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OS X Lion will allow you to boot right into Safari
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, PC / Laptop, Software
Borrowing a tiny page from Google's Chrome OS, Apple has snuck a feature into its upcoming OS X Lion release that allows users to reboot their systems into Safari.
Why would you bother doing that? In a word, security. When you elect to restart your system into Safari, you're effectively placing the Web browser into a sandbox. When it boots, your system will give any users with physical access to your machine the ability to surf the Web. But that's it. Users won't be able to access the system's files or applications.
And thanks to Lion's new auto-save and application restoration capabilities, users that slap their systems in Safari-only mode will be able to restore back to their full desktop exactly as they left it. Since Safari mode runs off of a system's recovery partition, you'll still be able to access the Web and research new methods for fixing your system should your primary partition suffer some catastrophic upset.
The comparison to Chrome OS stems from the fact that Google's operating system runs entirely Web-based: The browser is the primary method for interacting with the system. There's no underlying desktop layer to speak of.
Click to continue reading OS X Lion will allow you to boot right into Safari
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Firefox 4 is here
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software
Mozilla's popular open-source, community-developed browser has been updated to Firefox 4.0 today. Users can now download the significantly overhauled software in 75 languages from www.firefox.com. Versions are available for Windows (including the popular XP, shunned by the also-new Internet Explorer 9), Mac OS, and Linux.
The new browser version was announced on the Mozilla blog in a post lengthily titled "Mozilla Launches Firefox 4 and Delivers a Fast, Sleek and Customizable Browsing Experience to More Than 400 Million Users Worldwide."
The browser that pushed Internet Explorer to stop resting on its laurels after years of stagnation has now been pushed by Google's newer Chrome browser to do just the same. Not that Firefox had been stagnating the way that IE had been before the Mozilla browser's debut. But Chrome has served as inspiration for the new version of Firefox in more ways than one—improved speed and a simplified interface are standout examples of this.
Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, commented, "Mozilla is very proud of Firefox 4, created by our community of thousands of volunteers worldwide. It truly is the browser for tomorrow's Web. The Internet has become the most important connection mechanism in our society, which is why we've focused on making users' Web experience as fast, modern, safe and intuitive as possible."
Click to continue reading Firefox 4 is here
iPad 2 gets Flash with Adobe Wallaby
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Software
Despite a new pair of eyes, trimmer figure, and nimbler mind, the
First previewed at the MAX 2010 Developer Conference last October, Wallaby's launch today at FITC Amsterdam fulfills months of fomenting developer excitement. Built on Adobe Air, the application runs on Mac or Windows and enables developers to convert Flash Professional (.FLA) files into the building blocks of simple animations or online ads—folders comprised of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—suitable for DreamWeaver.
"Adobe's goal is to support our customers with whatever tools they need to get their creative content onto any device," said Tom Barclay, senior product manager for Flash Professional at Adobe, when asked for a comment. "We look forward to the user feedback about the code they're generating with Wallaby and the use cases for which they end up using Wallaby. We believe Flash is the best long-term solution for things like games, video and RIAs where high levels of interactivity are required. And we believe HTML5 is just as imperative for things like banner ads, especially for devices such as iPad and iPhone."
Click to continue reading iPad 2 gets Flash with Adobe Wallaby
Safari 5.0.1 released, brings Extensions Gallery with it
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Software
Apple has released an update to Safari to finally enable the Extension Gallery that they’ve made mention of a few times since Safari 5 was released. Safari 5.0.1 lets you peruse through a bunch of extensions that add to your Safari experience, including stuff from big names like Bing, Amazon, Twitter, eBay, and more. There are bug fixes and secutiry updates as well in this release:
- More accurate Top Hit results in the Address Field
- More accurate timing for CSS animations
- Better stability when using the Safari Reader keyboard shortcut
- Better stability when scrolling through MobileMe Mail
- Fixes display of multipage articles from www.rollingstone.com in Safari Reader
- Fixes an issue that prevented Google Wave and other websites using JavaScript encryption libraries from working correctly on 32-bit systems
- Fixes an issue that prevented Safari from launching on Leopard systems with network home directories
- Fixes an issue that could cause borders on YouTube thumbnails to disappear when hovering over the thumbnail image
- Fixes an issue that could cause Flash content to overlap with other content on www.facebook.com, www.crateandbarrel.com, and other sites when using Flash 10.1
- Fixes an issue that prevented boarding passes from www.aa.com from printing correctly
- Fixes an issue that could cause DNS prefetching requests to overburden certain routers
- Fixes an issue that could cause VoiceOver to misidentify elements of webpages
You can download Safari 5.0.1 now.
