Mozilla plans to add a do-not-track feature to its Firefox Web browser, which could let users avoid having their actions monitored online.
WSJ.com: What’s News US
Category : Technology
Continuing today’s theme of scouring Quora for interesting nuggets of information, a Q&A about Mozilla’s Firefox Mobile browser is of some interest. In response to the question: Will Firefox Mobile ever be released for iOS devices?, Mobile Firefox developer Matt Brubeck this morning gave his answer.
First, he gave the obvious and fairly well-known official answer, “We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for Apple iOS devices,” Brubeck wrote. Why? Because the current iOS SDK agreement forbids apps like Firefox from including their own compilers and interpreters, Brubeck explains.
But he continues on to note that there are a couple of ways to work within Apple’s system, notably what Skyfire is doing (using Apple’s own build-in WebKit libraries) or what Opera Mini is doing (using a proxy server to execute their JavaScript). “Mozilla could create a browser that did one of those things, but it wouldn’t be related to Firefox in any way,” Brubeck explains.
Mozilla does currently have a Firefox iPhone app, Home, but it does not include a browser for the reasons listed above. Instead, it lets you sync bookmarks and open tabs between your iPhone and the home computer. But Mozilla is also in charge of other browsers, notably Camino, which has long been a Safari and Firefox alternative on Mac machines. Might Mozilla consider releasing it as an iPhone app? If they did, it would have to be altered from its current state as it’s not WebKit-based (it, like Firefox, is Gecko-based).
Or could Mozilla come up with an entirely new WebKit-friendly browser for the iPhone? It’s certainly possible, though it would still have to use the specific WebKit framework that Apple has built-in to iOS.
Or, there’s always the jailbreak route. As Brubeck notes, some people have been doing work to port Firefox to iOS. Interestingly enough, his wording seems to imply that it actually might be Mozilla employees working on this. But as he continues, “unless Apple removes these restrictions, Mozilla will not spend time and money on this project.” So if they are working on it, they’re doing so off-reservation.
“The development would likely violate the SDK agreement, and it would not be distributable to non-jailbreak iOS users,” Brubeck conclues.
Category : Bangkok Post
As concern about online privacy grows, Mozilla is promising to let people cloak Internet activity in free Firefox Web browsing software being released early next year.
Bangkokpost.com : Breaking News
Category : Technology
Almost two years to the day that Mozilla acq-hired him, Firefox Creative Lead Aza Raskin will be leaving Mozilla on January 1 to found a new startup called Massive Health. Raskin started out as head of user experience at Mozilla Labs where he spearheaded projects such as Tab Candy, Ubiquity, Jetpack, new mobile interfaces, and geolocation specifications.
Now, at Massive Health, he wants to bring better interface design to help people take control of their health, specifically people with weight-related health problems such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Massive Health will present people with better data and tighter feedback loops so they can assess how the actions they take today will impact their weight and overall health.
His co-founder is Sutha Kamal, and Atul Varma—another Mozilla colleague and his former CTO at Humanized (the startup he sold to Mozilla)—will be also be joining him. Better health through better information is a huge, mostly-untapped opportunity. We’ll be following Massive Health closely once it launches.
Photo credit: Flickr/Gen Kanai
Yesterday, Google put up a post on the Chromium Blog to celebrate a year of extensions being available for their Chrome web browser. The main part of the post touts some big numbers that the feature has accumulated in the past 12 months. Those include, over 8,500 extensions, 1,500 themes, a third of Chrome users now having at least one extension installed, and over 70 million extension and theme installs total. But actually, looking at the Extension Gallery, the numbers may be even bigger.
According to the pages in the Extensions Gallery, there are actually now over 10,000 extensions in the gallery. 10,078, to be exact. The “Most Popular“, “Most Recent“, and the “Top Rated” areas point to that number. Each area shows what would appear to be accurate counts for the total number of extensions currently in the Gallery.
It’s not clear why Google wouldn’t tout the 10,000 number instead of the “over 8,500″ while marking their one-year milestone. But unless their Gallery counts are off, the number is into five digits now, just a year after launch. (It is worth noting that the Chrome Web Store does count just over 8,500 extensions. Presumably, the Chrome Web Store will eventually be the official home of extensions, but the standalone area does still exist with its higher count.)
And the number is also significant because Chrome’s chief rival when it comes to extensions (aka add-ons) is, of course, Firefox. So how many add-ons are available on that browser? Mozilla isn’t quite as transparent with the counts (instead, not surprisingly, they focus on cumulative download numbers), but presumably if you add up the totals from all the categories, you’ll get the overall total. As it stands today, that number is 12,739.
The last time we checked the two counts back in March, Chrome stood at just over 3,000 extensions, while Firefox had 11,623. So both are still growing, but Chrome extensions are growing much, much faster. At the current rate, Chrome would surpass Firefox in that regard at some point pretty early next year.
