browsers

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor and privacy expert who has worked with the Obama administration, is stepping into a contentious process to create a standard way to let people stop Web sites from tracking their online behavior.

Aleecia M. McDonald announced today she's stepping down as co-chair of the Do Not Track standardization effort at the World Wide Web Consortium. She previously worked for Firefox maker Mozilla, which launched the current DNT technology after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sought a mechanism to block online tracking, but she currently works for a program within Stanford University'… Read more

Simplicity and speed are two important attributes that a mobile Web browser must have to let you browse Web pages efficiently. UC Browser not only has these two attributes, but some extra features that make it one of the better browser apps for Android devices.

The opening page of the UC Browser resembles the default Android Web browser, but the URL bar is at the top. However, unlike the default Android browser it is accompanied by a search bar and a voice command button. The browser supports multitouch gestures when controlling tabs, and not just when you are actually browsing … Read more

Although it's hardly the best Web browser out there, Puffin Web Browser Free does provide you with something different when it comes to browsing the Web. This free app can bring PC-style Web browsing directly to your Android device.

The main browser interface of the app is a bit reminiscent of Android's default Web browser, with pop-up settings and only the address bar on top of the screen. However, you'll instantly notice that there are two more buttons below its main interface. The one on the left is the mouse button. When clicked, it displays a "… Read more

Opera Mini is perhaps the most compact Web browser you can use for your Android device. It's smart, has easy-to-access options, and best of all, pages accessed in Opera Mini load very fast, even when compared to other browsers with the same data transfer speed.

Upon launch, Opera Mini takes you directly to the Quick Launch menu. When presented in its live link feed mode however, it instead displays links to Web pages that are related to the ones you have visited using the app. It is, after all, touted as the smart Web browser app that adjusts and … Read more

Mozilla engineering manager Benjamin Smedberg has asked developers to stop nightly builds for Firefox versions optimized to run on 64-bit versions of Windows.

A developer thread posted on the Google Groups mozilla.dev.planning discussion board, titled "Turning off win64 builds" by Smedberg proposed the move.

Claiming that 64-bit Firefox is a "constant source of misunderstanding and frustration," the engineer wrote that the builds often crash, many plugins are not available in 64-bit versions, and hangs are more common due to a lack of coding which causes plugins to function incorrectly. In addition, Smedberg argues that … Read more

Firefox for Android used to be a must-use mainly for Firefox fans. It was good at what it did, but it wasn't great, and the competitive field of Android browsers surpassed it on many levels.

As a reaction, Mozilla spent the better part of a year redesigning the browser from the ground up. The new Firefox for Android brings an interface powered by native code, competitive page-load times, and Flash support. As important for Mozilla is that the sum of the new browser's parts will keep its flagship brand relevant on Android as Chrome for Android grows.

New … Read more

With more than 400 million Firefox users, Mozilla doesn't have a problem with relevance. And with today's disclosure that organization's revenue grew 33 percent to $163.5 million in 2011, the nonprofit organization doesn't have a problem with money.

But it does have a problem with mobile.

So concludes Mitchell Baker, leader of the organization behind the open-source Web browser and other projects designed to keep the Internet free from proprietary constraints. Firefox, which just celebrated its eighth birthday, is the main lever that Mozilla uses to try to keep the Internet open. But Firefox is … Read more

After a SkyDrive debacle over the weekend, which caused Opera users to be blocked from the cloud storage service, Microsoft has said it's working quickly to fix the problem.

The problem began when Opera, which is a Web browser, received a bug report showing that Microsoft's cloud storage service froze out all users when it was being loaded. Instead of being able to see their saved files and photos, users could only see millions of characters of code.

After some poking around, Opera's Hallvord Steen realized that the problem was "some strange bug in the Microsoft … Read more

Google Chrome has matured from a lightweight and fast browsing alternative into an innovative, standard-bearing browser that people love. It's powerful enough to drive its own operating system, Chrome OS. The browser that people can use today, Chrome 23, offers highly competitive features, including synchronization, autofill, and standards compliance, and maintains Google's reputation for building one of the fastest browsers available.

Chrome 23 represents a major milestone for the browser, but those expecting to see dramatic changes in major version-point updates will be disappointed. For a while now, Google has been pushing features over what it calls milestone … Read more