Desktop software

Windows Store hits 100,000 apps: Impressed?

Microsoft's Windows Store has hit the 100,000 apps mark in short order.

"Thanks for a great \\build! Just passed 100k apps in the Windows Store," Microsoft tweeted earlier today.

That was fast. Windows 8 was launched only last October.

How fast? Google took longer to reach that point -- roughly two years after the Android Market formally opened for business.

And it took about a year and a half for the iPad to garner 100,000 iPad-specific apps. "The platform has been out for 453 days, with developers getting access to its software development kit … Read more

Rival mobile browsers chip away at Safari's lead

Safari, the top browser in terms of mobile usage, lost a little share to three rivals in June.

The Apple browser dropped from 60.0 percent of usage in May to 58.0 percent in June, still well ahead of competing browsers, according to statistics released by tracking firm Net Applications on Monday. Google's unbranded Android browser, in second place, also dipped, from 20.7 percent to 20.6 percent.

Picking up the slack were Opera Mini, which rose from 10.5 percent to 11.2 percent; Google's Chrome, which rose from 3.2 percent to 3.8 … Read more

Despite Windows 8.1, PC market prospects aren't pretty

Windows 8.1 may fix Microsoft's dot-zero release but it may not fix the PC market.

After Citi Research revised its PC market growth forecast down to negative 10 percent growth earlier in the month, market researcher IDC chimed in on Friday with a less-than-upbeat snapshot for May.

"May results reflect deteriorating conditions rather than improvement and the market will probably fall short of projections," said Loren Loverde, an IDC analyst in a statement, referring to May regional PC shipments.

"The results for May are behind pace for achieving the projected [second quarter 2013] growth rate,&… Read more

RSS, autocomplete URLs hit new Android Firefox beta

Mozilla debuted a new Firefox for Android 23 beta (download) on Thursday that brought with it a flatter but more Web-friendly version of the familiar browser logo.

The new logo has been designed, wrote Sean Martell, Mozilla's lead visual designer, with "SVG compatibility and color consistency" in mind. It doesn't ditch detail just for the sake of it, he said in his blog post about the change, but actually adds more detail in some areas.

One major detail he pointed out that has changed is the fox's arm. It now comes from its shoulder, instead … Read more

Microsoft's pitch for hybrids: Tablets alone don't cut it

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pitched upcoming "2-in-1" devices hard Wednesday at the Build Conference. Part of the pitch included mocking the dedicated tablet experience.

Here's what Ballmer said.

How many of us have gone to a meeting with somebody who brought a tablet and then when it comes time to actually take notes, writes them down on pencil and paper. Or can't get at the spreadsheet...or try to use it in terminal emulator mode...or take [a long time] to set up and turn their tablet into something that approximates a PC.

That statement -- … Read more

Ad group blasts cookie-privacy project from Mozilla, Stanford

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, a group that represents hundreds of Internet advertisers, has attacked Mozilla's involvement in a Stanford Law School privacy project to judge whether individual Web sites can be trusted to set behavior-tracking browser cookies.

The IAB doesn't like the Cookie Clearninghouse, which Stanford's Center for Internet and Society and Mozilla announced on June 19. The project aims to rate individual to bring privacy ratings for browser cookies -- the small text files that Web site operators can store on people's computers. Cookies can be useful for remembering that you're logged into a … Read more

Leak confirms WebGL, SPDY for IE11

If Internet Explorer 10 impressed you, you're going to love what we now expect from IE11 at Microsoft's Build conference on Wednesday.

Information leaked by a Microsoft Developer Network subscriber appears to confirm long-rumored details on what's going to be included in Internet Explorer 11.

The next major version of the browser, expected to arrive with Windows 8.1 later this year, will include support for many under-the-hood features that Firefox and Chrome already offer, and some that they don't.

According to Microsoft-News.com, IE11 will include WebGL support, a standard originally from Mozilla that makes … Read more

Google's Chromebook photo app tries to pick your best pics

Google has released its promised photos app for Chromebooks, software that imports photos from an SD card, backs them up to the cloud, and spotlights the ones it judges to be the best.

The software, a Chrome extension, is available only for the Chromebook Pixel at present, but Google is "working to bring the app to other Chromebooks as well," said AJ Asver in a Google+ post Tuesday.

Sundar Pichai, head of Chrome, Google Apps, and now Android, gushed about the app in a February interview during the debut of the Chromebook Pixel, Google's high-end, $1,300 laptop. … Read more

New Firefox earns full WebRTC

Following the recent introduction of full Web Real-Time Communications to Chrome, Tuesday's update to Firefox makes it the second browser to support the plugin-free protocol.

The debut of WebRTC, as the protocol is known, in Firefox 22 (download for Windows | Mac | Linux) is no small potatoes. "Plugins are the single largest source of security and stability issues that we see," said Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's vice-president of engineering for Firefox.

WebRTC is planned for Firefox for Android (download), which also updated Tuesday, but it has yet to be added to the mobile browser.

On the surface, WebRTC … Read more