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by Stephen Schenck | May 15, 2012 1:36 PMMozilla's been working for months on a major re-tooling of Firefox for Android, replacing the XUL-based interface that the browser had been using with native Android elements, hoping to improve app performance. Back when it discussed this project in October of last year, Mozilla revealed this to be more of a long-term goal, and didn't intend on having it take over the main release until sometime this year. Since then, it's been cranking-out builds of the new version for interested testers to check out, but continued with XUL for both the primary and beta versions available in the Google Play s...
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by Stephen Schenck | April 24, 2012 7:03 PMGoogle's earned itself a bit of a reputation for getting started with big projects but then taking forever to see them through to a finished state. You need look no further than Gmail, which despite first entering testing in 2004, didn't abandon its "beta" tag for another five years. It seems that Google has found new motivation to get projects out of beta since that time; Chrome for Android had its first beta release less than three months ago, and Google is reportedly nearly prepared to strike down this "beta" label, as well. Sundar Pichai, Google's Senior Vice President of Chrome and App...
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by Stephen Schenck | April 17, 2012 3:06 PMGoogle gave Android users a powerful new browser option earlier this year when it ported Chrome over to run on Ice Cream Sandwich. The app made a strong first impression, and we've heard from Google about some of the company's plans for future releases of the software. A newly-available update starts delivering on the company's promises, adding a desktop mode in addition to a bunch of other usability improvements. We first heard Google talk about adding a desktop mode to Chrome just about two months ago. With the release of this new Chrome 0.18.4409.2396 beta, the app can now masquerade as ...
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by Stephen Schenck | March 12, 2012 7:40 PMOwners of BlackBerry's PlayBook tablet got their eagerly awaited update to PlayBook OS 2.0 last month, bringing with it, among other features, support for compatible Android apps through its Android Player. The process by which you can run those apps take a tiny bit of effort, requiring the developer to re-package his or her release for the BlackBerry, but it's certainly preferable to re-coding a port, or just not reaching BlackBerry users with Android apps at all. One of the latest developers to embrace the Android Player on the PlayBook is MoboTap, the team behind the Dolphin Browser, which ...
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by Stephen Schenck | March 5, 2012 5:08 PMWe've talked before about some of the tools Google has made available in order to help bridge the gap between the time you spend working on your computer and time spent on your smartphone. There's stuff like Chrome to Phone, for example, which lets you access information your pulled-up while browsing from your PC while later on a mobile device. Today the company has a tweak along those lines to introduce to its mobile site, letting you easily access information on places you've researched from your smartphone. If you've got Google's Web History enabled, letting it keep track of your queries...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 29, 2012 5:06 PMDolphin Browser HD continues to try and attract new users by offering unique features you might not get on the other major browsers. Lately it had been promoting its Webzine layout, but enthusiasm towards the option may have soured in the wake of news of privacy concerns. Today, though, the browser gets a new stand-out feature with the arrival of Dolphin Browser 7.4 and its Sonar voice commands. Dolphin uses the standard Google speech-to-text interface for actually interpreting your voice, so the special thing about Sonar is how it reacts to your commands. Dolphin's configured site-specific...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 28, 2012 11:56 PMWhile we may think of the web browsers that accompany the major smartphone operating systems as wholly distinct entities, many of them share common elements. At the heart of mobile Safari, the Android browser, and RIM's browser for the PlayBook is some code known as WebKit. Browsers heavily rely on WebKit to handle page layout when rendering content to the screen. Unfortunately, that may mean that an unusually large fraction of smartphones are vulnerable to a newly-discovered exploit. The news comes courtesy of security firm CrowdStrike, which intends to make a presentation on the vulnerabi...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 24, 2012 3:30 PMThe newly-released Chrome for Android is already a fast, capable browser, even if it is technically still a beta release. After launching earlier this month, the browser now finds itself on the receiving end of a new update, but Google hasn't published any changelog to accompany it. Just what's new in the latest version of Chrome? Probably the most noticeable change to occur in this update has to do with browser speed and responsiveness. The web-browsing experience should altogether feel a bit smoother, and benchmarks confirm the improvement. Chrome should also start demonstrating smarte...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 20, 2012 3:35 PMAbout two weeks ago, Google gave Android users a new browser option, introducing the first public beta for the mobile Android edition of its Chrome browser. We've been quite impressed with our experiences using it thus far, but seeing as this is still a very early release, there's plenty of room for the app to grow and change from here. Google's Sundar Pichai, head of all things Chrome, recently sat down to answer some questions about the company's work on the browser, including future developments for the Android version. So far, even with limited availability due to its Ice Cream Sandwich...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 17, 2012 12:36 PMApple found itself in the hot seat recently after it was discovered that the company had approved apps for sale in its App Store which were capable of secretly reading your phone's contact book and sharing that personal data. The company's damage control for that incident has led to the decision that apps must now formally request permission to access your contacts, hopefully resolving this all. Today the iPhone is back in headlines about privacy issues, but this time it's Google's actions that are under the microscope. Basically, Google's being accused of some possibly shady behavior in or...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 17, 2012 2:47 AMSmartphone users are probably most familiar with Mozilla for its work on mobile versions of Firefox, but the foundation has much grander ideas in mind for what it could offer mobile devices. We got our first inkling of this project last summer, when Mozilla revealed plans for Boot2Gecko, an ambitious project to offer a new smartphone operating system built on web-based apps. Today we get to see just what the team has been up to for the past seven months, thanks to a whole bunch of new screenshots and some detailed descriptions of how the platform will work. At its heart, Boot2Gecko runs off...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 14, 2012 7:24 PMThe past few weeks have been pretty decent in regards to new versions of mobile browsers; first we saw Firefox move on up to version 10.0 for Android, and then Google really made some noise when it released the first beta of Chrome for the platform. While that time was dominated by releases for Android, today it's time for iOS to get its due, upon news of Dolphin Browser 3.5 for the iPad. This tablet-only edition of Dolphin Browser doesn't make any groundbreaking changes with this new release, but instead features a host of ease-of-use improvements, bugfixes, and boosts to performance. One ...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 8, 2012 7:34 PMGoogle gave Android users a new browser option yesterday when it finally released a version of Chrome for smartphones. While it's still considered a beta release, impressions of the browser have thus far been extremely positive. We gave you a quick look at it in action, since not everyone yet has access to the Ice-Cream-Sandwich-running hardware required, taking note of Chrome's impressive tab management. Had our video run a bit longer (quite a bit), though, and we might have run across one of the Easter eggs already discovered for the app. Chrome will keep track of how many tabs you curren...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 7, 2012 1:19 PMWhen Google delivered a long-overdue update to Chrome to Phone for Android last week, we were glad to see it arrive, but didn't read that much into the action. Perhaps we should have taken it as a sign that Google was starting to get all its ducks in a row when it came to Chrome on the platform, as the company has just now released the first beta version of Chrome to the Android Market. This project has been in the works for some time now, at least as evidenced by the progress documented over at chromium.org since last fall. There are a few restrictions on who can get access to the Chrome A...
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by Stephen Schenck | February 1, 2012 7:40 PMThe number of PC users who employ Chrome as their primary browser continues to grow and grow. If you've already made the transition to Chrome, and you use an Android smartphone, there's a good chance you've already tried-out Google's Chrome to Phone app. We talked about the release of this tool all the way back in 2010, and after a lengthy hiatus, Google's back to cranking-out updates for the software. The first in over a year arrives today, fixing bugs and making a few improvements. Chrome to Phone works with the copy of Chrome on your desktop or laptop. We don't always come across informa...
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Posts tagged with: Browser