web

Google has released a new beta of its Chrome browser for Android that gives people the option to try new features such as WebGL and CSS graphics features.

The update, the third since the inaugural version of the Chrome beta for Android, shows not only more of the browser team's ambition but also a faster pace of change.

The unbranded stock browser that shipped with Android for years moved comparatively glacially, but in particular with the new Chrome beta releases for Android, Google is pushing for a broader feature set. And the code base is evidently an offshoot of … Read more

He stopped well short of saying information wants to be free, but Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, said today the world would be better with some judicious liberation.

Speaking at the 2013 World Economic Forum today in Davos, Switzerland, Berners-Lee called on social-networking sites, academics, musicians, and governments to share more information online.

In earlier days of computing, people had full control over their own information because it was all stored on their own computer in front of them. Now, people store data with online services that deprive them of that control.

"They put their … Read more

Do you love reading articles online, but find yourself losing your spot often? The developer of MagicScroll Web Reader, Richard Wallis, proposes that the problem isn't social media and other computer distractions -- it's the way you scroll through large blocks of text online.

To combat the issue of scrolling and making your eyes search for where you left off, Wallis wrote a browser bookmarklet that changes normal scrolling to page-turning style. This means that instead of scrolling down a really long page, you can flip through it, just like you would do with a book.

Here's … Read more

After a fractious false start last year, Web standards makers will reconvene in Orlando, Fla., this March to try to settle a debate about the best video technology for browser-based chatting.

The Web-based chat standard, which holds the potential to bring Skype-like audio and video communication services to the Web, is called WebRTC. The debate about it centers on how best to compress video: the widely used industry-standard H.264 codec, or Google's royalty-free, open-source VP8 codec?

The discussion took some surprising twists and turns late last year -- including Google's last-minute action to postpone discussion because of … Read more

Those of you who play games from Amazon on your computer or over the Web will now be able to buy virtual items directly in the game.

Unveiled today, the new in-app purchasing service allows developers to set up their games so players can pay for virtual goods and currencies using their Amazon accounts. Previously, only Android and Kindle games in the Android Appstore were able to offer the in-app buying option. Now the feature extends to Amazon games for Windows PCs, Macs, and the Web.

Gamers wil find titles for the PC and Mac at Amazon's Digital Games store. … Read more

The Opera Browser will be rebuilding its mobile browsers using WebKit and a new interface that nearly entirely ditches the traditional browser buttons called Opera Ice, according to a leaked video acquired by Pocket-Lint.com.

Ice is not Opera's first dalliance with WebKit, as its current iOS offerings are also built with the WebKit engine. However, the current iOS Opera runs its server-side compression with Opera's Presto engine. It's not clear that that will continue with Ice, which apparently will debut at Mobile World Congress in February.

The video shows off Opera Ice, a browser that looks … Read more

Sometimes code speaks louder than words.

That's why Microsoft today published software demonstrating its own proposal for a Web standard enabling browser-based audio and video chat. In the demo, the CU-RTC-Web (Customizable, Ubiquitous Real-Time Communication) technology is used to set up a real-time voice communication link between Chrome on Mac and IE10 on Windows.

Microsoft has an uphill battle getting CU-RTC-Web to catch on: it showed up late to the game, well after the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) began work standardizing a different approach called WebRTC.

But Microsoft thinks its own proposal … Read more

A fair number of people are turning to the Internet to help them with medical problems.

Among 3,000 adults surveyed by Pew Internet, 35 percent say they've gone online at one time or another to diagnose a medical condition. Some were researching their own medical problems, while others were looking into problems suffered by people they know.

Dubbed "online diagnosers" by Pew, 46 percent of them said the information they found online made them think they needed the help of a doctor. Another 38 percent said they felt they could remedy the problem at home, and … Read more

As the browser becomes the driving engine behind several operating systems, extensive hardware controls are landing as built-in HTML5. The latest developer's build of Firefox Aurora can now record by default video from your camera and audio from your microphone.

Firefox 20 Aurora (download for Windows, for Mac, for Linux, and for Android) has the new hardware API getUserMedia enabled by default, which means that you won't have to use a plugin to record directly from your local camera or mic. In her blog post announcing the update, Maire Reavy, Firefox's product lead on media, provided an … Read more