Yesterday evening, Mozilla announced that it would be blocking the Skype toolbar add-on in all versions of its Firefox browser.
While this concerns an impending ‘soft block’, meaning users will be able to re-enable the add-on if they choose to do so, Skype is keen to point out users should always install the most recent version of its desktop client in order to avoid compatibility issues. → Read More
Earlier this week, Google wrote a very short post on their relatively small Chromium blog to announce a big change: they were dropping support for the H.264 codec in Chrome. While they may have tried to whisper it, the post resulted in a shitstorm that reached high into the heavens. It seems as if just about everyone weighed in on the decision (including us, twice).
As a result of the fallout, Google decided to follow-up on their three-paragraph post with a ten-paragraph one today more clearly outlining why they’re making the move. It certainly is more clear, and that’s perhaps what makes it even more frustrating.
As Google notes, this is all about the HTML <video> tag. The search giant cites an impasse in figuring out one codec to use for the future of HTML5-based web video. Safari and IE are backing H.264, but Mozilla and Opera refuse to, and had been backing Ogg Theora. So Google dreamed up WebM and got Mozilla and Opera to sign on board. Unfortunately, we’re still at an impasse, because it does not appear that Safari and IE will be doing the same any time soon. → Read More
In late November of last year, we noted a changing of the guard: Chrome had become the most-used browser amongst TechCrunch readers, ending the four year reign of Firefox in the pole position. And since then, Chrome has actually widened its lead. In the past 30 days, it’s a full 2 percentage points ahead of Firefox now. And that lead continues to grow. But something really odd happened last week. Chrome wasn’t number one. And neither was Firefox. Instead, it was Internet Explorer.
Yes, IE took the crown last week.
You might not think that’s a big deal considering that IE is still by a fairly large margin the most-used browser overall. But as long as we’ve been keeping track of stats for TechCrunch, it has never been the top browser here. In fact, it has been number four for quite some time. And it’s normally about five percentage points behind number three: Safari. So for it to surge to number one is a real oddity. → Read More
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. → Read More
Mozilla just released the latest version of Firefox 4 Beta for both the Web and mobile phones (Android and Maemo). The desktop version now supports the WebGL 3D graphics standard without the need for a plugin and syncing different browsers across devices is now an easier process.
But the feature that caught my eye is in the new mobile version of the beta. You can save any web page as a PDF, which is a handy way to read it later, especially if your connection goes down. On Android, you hit “Site Options” and then “Save as PDF.” The page is then available in the downloads menu → Read More
Help Mozilla squash a bug, earn some money. Nothing wrong with that, right? The organization that brought us Firefox has expanded its program that pays people between $500 and $,300 for finding and reporting glitches in its software. The program originally only applied to Mozilla’s applications, like Firefox and Thunderbird, but now applies to its various online sites, like getpersonas.com and addons.mozilla.org. → Read More
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. → Read More
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? → Read More
Mozilla has just published their annual “The State of Mozilla” report. They do this once they’ve filed their audited financial statements for the previous year, so these numbers are for 2009. Still, they’re impressive numbers given how much competition their is in the market — particularly from their biggest benefactor: Google.
For 2009, Mozilla reported revenues of $104 million. That was up 34 percent from 2008 when revenues were $78 million. Notably, that revenue number includes a $104,000 loss from long-term investments, but that’s a huge improvement from 2008 when the same loss was $7.8 million. So where does Mozilla make most of this money from? Firefox, of course, thanks largely to their search deal with Google. In the FAQ section of the report, Mozilla addresses this: → Read More
You sure love blocking ads when you’re browsing the Web, don’t you?
Adblock Plus, the hugely popular Firefox add-on, has been downloaded over 100 million times, its creator is set to announce soon. That’s a record number of installs for a browser app, and one that will be hard to beat, too.
In hopes of avoiding the wrath of my fellow TechCrunch staff writer Jason Kincaid, here’s another interesting key stat that will be announced later today: more than 12 million people apparently use Adblock Plus to browse the Web advertising-free every day. → Read More
Browser market share numbers are out for October from Net Applications. Chrome made the biggest gains with a 0.49 percent jump from September to 8.47 percent.
Chrome is the third most popular browser after Internet Explorer (59.26 percent) and Firefox (22.82 percent). Both FireFox and IE saw their overall market share positions erode slightly by 0.39 percent and 0.14 percent, respectively. Safari was up a smidge (0.06 percent) to 5.33 percent, and Opera declined 0.11 percent to 2.28 percent. → Read More
Back in May, Google surprised a lot of people by unveiling plans to create an app store for the web, which they called the Chrome Web Store. A day later, Mozilla, makers of rival browser Firefox, stated their plans for an Open Web App Store. Mozilla’s post on the matter was clearly a reaction to Google’s maneuver and so there weren’t a lot of details. Today, as the Chrome Web Store opening approaches, Mozilla finally has those details.
