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How Amazon’s new Silk browser makes browsing faster
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Software
Alongside all the Kindle news this morning, Amazon also announced their own home-grown browser, Silk. Amazon Silk will be exclusive to the Kindle Fire for the time being, and it aims to speed up web browsing by a significant margin by offloading some of the heavy lifting to the Amazon EC2 cloud servers. Hit the video above to see how it all works, and why we're drooling with anticipation for Silk to hit the desktop.
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Mozilla Firefox switched to 18-week dev cycle; Firefox 5 coming June 21
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Software
No, you aren't crazy, Firefox 4 did just launch a week ago.
Mozilla is borrowing a page from Google Chrome and speeding up the development cycle for Firefox releases, setting new iterations of the browser for fixed time periods and bulldozing over features that just aren't ready to make it into a new browser release.
And if Mozilla sticks by its newly proposed plan, that means that we'll be seeing Firefox 5 on June 21—following a shortened 13-week development cycle instead of the proposed 18-week cycle for all future Firefox builds.
Within this 18-week cycle comes a new development stage that adds on to Mozilla's three previous update channels: Nightly, or builds created from the mozilla-central-repository that are highly unstable, but incorporate the latest texts and fixes; Beta, which ups the quality demands of features and tweaks added via the nightly builds; and Release, which becomes the version of Firefox that most consumers are used to using.
Mozilla's new stage, Aurora, will be a nightly update that splits the difference between the chaos of the company's Mozilla-central build (or Nightly build), and its Beta build.
Click to continue reading Mozilla Firefox switched to 18-week dev cycle; Firefox 5 coming June 21
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
Firefox 4 release candidate now available
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Internet, Software
Mozilla on Wednesday released the Firefox 4 release candidate, the final update before the company formally unveils its next-generation browser.
Those who have been testing Firefox 4 will be automatically upgraded to the RC. Mozilla said it has fixed more than 8,000 bugs since the first beta release of Firefox 4, but encouraged RC users to test this latest release as well and provide feedback.
Mozilla executives expect the final Firefox 4 to be released later this month.
Firefox 4 is a major upgrade for Mozilla. It will feature a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack, a redesigned minimalist interface, faster JavaScript performance, and greater support for HTML5, including Google's WebM HTML5 video format.
Mozilla has streamlined the user interface, collapsing the full menu bar into a small "Firefox" drop-down option on the top left. The tabs are front and center, with the URL and search bars underneath.
Click to continue reading Firefox 4 release candidate now available
Mac App Store pins silly 17+ rating on Opera browser
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Internet, Software
Opera, the least popular of the full Web browsers, became the first non-native browser to be included in Apple's Mac App Store on Thursday. But as per Apple's tradition with rating browsers, it has been slapped with a 17+ rating.
To download Opera from the Mac App Store, users will be prompted to verify that he or she is at least 17 years old.
"I'm very concerned," Jan Standal, vice president of Desktop Products for Opera Software, joked in a statement. "Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It's very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18."
When it comes to rating browsers, Apple treats the entire Internet as its content and thus always gives the highest rating to browsers, as apps in the App Store demonstrate.
Click to continue reading Mac App Store pins silly 17+ rating on Opera browser
Google Chrome now has over 8,500 extensions
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Google, Internet, Software
Last week, Google put up a blog post with some statistics on their Chrome browser. Of note, the browser now has over 8,500 extensions and 1,500 themes, which have been installed over 70 million times. They also describe some of the latest updates the browser has had such as the sync feature, better HTML5 support and new APIs for developers. Google also promises that they will not be slowing down the amount of new features. On the roadmap they say new APIs will be added for things like the omnibox and pinned tabs, as well as download management and network interception. With the release of the Chrome Web Store this week, Google is clearly positioning themselves as one of the top players in the browser market.
Read More 
| Google Chrome Blog
Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
Posted by Jazz English Categories: Internet, Software
Yesterday, new browser RockMelt entered a limited Mac and Windows beta with hopes of capitalizing on your favorite social networks.
In the last few years, social network after social network has popped up and each has become more and more a part of daily Internet habits. According to RockMelt co-founder Tim Howes, that is why their goal is "reinventing the browser for how people use the Web today."
Click to continue reading Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
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.
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.
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