Microsoft blasts Google over iPhone browser tracking, pushes IE9 while it’s at it
With Google acknowledging that it utilised features in its services to bypass Apple’s built-in security measures in its Safari mobile browser to track users, Microsoft has taken the opportunity to join the debate, condemning the search giant and using it as a platform to tout the security of its own browser, Internet Explorer 9.
Remarking that Google’s tracking practices are “not new”, Microsoft’s blog post entitled ‘Browse Without Being Browsed’ accuses the company of circumventing the privacy protections in Apple’s mobile browser “in a deliberate, and ultimately, successful fashion.”
Microsoft then proceeds to list how its Internet Explorer 9 browser has some of the “strongest privacy protection in the industry,” highlighting its Tracking Protection feature and how it puts users in control of their actions online.
“Not Google. Not advertisers. Just you,” Microsoft declares. Read more...
Google’s punishment of Chrome drops browser’s share, says metrics firm
The browser world turned upside down last month as Internet Explorer's share jumped by its largest-ever increase and Chrome posted its biggest one-month loss, a Web metrics company said today.
Net Applications, which measures browser usage by collating data from some 40,000 sites, attributed the turnabout to Google's self-imposed punishment last month when it downgraded Chrome's search ranking.
Google demoted the PageRank -- the rating Google assigns based on how many other sites link to a URL -- for Chrome's download site after it admitted a marketing campaign had violated the company's own rules against paid links. Read more...
Death of IE6 still greatly exaggerated, says browser hit squad
Internet Explorer 6 dead? In your dreams, Microsoft, in your dreams.
Redmond broke out the dancing shoes and did a twirl on IE6's grave in January, citing data that showed its once-celebrated, now-hated browser had slipped below 1 per cent US market share. The decline followed some determined pushing by, of all people, Microsoft.
The software giant was handing out praise along with slices of cake to celebrate.
One problem: the aforementioned data, gathered by Net Applications, counts browsers running on Joe Netizen's PC. It doesn't count enterprise users. Read more...
Opera’s new store beams HTML5 apps into tellies
Opera Software is making a play for turning your TV into a window-on-the-web with the announcement of Opera TV Store.
The browser maker's unveiled e-shop will flog HTML5 apps that you can use from your TV. The idea is to make it possible to access web content and apps using your existing HD-TV and remote controls, without needing to hook up a media centre or keyboard.
Opera said in a release: "By introducing easily navigated HTML5 apps such as Facebook or Vimeo to your living room, it expands your TV entertainment options." Opera TV Store was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Monday. Read more...
Chrome beta promises super-fast URL loads
Chrome 17 has hit beta with the promise Google's browser will start loading web pages before you've completed the URL.
The Chrome team blogged here that Chrome 17 loads some pages in the background and if the URL auto-completes then Chrome will begin pre-rendering the page.
Google software engineer Dominic Hamon wrote: "Pre-rendering reduces the time between when you hit Enter and when you see your fully loaded web page - in some cases the web page appears instantly." Read more...
Scammers use browser extensions to hijack Facebook accounts
Facebook spammers have started using rogue browser extensions to prolong the life of their scams, researchers from Web security vendor Websense warned.
Attacks using social engineering techniques have plagued Facebook for years and despite the company's best efforts to block them, scammers have always found alternative methods of tricking users.
In a new type of scam detected by Websense researchers, attackers are encouraging users to install rogue browser extensions in order to view certain videos or receive free vouchers.
The add-ons, which are advertised as DivX plug-ins or coupon generator, use the Facebook API (Application Programming Interface) to post unauthorized messages on behalf of Facebook users who log in from the affected browsers. Read more...
Mozilla denies OS X Leopard 2012 kill
Mozilla has denied that the death of Firefox on OS X Leopard, released just four years ago, is coming.
The browser operation has downplayed a proposal, broached by one of Firefox’s developers, to stop supporting OS X 10.5 with Firefox 13. This version of Firefox is due to ship on or near 5 June 2012.
The proposal was floated by Josh Aas, a member of the Mozilla platform group who works on Gecko and the Firefox rendering engine. The debate unfolded on Google Groups, here. Read more...
Chrome passes Firefox in web browser charts, IE9 usage increasing
If you listen closely, you can hear distant chants of “We’re number two! We’re number two!” coming out of Mountain View. Yes, Google Chrome has passed Firefox to become the second most popular web browser worldwide.
Chrome isn’t the only browser with something to cheer about this month, either. Internet Explorer 9 posted good numbers last month, too, with Microsoft’s latest now sitting at the top of the charts among users running Windows 7. On the overall chart, IE was up half a percentage point. That might seem like small potatoes, but that half a point nearly matches Chrome’s growth over the last month. It’s also the first real gain for IE in more than a year — it’s had break-even months, but generally Firefox and Chrome have been piling on the hurt on an ongoing basis. Read more...
