browsers

How corporate bickering hobbled better Web audio

For more than three years, Skype has worked to improve online audio through involvement in a project now called Opus. But perversely, Skype's new owner, Microsoft, is undermining Opus just as a Web standards effort is poised to carry it into the mainstream.

Opus is an audio "codec" -- technology to encode and decode media streams for efficient transmission over the Internet or storage on computing equipment. Opus backers besides Microsoft's Skype division include Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

Opus has a lot of potential to improve online audio, something that's increasingly important as more communications … Read more

Google offers bigger bucks in Chrome bug hunt

Google's program to pay outsiders who find Chrome security vulnerabilities is working well enough that the company has concluded it's time to add new financial rewards.

"Recently, we've seen a significant drop-off in externally reported Chromium security issues," Chrome programmer Chris Evans said in a blog post yesterday. "This signals to us that bugs are becoming harder to find, as the efforts of the wider community have made Chromium significantly stronger."

Thus, Google added a new $1,000 bonus on top of the regular incentive in three circumstances. The bonus applies if a … Read more

Optimize and address Flash performance in OS X

Adobe's Flash player provides access to a great deal of online content, including that from popular sites like YouTube; however, there may be times when visiting sites that use the plug-in results in choppy performance or an inability to connect to the media being presented, which may happen on all installed and updated Web browsers. If this happens on your system, you have several options to optimize the plug-in's performance and get the sites working again.

Update Flash First if you are having troubles with Flash, then be sure to fully update to the latest version. This will … Read more

Your Web browsing history is totally unique, like fingerprints

Browser sniffing has had its rogue moments, like when the Web site YouPorn was caught checking whether visitors had been to other porn sites. It turned out that YouPorn was just the top of a list of 46 Web sites that were sniffing users' browser history, according to researchers at the University of California at San Diego.

But in a new study from the French public research institute Inria, ( PDF) researchers themselves did the browser sniffing and discovered that most users have a completely distinctive history when it comes to Web sites they regularly visit. Their results show that users' … Read more

Google's Chrome adds support for Retina Display

Google's Chrome can now serve up Web pages that show off Apple's Retina display in all its glory.

Until now, Google's popular browser did not support the display on Apple's newest MacBook Pro. The Retina screen has a 2880x1800 pixel density (220 pixels per inch). It is the highest pixel density, by far, of any laptop in its class.

Back in June, Google said: "Apple recently announced a new laptop with a Retina high-resolution screen, and we're committed to polishing Chrome until it shines on that machine."

And that's exactly what Google did yesterday. … Read more

Spoilsports rejoice: Olwimpics wipes Olympics from your browser

Ah, the Olympics. We get three weeks of athletic prowess, medal counts, moving personal stories, and slow-motion replay of swimmers touching the side of the pool. If you can't stand yet another headline about sporting glory, turn to the Olwimpics browser extension for relief.

Olwimpics' sole purpose in life is to expunge the Olympics from your browsing experience. It's available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It thoughtfully covers up keywords with Olympics-color blocks, though it doesn't make the accompanying images disappear.… Read more

Display time and weather info on Chrome's new tab page

The new tab screen in Chrome normally displays a thumbnail grid of your most visited sites or a list of your Chrome apps. But how often do you really make use of either of those screens? If you're a weather junkie, you might like a Chrome extension called Currently. It's a very simple extension that displays the current time, date, and weather forecast.

You can still access your old screens by clicking on the icon in the lower-right-hand corner of the screen. If you don't like the dark color, you can change it to light (gray) or … Read more

W3C names not one, but four HTML5 editors

The World Wide Web (W3C) Consortium has named four members of the computing industry to lead standardization of HTML5, the overhauled version of a standard that underlies the entire Web.

The four editors are Travis Leithead and Erika Doyle Navara, both of Microsoft, Ted O'Connor from Apple, and Silvia Pfeiffer, consultant at Ginger Technologies. Paul Cotton, one of the HTML Working Group's co-chairs, announced the new editors in a mailing list message yesterday.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which governs how programmers describe Web pages and how browsers interpret that coding, was born at the CERN nuclear physics lab … Read more

Three cheers for Android browser competition

This morning, I installed the Firefox 15 beta on my two favored Android devices: a Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone and an Asus Nexus 7 tablet.

Big deal, you say. Installing a browser. Ho-hum.

It shouldn't be a big deal, but it is -- because you can't install Firefox on an iPhone, an iPad, or a forthcoming Windows RT tablet.

But on Android, Google has chosen to let any other browser compete directly against its own. For that reason, I regularly use Opera Mini and Opera Mobile alongside Google's Chrome. The Dolphin Browser HD, installed more than 10 … Read more