Safari 5: Extensions, Reader, HTML5, Bing. Oh, and it’s fast.
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Software
Apparently, the release of Safari 5 wasn’t big enough to be mentioned in the WWDC 2010 keynote this morning, but nevertheless, the company has launched a fully-updated version of its browser. So, what’s new? Quite a bit, actually. First, Safari 5 is much faster—it runs Javascript 25% faster than Safari 4, is twice as fast as Firefox on the Mac, and is even 3% faster than Chrome. So yeah, it’s fast. There’s also a new feature called Safari Reader. If you hit a web page that has an article on it, you can hit the Reader icon, and the article will be overlaid over the site in a very readable fashion. Another biggie is the addition of a bunch of extra HTML5 features. As we know, Apple is all about supporting HTML5 as a platform, and they are putting their money where their mouth is by having Safari 5 be the browser with the most HTML5 support at the moment. Oh, and for those of you who want more choice in your search bar, Safari 5 offers Bing as a search option, built-in, alongside Google and Yahoo! Search.
You can download Safari 5 now.
Read More 
| Safari 5
Opera Mini is top free app in all App Store regions
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Productivity, App Store News, Free Apps
Surprise, surprise - looks like iPhone and iPod touch users the world over are downloading the recently-approved Opera Mini app, a free Safari web browser alternative. In fact, it’s so popular, that it’s the number one free download in all 22 App Store regions. Have you tried it?
Read More | Opera Mini for iPhone
Safari 4.0.5 now available
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Software
Apple just released an update to Safari 4, and you can download Safari 4.0.5 right now by firing up Software Update, or by simply hitting the Safari product page and downloading it there. According to Apple, you get a few performance and stability improvements (always a good thing,) as well as some bug fixes. Can’t complain about any of that, right?
Oh, and if you are on OS X and run something like Saft, be sure to wait before installing the update, in case it breaks your plugins and add-ons.
YouTube launches opt-in HTML5 video player
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software
YouTube has just launched a new experimental HTML5 video player, which would replace their Flash player for supported videos. Flash has long been seen (with good reason) as a resource hog, so switching to the HTML5 browser should show a dramatic performance increase. One user reported a resource drop of over 50% when using the HTML5 player when compared to the Flash version. You can get in on the action, as long as you are using either Google Chrome or Safari 4.0 or above (although we’ve heard that it also works with recent versions of Firefox.) The only catch here is that videos with ads, annotations, and captions will still play in the older Flash player, and you won’t get fullscreen support. Of course you can try it out, and if you don’t like it, you can just turn it off.
Read More | YouTube HTML5 Video Player
Mac OS X 10.5.8 now available
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Software
Apple has just unleashed the latest update to the Mac OS X Leopard operating system in the 10.5.8 update. If you are running Leopard, just fire up Software Update, and the 165MB package will be available for you to download. This will likely be the last 10.5.x update before Snow Leopard launches next month. We’ve got a rundown of all the fixes and security updates includes in 10.5.8 after the break, but you can look forward to a Safari update, MobileMe improvements, and more.
Click to continue reading Mac OS X 10.5.8 now available
Microsoft SIlverlight 3 now available, takes aim at Flash, HD streaming
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: HDTV, Internet, Microsoft, Software, Video Games
Microsoft Silverlight 3 is live, and you can go ahead and update your browsers now over at Microsoft’s Silverlight page. Silverlight 3.0.40624.0 weighs in at 4.7MB, and works with Internet Explorer, Firefox 2 and 3, and Safari 3 and 4. Here’s a look at some of the major new features:
- Media: GPU hardware acceleration, new codec support (H.264, AAC, MPEG-4), raw bitstream Audio/Video API, and improved logging for media analytics
- Graphics: GPU Acceleration and hardware compositing, perspective 3D, bitmap and pixel API, pixel shader effects, and Deep Zoom improvements
- Application development: Deep linking, navigation and SEO, improved text quality, multi-touch support, 60+ controls available, and library caching support
- Data-binding improvements, validation error templates, server data push improvements, binary XML networking support, and multi-tier REST data support
Also, remember that Xbox 360 Instant-on 1080p stuff? That’s all powered by Silverlight 3 as well (yes, Silverlight is coming to your Xbox 360 dashboard.) It’s a solid upgrade, and the installation is pretty much immediate if you are on any sort of respectable broadband connection. Definitely worth a look, and you can bet that Microsoft will be pushing hard for a few big Silverlight exclusives, like they did with the Beijing Olympics.
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