Why does Mozilla care about Google’s store? Because it has the name “Chrome” in it, obviously. But it’s bigger than that as well. While Google says they’re committed to making their Chrome web apps work in other browsers, it’s not entirely clear how that will be possible for paid apps that will undoubtedly have to be laced with DRM. It also sounds as if the store itself will only work through Chrome, and that app shortcuts will only be a part of the Chrome experience. Mozilla wants to take the idea and open it up, creating a standard that will work regardless of the browser. → Read More
According to the the latest data from the company, last month, September 2010, marked the first time IE fell below the 50 percent share mark in the past decade. Of course, this data only counts what StatCounter collects, but they claim that it’s a huge dataset worldwide — billions of visits from millions of sites. And the trend is clear: two years ago, two-thirds of those people were browsing the web with IE, now less than half of them are.
According to the the latest data from the company, last month, September 2010, marked the first time IE fell below the 50 percent share mark. Of course, this data only counts what StatCounter collects, but they claim that it’s a huge dataset worldwide — billions of visits from millions of sites. And the trend is clear: two years ago, two-thirds of those people were browsing the web with IE, now less than half of them are. → Read More
Much love has been thrown in Google Chrome’s direction of late, not least of which because, well, it’s quite snappy. But let’s not forget the trailblazing browser that helped open the door for all these non-Internet Explorer browsers: Firefox! Yes, Mozilla is closing in on version 4.0 (I’ve been running the betas for some time now, and I’m a fan of the new Mac interface, while the Windows one looks sorta weird in Aero), and now Mac users have a rather specific reason to be excited: hardware acceleration. → Read More
On Monday, Google made a big splash with a customized Arcade Fire video page that showed off all the cool things HTML5 can do, from video, animations and 3D rendering to gorgeous fonts and choreographed windows. It’s all cutting edge stuff as far as what is possible with a Web browser goes, but there is one very big problem. It doesn’t work so great in all browsers, even browsers that supposedly support HTML5. If you go to the landing page that launches the video in Firefox or even the forthcoming IE9 (which isn’t out yet, but is very HTML5-friendly), it detects your browser and suggests you use Chrome instead.
href=”http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/demo-firefox-35-treats-videos-like-web-pages-why-cant-flash-do-that/”>supports HTML5? This isn’t the first time there have been issues with HTML5 compatibility. The problem is that HTML5 is so young that the standards have not been hammered out yet across all browsers. The markup language required to produce the same effect is different for different browsers. → Read More
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. → Read More
Mozilla this morning introduced the Alpha release of the next version of its mobile browser Fennec for Android and Nokia N900. Fennec, which serves as the codename for Firefox mobile, comes with add-ons and is also built on the same technology that powers Firefox for the desktop.
An earlier version had surfaced back in April this year.
Fennec Alpha for Android and Nokia N900 comes with Firefox Sync built right into the browser, which means your smartphone browsing experience should closely match the one on your desktop. → Read More
Those of you stuck using boring old stable builds of Google’s Chrome web browser are missing out. Chromium (the open source browser that Chrome is based on) is where it’s at. Sure, it may not be as stable as Chrome, but it has some cool new things that Google is working on.
For example, the latest builds of Chromium (already into version 7) include the new “Apps” area above the “Most visited” area on the new tab page. Here, you’ll find a new placeholder for the Chrome Web Store, which just began initial testing with developers and is due for consumers later this year. Right now, clicking this icon just takes you to the Chrome Extensions Gallery page. But in this Apps area you can also install the apps that Google includes with Chrome, including Gmail, Docs, and Calendar. (Though this is a little tricky to do currently.) → Read More
Adblock Plus, the wildly popular Firefox browser add-on that, well, blocks ads, is not going to get the plug pulled out of any time soon, and might eventually turn into a self-sustaining venture, even.
That’s the gist of this blog post by ABP developer Wladimir Palant (hat tip to @CleverClogs), who has apparently raised enough capital – courtesy of an unnamed Samaritan – to quit his day job at Songbird and work on the project full-time for the next two years. → Read More
Last month, we wrote a post giving a quick overview of a potential new Firefox feature called Tab Candy. 1,900 tweets, 2,000 Facebook Likes, and 285 comments later, it’s clear that there is a lot of interest in the idea. Mozilla clearly recognized that as well, as they’ve already decided to make sure the feature is a part of the upcoming Firefox 4 release. And they’ve given the feature a new name: Panorama.
A new post today by Mozilla’s Asa Raskin shows off the polish they’ve added to Panorama in the past month. Included in the latest beta build of Firefox 4 (build 4), the feature seems much smoother and more stable than it was previously in the experimental early builds of Firefox. That said, the idea is the same: a way to easily organize clusters of tabs together in different windows. You can then zoom out with the click of this Panorama button (or keyboard shortcut) and see a macro-view of all your windows/tabs. Yes, it’s a lot like the Expose feature that Mac users are accustomed to. → Read More
