs an ARM or Intel processor. They would care, perhaps, if software doesn't run, particularly as the first Intel-powered devices reach the mass-market.
Google has updated Chrome for Android, to run on x86 processors, paving way for its own subsidiary, Motorola, to release Razr i, which packs a 2GHz Intel Atom powerhouse.
Chrome 22 is available -- get it NOW!
Google has released Chrome 22 FINAL, with the promise of improvements for Windows 8 users, gamers and those using HiDPI and Retina screens.
Chrome’s gaming enhancements revolve around support for the Pointer Lock JavaScript API. Otherwise known as "mouse lock", it allows sites to “capture” the mouse and provide the user with an immersive experience that isn’t constrained by the mouse cursor’s position relative to the edges of the browser window.
Internet Explorer zero-day exploit threatens huge chunk of IE users
Security researchers this week uncovered a bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer that is actively being exploited in targeted attacks and remote code execution. Microsoft responded by launching its own investigation of the vulnerability, but has no solution yet.
The vulnerability has been observed in Internet Explorer 6 through Internet Explorer 9 on Windows XP SP3, Vista, and Windows 7, and users can be infected simply by visiting a malicious website.
Pale Moon 15.1 fixes big bugs
Firefox-variant Pale Moon 15.1 for Windows has been released, promising to resolve a “fairly large number of issues with the initial version”. Version 15.1, also available as a dedicated 64-bit build, includes fixes for the mouse wheel scrolling preferences, memory inflation while playing some canvas games and a fix for private browsing mode.
Pale Moon, which is optimized for speed and efficiency, offers a lightweight, fast variant to Firefox. This latest build comes after version 15.0 was released at the end of last month.
Google ends Internet Explorer 8 support on Google Apps
Last year Venkat Panchapakesan, Google Vice President of Engineering announced the company's plan to limit support to modern browsers across Google Apps. To support modern web apps, support for browsers not supporting technologies like HTML5 had to be discontinued. Examples given at that time included desktop notifications or drag-and-drop file uploading, which both require browsers supporting HTML5.
For that reason, Google made the decision to support only the current and previous major version of a web browser. When a new major version of a browser gets released, support for the third oldest version gets discontinued automatically.
Opera 12 beta RC supports Retina Display
Retina Display support continues to be added to more and more applications as they are updated, and the latest update is for Opera 12.10 beta. This is one of the headline features of the latest build, but there are also a range of bug fixes as well as an update core – although it should be noted that this is a beta release.
The addition of Retina Display support helps to improve the appearance of web pages, particularly for text. Graphics, on the other hand, will appear slightly blurry unless the page administrator has taken the step of using double resolution images. The interface of the browser has also be updated with a new skin which includes new higher resolution icons.
Now you can open PDFs directly in Firefox
Do you want to know what’s annoyed me most about recently switching from Google Chrome to Firefox (or, more precisely, its 64-bit variant, Waterfox)? The lack of a built-in PDF viewer, that’s what.
In Chrome, you’d click on a PDF link, and it would open in Chrome: do the same in Firefox, and it would save the PDF to disk instead. Incredibly annoying. The development of a built-in PDF previewer was welcome news to my ears, but having appeared in Firefox 15 Beta, it disappeared from the final version. The good news is that it’s there, and you can switch it on. If you know how.
Tired of switching between browsers? Try Lunascape 6.8.0
Are you forced to run two or more web browsers on your PC for compatibility reasons? Perhaps your online banking doesn’t work properly unless you access it in Internet Explorer, while for day-to-day browsing you prefer Firefox.
Switching between browsers can be a real pain, which is where Lunascape 6.8.0 comes in. This freeware browser takes the browser engines from Internet Explorer, Chrome/Safari and Firefox, and wraps them up in a single program, letting you switch effortlessly between them.
Do you use Google Chrome?
To celebrate Chrome's fourth-anniversary -- well, in beta -- we're asking readers if and why they use Google's browser. The search and information giant released the first public test build, for Windows, on Sept. 1, 2008, with the one-oh release following just three months later. For a company renown for perpetual betas (wasn't it five years for Gmail), the rapid push to release build was uncharacteristic -- and foreshadowing. As Martin Brinkmann explains, Google set a rapid-release cycle -- new versions about every six weeks -- that transformed web browser development.
Yesterday, Tim Conneally told his personal story about using Chrome, starting from the beta. I would like to hear your story, too. You can comment to this post, or, better, email me -- joe at betanews.com. I'd like more than a comment, but your story to which we can put your byline, bio and photo.
You don't need Java
Java is one of those technologies that you find installed on the majority of computer systems despite the fact that average users do not come across many Java-powered websites or desktop applications. Sure, some may use desktop applications like JDownloader or the game Minecraft (which both require Java), but on the Internet? Seriously, when was the last time you went to a website that required the Java Runtime Environment to be installed for core functionality?
Statistics can be misleading, but according to Statowl, Java is installed on roughly 70 percent of Web browsers, which makes it the second most popular plugin behind Adobe Flash, and places it before heavyweights such as Quicktime, Windows Media Player, or Silverlight.
Four years with Google Chrome, and I'm never going back
Today is Labor Day in the United States. It's a federal holiday dedicated to the American workforce, celebrating, as the U.S. department of labor puts it, the "contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country."
Every year, the Labor Day holiday falls very closely to the anniversary of Google's launch of the beta version of the Google Chrome Web browser. Released on September 1, 2008, Google Chrome is now four years old, and I am taking the opportunity on this holiday to celebrate the workhorse that is Chrome.
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