Browsers and extensions

In a step to help browser-based apps catch up with the abilities of other software, Google has made it possible for programmers to push notifications to Web apps running in Chrome.

On Thursday, Google enabled a service called Google Cloud Messaging for Chrome (GCM) that brings push notifications to its browser and to Chrome OS, its browser-based operating system. Mark Scott, a Google product manager, announced the service in a blog post.

The technology means that servers can send a message -- a stock price alert or news item, for example -- that triggers an action in the browser. To … Read more

Imgur is one of those sites that becomes a huge time sink if you let it. For some reason, browsing the random photos that people upload is really addictive, and so is reading the comments on said photos.

If you like to share your own images, you probably already know there are four ways to do so: uploading from your computer, putting in a URL, dragging and dropping, or with the paste command. But if you notice that you're often sharing pictures you find online, whether they're in your Facebook Timeline or just random spots on the Web, … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium has decided to go ahead with a technology that will let companies like Netflix stream encrypted video using Web sites -- against the wishes of the Free Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and 25,600 petition signatories.

The Web standards group announced the move Thursday, to nobody's surprise. Entertainment-industry players had approached the group three years ago to discuss the technology, Microsoft has been helping develop it, and Google already has built the specification, called Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into Chrome.

The standard doesn't actually handle encryption and digital rights management (DRM) to … Read more

Facebook's engineers like Google's WebP and want Mozilla to build support for the image format into the Firefox browser.

Google hopes to speed Web performance with the image format, which can do the job of both of today's major graphics formats, JPEG and PNG. Facebook began testing WebP support in April.

And now it looks like the powerful company has become Google's biggest ally in the effort to promote WebP. Mozilla is deciding whether to reverse its earlier opposition to WebP, and Facebook programmer Bryan Alger on Wednesday encouraged Firefox developers to do so in a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO -- First-person shooter games don't appeal to Brendan Eich, Mozilla's chief technology guru and the guy who created JavaScript nearly two decades ago. He doesn't let his kids play them, either, he says. But he was so excited on Friday about showing off the potential of a new browser codec called ORBX.js at Autodesk's One Market Street offices here that he began playing Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 "Sanctuary" level in a room of 20 or so witnesses.

As Eich maneuvered somewhat awkwardly through the onslaught of opponents, Jules Urbach, CEO … Read more

A new codec from Mozilla and OTOY will let browsers run high-performance rendering apps like Autodesk and high-definition video without plug-ins, the companies unveiled Friday.

The new, open-source digital stream encoder and decoder, called ORBX.js, obviates the need for a plug-in like Flash, Sliverlight, or QuickTime to run HD video in the browser. Mozilla and OTOY expect live TV, watermarked video, and cloud gaming to all get a boost in HTML5-enabled browsers that support it. Currently, that list includes all five major browsers: IE 10, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

"Thanks to our ongoing efforts in making the … Read more

Installation and initialization is quick and painless with four, easy steps:

Simply download and install Kloudless (public beta).

Sync your Gmail and Google Drive account with Dropbox and/or box services.

Set automation rules for how Kloudless handles your files. Set MS Doc and Excel spreadsheets to be automatically sent to Google Drive. Large files like videos and music can be transferred to Dropbox while smaller files can go to your box storage. Move confidential materials off your e-mail quickly and into the cloud.

Sync multiple e-mails and make their attachments available on one cloud service. You can also sort … Read more

Google Keep wants to be the app that you dump all your little notes and big thoughts into, and Google introduced a Keep Chrome Web app version on Thursday.

To install it, you must use the link above, as it's not yet available by searching the Chrome Web Store.

Like Keep in Google Drive and Keep for Android, it lets you write notes in a stripped-down interface that lacks all but the most basic features. In addition to standard note-taking, you can change the text color or insert an image.

Keep for Chrome launches in its own window, and … Read more

Google is working on software that will improve Chrome (Windows, Mac) during moments when people lose their network connection by letting the browser load its own stored copy of previously visited Web pages.

Google programmer Randy Smith said yesterday he's added support for "offline cache mode" to Chrome. It's only on the developer version of the browser so far, and it's disabled by default, but the flag to enable it says the feature will let Chrome load Web pages from the browser's local cache if the online version isn't available. That could help … Read more