browser

Reading a bright screen at night can be harsh on the eyes. A popular way to reduce eye strain is to use a dark background with light-colored text. The Dolphin browser for Android now supports night-time reading with a new add-on called Night Mode.

To enable Night Mode, you first have to install the add-on, Night Mode For Dolphin Browser. Once installed, swipe your Dolphin screen to the left for quick access to your add-ons. Tap on Night Mode to turn it on.

Now when you view a Web page, the screen will be dimmed for easier reading at night.… Read more

After using the new Samsung Chromebook for the better part of a workday, I have to say I'm impressed -- as long as you consider the constraints of its $249 price tag.

Google announced the Samsung Chromebook today along with new ambitions to spread its browser-based, cloud-focused Chrome OS laptop much more widely. Google envisions it as good for an extra machine that lies around the house or as a laptop for students.

I find it a reasonable device for those categories, especially for people like myself who already have their head in the Google cloud with Google Docs, … Read more

Google introduced a new 11.6-inch $249 Chromebook today that lowers the entry price and raises the expectations for its Chrome OS products.

Chromebooks are cloud-computing laptops use Google's Chrome OS, which is built on Linux under the covers but which actually runs applications in the Chrome browser. When Google released two second-generation Chrome OS products, the $550 Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook and the $330 Series 3 Chromebox in May, it aimed for increased processing horsepower.

If the Chromebook Series 5 550 drew inspiration from a MacBook Pro, the new Chromebook did so from a MacBook Air. It'… Read more

Google released its first stable version of Dart, a programming language for Web applications that it believes improves on the incumbent JavaScript language.

"I'm pleased to announce that the M1 release of Dart is ready...This release is a more stable and comprehensive version of Dart," said Lars Bak, a programmer and key figure in the project, in a mailing list message today about the milestone 1 release. "Moving forward, we'll mainly focus on performance and completeness without introducing breaking changes to the Dart programming language."

It's hard to get new programming languages … Read more

If you stick with your software's default settings, you're letting the programs' vendors determine how much security is right for your system. Those vendors have their best interests in mind, not yours.

As I pointed out in last week's post titled "Ten simple, common-sense security tips," PC security doesn't have to be complicated. However, not all important PC security measures are easy to implement. Follow these less-than-intuitive steps to block Flash cookies, lock down your browser, and test your Facebook profile's privacy.

Note that not everyone needs the level of protection offered by … Read more

Firefox is going social, at least in a tentative sort of way.

Mozilla announced today that its Firefox Beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux will support Social API, a framework designed to let developers integrate social-networking features directly into the browser. Mozilla was quick to point out that the Social API support is "preliminary" at this point, suggesting it isn't fully baked and ready for prime time.

Mozilla didn't offer many details on how the social features might be integrated into the browser. It did say that it envisions developers allowing the browser's users to &… Read more

Mozilla released a new version of Firefox (Windows, Mac) today, one day after yanking the Web browser to address security flaws.

Firefox 16 was pulled off Mozilla's installer page yesterday, just one day after its release, to fix a vulnerability that could have allowed a malicious site to identify which Web sites a user had visited, said Michael Coates, Mozilla's director of Security Assurance. The flaw was publicly disclosed yesterday by security researcher Gareth Heyes, who published proof-of-concept code to demonstrate the vulnerability.

Though Mozilla said it had no evidence that the vulnerability was being exploited in the … Read more

As part of its "make the Web fast" effort, Google has released version 1.0 of a module designed to improve the very widely used Apache software that's very widely used to host Web sites.

The Apache Software Foundation's flagship project is Web server software that delivers Web pages to people's browsers when they request it. It can be extended, and Google believes its mod_pagespeed extension for Apache is ready for use, Google said in a blog post.

"Users prefer faster sites and we have seen that faster pages lead to higher user engagement, … Read more

RockMelt has redesigned its social browser to optimize it for the iPad.

It's been awhile since RockMelt has made the news, but that doesn't mean its stopped working on new items and features. It also launched an iPhone app earlier this year, according to Engadget.

For those who don't know about RockMelt, it's a browser that launched in 2010 and remains in beta. It was created by Tim Howes and Eric Vishria and one of its backers is the king of venture capital Marc Andreessen who co-founded Netscape.