Firefox, which has had extensions for years now, is obviously still destroying Chrome when it comes to total add-on download numbers. But if you look at charts found here, you’ll see that since October, Firefox add-on download numbers have been dropping fairly quickly on a weekly basis. Perhaps this is as some users transition over to Firefox 4, which is currently in beta testing.
When Chrome was first released, users praised its speed, but many said they couldn’t switch from Firefox because of the add-ons. Google fixed that last year, and the numbers show Chrome gaining users at a much more rapid pace than Firefox is now. In fact, Chrome just because the top browser among TechCrunch visitors — ending Firefox’s four year reign.
Now the two are about to battle over web apps. Google just launched their Chrome Web Store earlier this week, and Mozilla is gearing up to counter when the Open Web App Ecosystem. Of course, as they stand right now, Chrome web apps essentially seem to act like either extensions or worse, just links to web pages hosting apps.
Chrome extensions are also an important part of the just soft-launched Chrome OS.
Seeing as Google is such an important part of Mozilla’s revenues, the two downplay this rivalry. But it very much exists.
Category : Technology
It has finally happened. It took a little longer than anticipated, but Chrome has now passed Firefox as the browser most often used to visit TechCrunch. For the month of November, Chrome is number one for the first time, edging out Firefox 27.80 percent to 27.67 percent.
Back in early September, on Chrome’s second birthday, we noted that Google’s browser had been making huge gains over the past couple of years and was only about 3 percent away from passing longtime leader (again, in terms of browsing traffic to TechCrunch) Firefox. The quickly progressing Firefox 4 beta likely slowed Chrome’s march to the top a bit, but it couldn’t fully hold it back. Now the question is: can Chrome hang on?
Mozilla is slated to launch Firefox 4 early next year. So far, the update looks to be a big improvement both in terms of speed and functionality. Features like F1 (Mozilla’s experimental social browser add-on) and Panorama, are sure to be hits.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is preparing to launch the initial release of IE9, a version of the web browser which finally seems ready to adhere to actual web standards.
And then there are the social browsers, which are coming around again: Flock and RockMelt. The difference this time is that both of these browsers are built on top of Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is also built on top of. Previously, Flock was built on top of Firefox.
But Google isn’t sitting around doing nothing. The search giant has been refreshing their browser like it’s going out of style. About every six weeks we now get a new version of Chrome. The big changes are less common than they were a year ago, but Google still has plenty of stuff they’re working on.
The Chrome Web Store, for example, is about to launch. This will feature web apps that can be downloaded through Chrome. And while Google says that many of these apps should work fine in “modern browsers” (their cute way of basically saying “anything but IE”), you’ll still need to access the store through Chrome.
And then there is Chrome OS, which will launch in beta before the end of the year. It’s Chrome, but it’s also your entire operating system.
Here’s the breakdown of the big boys for the month of November:
- Chrome: 27.80%
- Firefox: 27.67%
- Safari: 20.42%
- Internet Explorer: 15.74%
What’s most surprising here may actually not be that Chrome passed Firefox, it may be how high Safari is. If Chrome has something to worry about, it might actually be Safari, believe it or not.
If you’re wondering how Apple’s web browser is so high on the list, remember that it’s the browser used on every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch now. These devices boost Safari’s numbers by well over 10 percentage points. And if mobile traffic keeps growing the way it is, there’s a chance (just a chance) that Safari could even eclipse Chrome and Firefox as the top browser viewing TechCrunch. Since August, Safari has grown by two percentage points, while Chrome has gained just one.
Prior to this month, Firefox had been the number one browser visiting TechCrunch since at least late 2006, when we started keeping track of such stats. While IE was obviously the dominant browser back then (and still is number one overall), the Firefox usage shouldn’t be too surprising since those users tended to be more tech-savvy, and more likely to be reading TechCrunch. The problem for Mozilla now is that many of those same people are now using Chrome instead.
It has been a nice four-year run, Firefox, but we’re now in the age of Chrome.
Firefox just launched its fifth Firefox 4 beta, which includes a more streamlined interface, faster graphics and a new audio API that exposes raw audio data (see video above).
What’s new in this latest iteration of Firefox?
* The introduction of an audio API which uses HTML5, allowing developers to visualize the sound data in a browser and creating novel ways to experience sound while web surfing.
* Emphasis on faster graphics with default graphics support from Direct2D, a 2-D graphics API for Windows 7, on machines that support Windows 7.
* Implementation of the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), a security protocol that increases the chances for a secure connections.
A stable version is set to be released by Mozilla in November. You can try out the latest beta here.
As we pointed out earlier, today is Google Chrome’s second birthday. Since it launched in beta on September 2, 2008, it has come a long way (it’s already 6 versions deep). Back then, it was Windows-only, with official Mac and Linux support only coming late last year. But now it’s on the verge of another milestone: becoming the top browser coming to this site.
