Firefox 7 now officially available, promises ‘significantly’ reduced memory usage originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s hard to believe but WebKit, the rendering engine inside Safari and Chrome, is now ten years old. The forked child of KDE’s KHTML received its first commit of code from Apple back on August 24th of 2001. It would be well over a year before the debut of Safari in 2003, and another two years before it was fully open sourced. Since then it’s begun to replace Gecko (Mozilla) as the rendering engine du jour and even spawned a sequel in Webkit2. So, happy birthday to Apple’s greatest contribution to the open source community.

WebKit turns 10, celebrates a decade of speedy, standards-compliant browsing originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Aug 2011 09:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You may have caught wind of one sly fox unofficially popping up over the weekend. Well, as we reported, that fox — specifically Firefox 6 — is now officially ready for your downloading pleasure. If you’re a diehard Mozilla fan, or just an armchair browser expert, you’re probably already hip to the new Firefox rapid refresh cycle that’s seen three releases in the past five months. If not, the folks at Mozilla sent along a couple of nifty graphics (available after the break) to show you how the new timeline works. Alternately, if you’re not interested in how your latest install made its way to your device, feel free to download the real deal at the source links below.

Continue reading Mozilla officially releases Firefox 6, wants to show you how it’s done

Mozilla officially releases Firefox 6, wants to show you how it’s done originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like the sly fox is ready to make its worldwide debut a few days early. In typical Mozilla fashion, a complete build of Firefox 6 is now unofficially available for your downloading pleasure, three days ahead of schedule. If you’re looking for a major facelift to the desktop edition, you won’t find one here — most of the new features aren’t cosmetic. Perhaps most visibly, you’ll find the domain name of the page you’re parked on highlighted in the address bar. On the Android side, version 6 makes much bigger promises, like a “fresh visual style in Chrome Gingerbread,” enhanced image scaling, and, perhaps most importantly, it’s “faster and uses less memory.” We’ve downloaded the desktop version of the browser ourselves, and we’ve found the release quite snappy. If you’re not afraid of a little pre-release downloading, you can catch the (desktop) fox at the source links below. And as per usual, please let us know how it’s treating you.

Firefox 6 breaks out ahead of schedule, gets official August 16th originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 13 Aug 2011 14:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google just wouldn’t be Google if it wasn’t wringing out every last iota of performance from its products. The latest Chrome release is no different, ushering Instant Pages out of the dev channel and into the hands of the proletariat. The headline feature uses an algorithm to “guess” where you’ll click next, pre-fetching and pre-rendering the result if it’s confident enough. Mountain View says it’s the only “high-profile” site to support the tech, but interested web masters can can partake of the instantaneous Google goodies by peeping the more coverage link below. Tweaks to the Omnibox — which now returns URL and title history results based on partial queries — and the addition of print previews for Windows and Linux round out the 13th version of the popular browser. Video of the

Mozilla promised a faster refresh cycle for its wily web browser, following the release of Firefox 4, and it’s made good on that promise. We got word this morning that the final version of Firefox 5 is now available for download on Mozilla’s ftp server, just 12 weeks after the last re-up. The latest incarnation brings with it support for CSS animation and a more easily accessible do-not-track setting — now available at the top of the privacy pane — but won’t see much in the way of GUI enhancements. Of course, if you want to play it safe, and avoid any last-minute tweaks, you can always hold off until version 5 gets official, but what’s the fun in that? If you’ve already got your hands on the sly fox, let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

[Thanks, Haseeb]

Firefox 5 slips out ahead of schedule, gets official June 21st originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re expecting to see plenty of new features crop up for folks that have rooted their new Nook WiFi, but it looks like those not willing to go that far can still expand their options a little bit. As it happens, the new Nook has an experimental web browser of its own, which you can access simply by typing a URL into the search bar. Of course, Barnes & Noble has likely kept this feature under wraps for a reason, as actually browsing the web using it seems to be somewhat hit and miss — see for yourself in the video after the break courtesy of The eBook Reader.

Continue reading Web browser found hiding in latest Nook, no root required (video)

Web browser found hiding in latest Nook, no root required (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The latest version of a Chrome browser may not be quite the event it once was since Google switched to a six-week release schedule, but the company seems to be plenty pleased with the just-released Chrome 12 nonetheless, which it’s dubbed “safer and snazzier.” That’s because the browser now boasts a number of new measures to prevent malware and phishing attempts (and give you more control over data stored on your computer), as well as support for hardware accelerated 3D CSS, which will let you try out things like Aardman Studio’s “Shaun the Sheep” HTML5 experiment pictured above (and linked below). And if you’re reading this in Chrome, chances are your browser has already updated itself.

[Thanks, Christoff]

Google rolls out ‘safer and snazzier’ Chrome 12 web browser originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Been loving the Opera Mini experience on your iPhone and wishing for it on your larger iOS device? Opera is today turning that desire into reality with the release of v6.0 of its Mini mobile browser, which now has support for all iOS portables, including the iPad and iPad 2, plus a specific shoutout for the iPhone 4′s retina display. The overall design of the web explorer has also been freshened up, with a “new look and feel,” while a social sharing function will let you blast URLs into Twitter and Facebook directly from the app. Additionally, the new version includes the ability to load tabs in the background and improves support for non-Latin alphabets like Arabic and Chinese. Hit the source link for the download.

[Thanks, Chris]

Continue reading Opera Mini lands on the iPad in version 6.0

Opera Mini lands on the iPad in version 6.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 08:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has just announced that it’s making the Chrome Web Store available to the “entire userbase of Chrome” — all 160 million, according to the company’s latest numbers — and in 41 different languages no less, although those outside the current markets will apparently only have access to free apps initially. What’s more, it’s also now added in-app purchases to the mix — which it notes developers can add to their apps with “literally one line of code” — and it’s announced that it plans to “keep it simple” by simply charging developers a flat five percent fee instead of opting for some of the more complicated fee structures out there. As for how the Web Store has been doing so far, Google revealed that there has been 17 million app installs to date, although it provided few details beyond that.

Google makes Chrome Web Store available worldwide, adds in-app purchases and flat five percent fee originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 May 2011 12:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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