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 worldwide browser market a week after its debut. → 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 little more than the version which brings the new Chrome icon. But underneath, there are a couple awesome new things going on as well. → 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 downloaded nearly 2 million times as of this writing (check the counter for more up-to-the-second numbers).
I’m sure there are plenty of benchmark tests that show one browser is faster than the other, and vice versa, but my initial reactions after playing around with Firefox 4 today and comparing it side by side with Chrome is that it is just as fast if not faster. It depends on which website I visit. TechCrunch, for instance, loads a second or two faster by my stopwatch. Without the stopwatch, I can’t tell the difference. And that’s a good thing for Firefox, because speed is my No. 1 requirement for a Web browser. Nothing else is nearly as important. Sluggishness pushes users away. So that’s fixed. → 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 the punch; the Chrome Web Store launched in December, and we’ve been waiting for Mozilla’s “more open” rejoinder since. The initial phase of Mozilla’s project is finally here and shows that the company is making a serious attempt to take advantage of what few limitations there are in Chrome’s ecosystem. Of course, whether it can compete toe-to-toe in the long run remains to be seen. → 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 connectivity we’ve grown accustomed to. It makes sense, then, that Mozilla’s latest beta of Firefox 4 for Android is all about the speed. In at least one test, this newest build is clocking in at just over 3X faster than the built-in browser. → 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 the same steps — though I’m going to focus on Google here since their entire business revolves around ads. (Though I guess you could argue that Mozilla’s does indirectly as well since they’re business revolves around the revenue they get from Google.) And it’s even better that they’re open-sourcing the whole thing.
But let’s be honest here: this really doesn’t mean much of anything. → 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
Do you smell that? Just wait a second. You will.
Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
The bolding is mine, but that’s Google’s actual statement as to why they’re dropping support for the H.264 video codec from the Chromium open source browser (from which Chrome is built).
Erick wrote up the main story earlier today, but in my opinion, he didn’t go far enough in calling bullshit on this maneuver. Namely, how on Earth can Google get away with dropping support for one popular codec under the guise of “open” when baked into their browser is Flash, the decidedly un-open plug-in? → Read More
If you’ve ever searched online for guitar tablature (a popular music notation format used for guitars), you know that it’s a generally miserable experience. First there’s the problem of quality — there’s myriad versions of popular songs out there, and many of them are wrong. But even once you’ve found the tab you’re looking for, actually using it is a pain.
The most basic tabs are just text documents, with notes presented using a combination of ASCII characters. That works, but it’s no better than looking at the tab on a piece of paper — you can do much better by taking advantage of the fact that you’re viewing the tab from a computer. Now an experiment on Mozilla’s Hacks portal, which showcases neat things that are being done with Firefox, gives a glimpse of what tabs could look like in the future with the help of HTML5. → 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
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. → 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
As with most things on the web, the insanity surrounding the initial launch of RockMelt died down quickly. The first reactions had some people screaming “eureka!”, while others yelled “Flock 2.0!” The truth, as I see it after a few days of usage, is that the latest social web browser is somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.
I know, it’s boring to say, but RockMelt neither sucks nor is it awesome. It is much better than Flock already for one very important reason: it’s about a billion times faster than Flock was. In the world of web browsing, that’s all that really matters. Flock apparently thought — well, I don’t know what Flock thought. It was just dog slow. And that was in an age when browsers themselves were much slower than they are now. → Read More
If you’ve been riding along with Mozilla through Firefox 4′s Beta period on either Android or Maemo, it’s time for a refresh. Just a few minutes ago, the team pushed out a rather hefty upgrade for both platforms.
Bug fixes! File size decreases! Massive speed boosts! All this and more after the jump. → Read More
Earlier today, we noted that Paul Rademacher, the man known for creating “the first true Web 2.0 application”, was leaving his engineering job at Google after five years with the company. Now we know where he’s going. And it’s very interesting.
No, it’s not Facebook like seemingly every other Xoogler these days. Instead, he’s joining up with Joshua Schachter (the founder of Delicious) and Nick Nguyen (the former director of add-ons for Mozilla) to found Tasty Labs. → Read More
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