browsers

Mozilla is developing a new Web browser to challenge Safari on Apple's iPad.

The organization behind the Firefox desktop Web browser is working on a new mobile browser called "Junior," according to a video presentation (see below) delivered by company's Product Design Strategy team on Thursday. Junior is "an iPad browser that makes browsing more fun, more ergonomic and re-thinks browser user experience from the ground up," the company said on an intro page to the presentation.

"We wanted to make something entirely new. We wanted to look into how we could reinvent … Read more

A little bit behind schedule, Opera 12 makes its public debut today with numerous changes that mostly focus on faster browsing. But where the Norwegian browser used to take the lead on feature development, it now feels more like an understudy.

You can get Opera 12 for Windows (download), Mac (download), and Linux (download). There's nothing explicitly wrong with it. In fact, version 12 makes a number of good improvements.

Most importantly is an overall focus on speed. Quirky features such as Widgets, Unite, and Voice have been killed off, which means that there's less bloat in the … Read more

The bottom line: Extensions, competitive page-load times, solid features, and good support for "future Web" technologies make Opera 12 an excellent browser, but it's treading water where it used to lead.

Review: The second-oldest browser currently in use, Opera debuted way back in 1994 and continues to attract attention. Its feature-phone version claims more than 160 million users worldwide. While desktop Opera isn't quite as heavily used, it has developed a reputation as a leader on feature development, and can hold its own against the big four.

Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, … Read more

Most Web sites changes frequently, and it's sometimes useful to know what these changes consist of. SiteDelta is an extension for Firefox that can identify changes made to a Web page since your last visit and even tell you what the previous version of the page said.

Like most Firefox extensions, SiteDelta requires a browser restart to finish installation. Once installed, the extension appeared as a delta symbol (a triangle) in Firefox's status bar. Click the icon and the extension will scan the page; come back later, click it again, and SiteDelta will highlight all changes that have … Read more

Adobe has released version 11.3 of its Flash plug-in, which in addition to addressing a few security holes and offering improved input management and sound performance, includes a background-updating feature. This feature debuted for Windows systems in Flash 11.2, but this latest update has implemented it on the Mac.

Adobe Flash Player's popularity makes it a target for malware developers, who not only attempt to exploit its code, but also mask their distributions as fake Flash Player installations. As a result, many people have come to distrust update announcements and recommendations for Flash, even when they have … Read more

The bottom line: Firefox 13 is a worthy expression of Mozilla's ideals. The browser is competitively fast, sports a new minimalist look, and includes some excellently executed features. Unfortunately, that describes most of Firefox's competition, too.

Please note that the First Look video below is still applicable to Firefox 13, as is this Firefox How To collection, even though it features Firefox 4.

Review: For those of you who spent last year away from the Internet, it's the year that Firefox went from annual major-point updates to a Chrome-style quick-release cycle. How quick? A new major version … Read more

Super Speed Internet & Browser Assistant by Slamet Yanuar is free software that promises to improve browsing speed, help parents block sites, and block malicious activity. Unfortunately, its redundant features, poorly designed interface, and overly technical terms take away from its usefulness.

The application presents a compact interface crammed with 12 tabs that include General Statistics, Distributed Proxy, and Cache. On the General Statistics tab, it shows information such as Cache Hit Ratio and Connection to the Tool. It also shows Money Saved and Cost, although it isn't clear how this is determined. Each line of information is in … Read more

Microsoft's decision to turn off Web site tracking by default in IE10 is not sitting well with advertisers.

The Do Not Track feature prevents third-party Web sites from tracking your online activity. Web sites that receive the Do Not Track, or DNT, signal from your browser are supposed to honor that request, just as telemarketers are not supposed to call people on a "do not call" registry.

The ability to know where you go and what you do online concerns many users and privacy advocates. But advertisers use such information to determine how and where to target … Read more

Google's Chrome OS just got vastly more useful, with two new Chrome OS devices announced today -- a Chromebook laptop and Chromebox desktop from Samsung that clear up performance problems that sullied last year's debut of the browser-based operating system.

I found the first-generation Chromebooks usable but painfully slow. Unshackled from slow hardware, though, Chrome OS now can stand on its own merits.

So how does it stand up? After a week of testing Samsung's new $329 Series 3 Chromebox and $449 Series 5 550 Chromebook, which go on sale today, I think the new Chrome OS … Read more