‘Occupy Flash’ movement wants Adobe’s plug-in dead
A small group of website and mobile app developers have kicked off an "Occupy Flash" campaign to put a stake in the heart of Adobe's popular browser plug-in.
The organization, which launched a website earlier this week, said its goal was to "Get the world to uninstall the Flash Player plug-in from their desktop browsers."
And the group didn't mince words why it was after Flash Player.
"Flash Player is dead. Its time has passed. It's buggy. It crashes a lot. It requires constant security updates," said the Occupy Flash site. "It's a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of Web technology."
Last week, Adobe announced that it was halting development of Flash Player for mobile browsers, but that it would continue work on the plug-in for desktop browsers such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari. Read more...
Mozilla aims to add silent updating to Firefox 10
A year after it pulled the plug on silent updates in Firefox 4, Mozilla said it will debut most of the behind-the-scenes feature by early next year.
Assuming Mozilla pulls off silent upgrading this time around, it would make Firefox only the second browser to take that route. Google's Chrome has been the poster boy for automatic updates that remove the user from the equation and can't be switched off.
Mozilla did not say it was copying Chrome -- it's denied doing so with other features -- but the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, acknowledged what she called "update fatigue."
"In the past we have been very careful to make sure people know something is changing with their Web browser before it changes," said Baker, who heads the non-profit organization that oversees the Firefox-making Mozilla Corp. "Today people are telling us -- loudly -- that the notifications are irritating and that a silent update process is important." Read more...
Microsoft’s IE9-first strategy fails to stem browser slide
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) last month continued to shed users, losing the largest chunk of share since December 2010, Web measurement firm Net Applications reported Saturday.
During September, IE lost nine-tenths of a percentage point of share to slip to 54.4%, a record low for the browser. Last month's drop was the seventh straight decline and the most since last December, when IE fell by 1.1 points.
The beneficiaries of IE's slide were again Google's Chrome, which grew its share by seven-tenths of a point, and Apple's Safari, which gained four-tenths of a percentage point.
Chrome ended the month with a 16.2% share, while Safari accounted for 5% of all browsers used worldwide.
Microsoft, however, preferred to look on the bright side by again plugging the success of IE9 on Windows 7. Read more...
Google patches 32 Chrome bugs, revs browser to v.14
Google today patched 32 vulnerabilities in Chrome, paying more than $14,000 in bug bounties as it also upgraded the stable edition of the browser to version 14.
The company called out a pair of developer-oriented additions to Chrome 14 and noted new support for Mac OS X 10.7, aka Lion, including full-screen mode and vanishing scrollbars.
Google last upgraded Chrome's stable build in early August. Google produces an update about every six weeks, a practice that rival Mozilla also adopted with the debut of Firefox 5 last June.
Fifteen of the 32 vulnerabilities were rated "high," the second-most-serious ranking in Google's four-step scoring system, while 10 were pegged "medium" and the remaining seven were marked "low." Read more...
Google brings out new programming language
Google has built a brand-new programming language for "structured web programming", one that appears to be suited to browser-based apps.
Two of the search giant's engineers will discuss Dart, Google's new language, at the Goto international software development conference next month.
News of the new language was posted to the Goto website.
There aren't yet any technical details on Dart but the bios of the two Googlers presenting at Goto strongly suggest a bent towards programming for the web and browser. Read more...
Browsing and privacy: How to not get tracked
If you're old enough to remember the Cold War, you know what an arms race is. One side comes up with a new weapon, the other side matches it, and then the first comes back with something even bigger and so on and so on. That also describes the ongoing battle between computer users who value their privacy and the Web sites and their advertisers that don't.
Every time browser developers and others come up with a defense against tracking -- the use of tiny bits of computer code that tells Web sites where you've been on the Internet -- the other side ups the ante with a new trick. And it's happening again. Read more...
Firefox 7 reaches beta, promises faster browsing
Mozilla yesterday released a beta of Firefox 7, putting the lighter-weight browser in front of a large number of users for the first time.
According to Mozilla, Firefox 7 uses significantly less memory than Firefox 4 through Firefox 6, cutting consumption by as much as 50%.
The savings come courtesy of a two-month-old project dubbed "MemShrink" designed to drive down Firefox's memory consumption and close "memory leaks," bugs that prevent memory from being released to the system when tabs are closed. Over time, those bugs can degrade the browser's performance, or in extreme cases, cause it to crash or lock up.
In a blog post 10 days ago, Nicholas Nethercote, the Mozilla engineer who manages MemShrink, said that Firefox 7 "uses less memory..., often 20% to 30% less, and sometimes as much as 50% less" than earlier versions.
Nethercote also claimed that the memory changes make Firefox 7 faster than its predecessors. Read more...