Mozilla's Firefox browser rose to prominence by doing things Microsoft's Internet Explorer refused to do, like tabbed browsing, providing frequent updates (five years passed between the release of IE 6 and IE 7), playing nice with Web standards, and supporting extensions. But if Firefox has an Achilles heel, it's the browser's notorious memory leak problem that some users have reported with each and every release. Word on the Web is that Mozilla may have finally found a permanent solution.
If there were a mountain nearby, Mozilla and its team of programmers would be shouting from the top of it. They'll have to settle for cyberspace. What is it that has Mozilla so excited, you ask? Mozilla's programmers have been working on a Web-based PDF reader to replace those clunky third-party alternatives once and for all, and they just demonstrated
It's funny to think back when Google first launched its Chrome browser, a simplistic window to the Web that didn't look like any other browser out there. The minimalistic interface caught surfers off guard, and the lack of support for third party extensions was, to many, a deal killer. And today? Google's Chrome browser is, in many ways, the model browser that others have started to emulate, and it might eventually become the most used browser on the planet.
Microsoft this week rolled out a second preview of its Internet Explorer 10 browser. Like the first, IE10 Platform Preview 2 is primarily intended to give Web developers and designers an early look at the upcoming features so they can prepare accordingly. Outside of a handful of demos, there isn't much for the average user to play around with -- it doesn't even ship with a URL bar -- but it does reveal that Microsoft appears to be on the right track.
Whether or not you're a fan of the Opera browser, you have to give props to Opera Software, the Norwegian browser maker that despite lagging behind the big three (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome) in market share, they never take themselves too seriously. With the release of Opera 11.50 today, for example, Opera Software didn't set a goal of catching up to the competition, and instead made reference to Star Wars and Lady Gaga, all in same breath.
Browser vendors are making a conscious effort to make their browsers as self-effacing as possible. As a result, modern browsers usually feature a minimalist UI design that gives precedence to the web over the web browser. Norwegian browser vendor Opera Software also has something similar in mind for its eponymous browser with the new “Featherweight” UI.
Firefox has been taking a bruising in the browser wars at the hands of Chrome. Mozilla's watched Google's browser gain hordes of new adopters while its own market share sits dead in the water. Finally sick of watching Google get all the glory, Mozilla's instituted a fast-release schedule to get Firefox floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee again, and the first fruits of their labor are finally hitting the streets. Less than three months after Firefox 4 launched, Firefox 5 is now available for download.
Google began shipping its Chrome web browser with a built-in PDF viewer almost a year ago, making it the first browser to have such a feature. In fact, it still continues to be the only one. This is quite strange, particularly because of the competitive nature of the browser market. But Mozilla is now getting ready to catch up with Google in this department. Hit the jump for more.
You know that cute old couple down the street, the two that have been married since before your parents were born? Firefox and Ubuntu are kind of like that. It's hard to remember a time when you could find one without the other. But are the browser and the operating system experiencing irreconcilable differences? Any conservative radio host can tell you that the divorce rate is sky-high in America, and the Ubuntu team's considering tossing Firefox to the curb and chasing some hot young Chrome tail.
The great thing about being a freelance exterminator for Google is that there aren't any messy chemicals to inhale. That, and you get paid for breaking things, and in some cases, paid handsomely. The recently released Chrome 12 browser, for example, netted bug hunters nearly $10,000 in award money for discovering various exploits, including one that was worth $3,133.70.
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