I’ve checked out our logs over the past few years to see how well Chrome has been doing compared to its rival browsers. The numbers are shockingly strong for such a new entry — particularly in the past year. Obviously, TechCrunch has a tech-centric audience, but I don’t think it’s off-base to say that you’re also a leading audience of early adopters that often point to where the general public will be in the future.
The numbers are clear: Firefox is in trouble. It has been the top browser since we began using Google Analytics to record stats back in 2007. By 2008, it was nearly 25 percentage points ahead of the next closest rival, Internet Explorer. As of yesterday, it stood just 3 percentage points ahead of the next closest rival, Chrome.
Here are the numbers. In August 2010 (the month that just ended):
- Firefox: 33.98%
- Chrome: 26.22%
- Safari: 18.40%
- IE: 13.23%
- Mozilla Compatible Agent: 5.46%
One year ago, in August 2009 (right before Chrome’s first birthday), the numbers looked like this:
- Firefox: 45.91%
- IE: 20.61%
- Safari: 18.85%
- Chrome: 10.09%
- Mozilla Compatible Anent: 1.83%
Two years ago, in August 2008 (right before Chrome launched), the numbers looked like this:
- Firefox: 55.63%
- IE: 31.21%
- Safari 9.76%
- Opera: 2.23%
- Mozilla: 0.62%
By September 2008, the month Chrome launched in beta, it had an immediate impact. But remember, it was Windows-only at the time:
- Firefox: 52.36%
- IE: 28.55%
- Safari: 9.18%
- Chrome: 6.58%
- Opera: 2.05%
And just for fun, let’s go back three full years, to August 2007.
- Firefox: 48.81%
- IE: 40.61%
- Safari: 6.59%
- Opera: 2.29%
- Mozilla: 0.72%
Chrome has clearly taken a bite out of Firefox, IE, and even Opera’s already small share. Safari is up big over the past couple of years as well, but its growth has seemingly stalled over the past year — despite iPad browser usage (in terms of visits to TechCrunch) exploding.
Of course, overall traffic to TechCrunch is also way up over these past few years. It just appears that more and more people who are visiting are now doing so via Chrome.
Let’s look at the numbers from yesterday:
- Firefox: 34.68%
- Chrome: 31.09%
- Safari: 15.65%
- IE: 12.77%
- Mozilla Compatible Agent: 3.48%
Yes, it’s just a matter of time before Chrome is on top.
As a humorous aside, IE with Chrome Frame, the plug-in Google made to make IE behave like Chrome, is now a bigger source of traffic to TechCrunch than Opera Mini or BlackBerry. While still tiny, it too is growing.
Category : Technology
If you’re anything like me, at any given time you have a dozen to two dozen tabs open across multiple web browser windows. It’s great to have all these webpages open and ready to click on at any second, but it’s a nightmare to try and remember where each is with so many open. I shudder to think how much time I waste on this each day. Luckily, Mozilla is working on a solution.
A new feature called Tab Candy is in the works. It’s still early in testing mode, as Mozilla’s Aza Raskin points out on his blog today, but it looks to be exactly what I need.
Be sure to watch the video below for a full overview — from the looks of it, it seems as if Tab Candy is sort of like Apple’s Expose feature mixed with their Spaces feature, both of which are baked into OS X. For those who don’t use a Mac, basically these features allow you to zoom out and get a bird’s-eye-view of all your windows (or tabs, in this case) that are open — and you can also arrange open windows (or again, tabs, in this case) in certain spaces so they’re clumped together. This allows you to more easily find what you’re looking for with so many tabs open.
For example, when tabs are organized into a group, you can select that group and see only those tabs you put in there. The other tabs you have open (in another group) are still open, you just won’t see them when you’re focused on this particular group. And you can change the sizes of these groups in the bird’s-eye-view mode to highlight certain ones. “Make the group with your calendar and email bigger so that you can see what’s new just by zooming out to Tab Candy. Hide the group with distractions in a corner,” Raskin writes.
The best part is that you can actually test out Tab Candy right now. If you click on this link, you’ll download a special “super-early” build of Firefox (Firefox 4 beta, to be specific) with Tab Candy. Again, it’s early so there are bugs and performance issues, but this is a very, very good idea.
Good news, iPhone toting Firefox fans. A few weeks ago Mozilla submitted a new application called ‘Firefox Home‘ to the App Store. No, this isn’t a new Firefox browser for iPhone (which would be blocked by Apple). Instead, it’s a syncing application that gives you access to all of your Firefox bookmarks, history, and even the tabs you have open on your PC’s Firefox browser. Tapping on one of the links will open the page in iPhone’s Mobile Safari Browser. In short, it’s a great addition for regular Firefox users.
Seeing Firefox on the App Store is still sure to raise a few eyebrows, but there was never much doubt that this would be approved (we predicted it would make it through the approval process just fine). The application works using Firefox’s Sync add-on, which lets you upload your Firefox profile to the cloud.
