A new version of Firefox used to be a big deal, but since Mozilla switched to a rapid release schedule, these updates are becoming pretty routine. Today, Mozilla launched Firefox 12. For most users, this is likely one of the least interesting Firefox updates in recent history, as it only introduces a few minor changes. For developers, however, this update is a bit more interesting. In total, this… → Read More
This morning, Amazon announced that Kindle Cloud Reader, the nifty HTML5-based Web app that lets customers read Kindle books in their browser (online or offline), is now available for Mozilla Firefox 6 and above, in addition to Google Chrome and Safari (on iPad and desktop).
Not much else to report in terms of news, but Chris Blizzard, Director of Platform Product Management for Mozilla’s Web… → Read More
If you’re on a website that uses accounts, the sign in button can be anywhere. Sure, there are some common best practices, but I can think of dozens of sites that put them all over the place. Mozilla is looking to fix that, by bringing the sign in to the browser level.
A new experimental extension that Mozilla has released for Firefox does exactly this. When it’s installed, you’ll see a new… → Read More
A month just ended, which means new stats. In the world of web browsers, there are two particularly interesting ones of significance. One points to “open” web browsers now in the majority amongst those that surf the web. Another points to WebKit browsers passing Firefox, to claim the number two position amongst web surfers.
As first noticed by Google’s Peter Beverloo this morning… → Read More
I think we all know that add-ons have grown integral to the Firefox experience — and popular, to say the least — but we didn’t know just how popular until now. Today, Mozilla said through its blog that 85 percent of Firefox 4 users have installed add-ons. The company then added that, though it had expected the percentage of add-ons downloaded on Firefox 4 (which was released on March 22nd) to… → Read More
Twitter has just announced on their blog two new key bits of functionality: improved search and photos. The latter, we’ve obviously been all over in recent days, as we first broke the news a couple days ago. The former, we mentioned was likely coming as well. But there are a few details we didn’t know.
First of all, today brings a completely new version of Twitter Search that promises “more… → Read More
Firefox beta for Android has been updated today with the ability for users to turn on the “Do Not Track” privacy feature, making it one of the first mobile browsers to offer the privacy option.
Mozilla’s Do Not Track allows users to have more control over how their browsing behavior is tracked and used online. When the feature is enabled, Firefox will tell advertising networks and other websites… → Read More
When it comes to Chrome, Google has long been addicted to speed. And for many tasks on the web today, that speed is related to how fast your JavaScript engine is. Google has long held that their’s is the fastest. But it’s hard to know for sure because there are a few different benchmark suites to test such speeds — and the most popular ones are made by companies with stakes in the game: Apple… → Read More
Brand Thunder, the site that allows you to skin your browser, is rolling out a slick new theme creation utility called BT:Engage, which allows anyone to easily build and share interactive browser themes. The entire process is web-based with real-time previews of themes as you build them. It’s a little rough around the edges right now, but the long-term plan is to have a sophisticated suite of… → Read More
Mozilla released its new Firefox 4 exactly a month ago today and within a day had more than twice as many downloads as Internet Explorer 9 after its launch. Some where around midnight tonight the browser build will hit 100 million downloads after one month in existence, according to the Firefox download stats ticker.
What’s more impressive is that the browser has now taken over 7.94% of the… → Read More
While Google Chrome may still only have about 10 percent market share in the web browser world, it’s effect on the space has been much greater. For example, remember when Google said that Chrome would begin releasing new versions every six weeks? Well now we’re seeing both Mozilla and Microsoft move towards that type of rapid iteration. In fact, Mozilla has moved so much in that direction that… → Read More
A week after launching the official release of Firefox 4, Mozilla is following up today with Mobile Firefox for Android and Maemo phones (for all twelve of you Maemo fans out there). For Android, the browser is now available on the Android Market,.
One thing Firefox mobile doesn’t have is support for Flash, even though Android has a big partnership with Adobe to make Flash work on mobile. I… → Read More
How many of the more than 7 million Firefox 4.0 downloads do you account for? Mozilla has a running counter that’s keeping track of how many people, and from where, have downloaded the latest version of its Firefox browser, which was officially released yesterday. The browsers wars are hotting up all over again. → Read More
Mozilla has just released Firefox 4, and in less than a day clocked more than twice the downloads Microsoft boasted about after the release of Internet Explorer 9.
Now website analytics company StatCounter says Mozilla’s new browser has already taken 1.95 percent of the worldwide Internet browser market. In contrast, StatCounter adds, Internet Explorer 9 has taken only 0.87 percent of the… → Read More
As you’re aware by now, earlier today Mozilla officially unveiled Firefox 4 to the world. At first glance, it’s a great update with massive speed improvements. And that’s good, because that’s exactly what they need to combat the fast-rising Chrome browser from Google. But Google isn’t sitting still either.
This afternoon, Google pushed Chrome 11 into beta. On the surface, users might see this as… → Read More
If you’ve already downloaded the new Firefox 4 today, the first you probably noticed is how much zippier it is. I pretty much had stopped using Firefox altogether because of the creekiness of its previous versions compared to Chrome, Safari, and IE9. But the new Firefox 4, which Mozilla claims is 6 times as fast as before, puts it back in the same pack at least as the rest. It’s been… → Read More
At great long last, Mozilla has revealed the first developer release of their Web Apps Project, which aims to build the infrastructure for an open web app ecosystem.
Back in May of 2010, Google announced plans for what would become the Chrome Web Store. Mozilla responded immediately with plans for its own web store, now known as the Web Apps Project.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Google was first to… → Read More
Why is Mozilla harshing on Internet Explorer 9 ? The company’s tech evangelist, Paul Rouget, said in a recent blog post that Internet Explorer 9 isn’t a “truly modern” browser, specifically calling out its implementation of HTML5. I don’t understand why the average person couldn’t use both (along with Chrome and Opera) to browse the Web as they see fit, but let’s hear Rouget out for a bit. → Read More
In the never-ending Browser battle, speed is king. Browser A might be the prettiest, most secure one around — but if Browser B seems faster or more light weight, good ol’ Browser A is going to lose users in droves. This is especially true in the mobile world, where cellular network latency and the occasional peak-hour bandwidth bottleneck add precious seconds over the near-instant… → Read More
First of all, let me say that I think it’s awesome that Google has finally created a simple solution to allow users to opt-out of advertising tracking. This new Chrome extension already seems like a much better idea than the somewhat convoluted controls or browser plug-ins that they’ve created in the past to placate government agencies and concerned users. It’s also great that Mozilla is taking… → Read More
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… → 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. → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
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