browsers

Everybody knows we all need faster Web sites: speedy load times and responsive pages means that people stay on a site longer, look at more photos, see more ads, and buy more stuff. Much of the work to speed things up has happened in the browser, but a startup called Instart Logic hopes to profit by changing what happens on the server, too.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company came out of stealth mode Thursday, describing how its technology works and touting customers including Game of Thrones Ascent, GameStop, Bonfaire, and Kitchit.

"We generally drop people's load time … Read more

Google continues to slowly build Google Now into its services. It made the data-rich Now-styled notifications available through an advanced option setting in Chrome for Mac on Thursday, following basic implementation in Chrome for Windows and Chrome OS earlier this year.

You can activate Google Now notifications in Chrome for Mac by typing chrome://flags into your address bar, scrolling down to the Enable Rich Notifications, and changing the setting to Enable. The setting is limited to the most unstable of the browser's builds, Chrome Canary. Canary will only work on OS X 10.6 and newer.

Google Now … Read more

Dual Browser is designed to show two pages at once on your iPad's screen, a function that can be quite handy if you are filling forms or working on a Web site. On one hand, the interface is unique and intelligently designed; on the other hand the browser fails to provide some of the more robust features that iOS Web browsers have become well known for, weakening the overall experience.

Dual Browser opens, appropriately enough, in dual browsing mode. Both of the browsers onscreen (when in portrait mode) are a decent size, especially on a full-sized 9.7" … Read more

Anvi Browser Repair Tool helps IE users optimize, clean, and repair their browser when they believe it has been compromised. This tool performs well and offers many options that will appeal to all IE fans.

Anvi Browser Repair Tool comes as an EXE file and the installation completes very fast. By default, it will add other software to your PC, so uncheck the box during install if you don't want the extras. Once you finish the setup, the program welcomes you to a well-designed and self-explanatory interface. When it comes to options, this program offers the ability to block … Read more

Web-based photo editing took a second step forward Tuesday with the release of WebRaw, a tool that uses Mozilla's ASM.js technology for the computationally intense process of handling raw photos.

Raw photo formats, available on high-end cameras, offer better image quality and more editing flexibility, but they also are much more of a hassle than standard formats like JPEG, in part because they're so burdensome for computers to decode. That's why the demo, from Mozilla's Vladimir Vukicevic, is interesting: processing raw photos is the sort of chore that only a couple of years ago would … Read more

Foxconn and Mozilla announced a partnership Monday under which the Chinese electronics manufacturer will build not just Firefox phones, as others have announced, but tablets, too.

The rumored partnership was confirmed as Mozilla and Foxconn announced their tie-up at the Computex show in Taiwan. By including software in its devices, Foxconn gets to sell a more complete and therefore potentially valuable product to those companies that actually will attach their brands to the hardware.

"We believe that the integration of software and hardware development will offer greater benefits to our customers and consumers," said Young Liu, the general … Read more

As Chrome usage grows on mobile devices, the latest iOS version of the browser finally arrived Monday with the same voice search feature that its cross-platform siblings have.

Chrome 27 for iOS (download) incorporates voice search, which uses Google's own voice-recognition database and not the Nuance-driven Siri.

As with other Google services that use its voice search, including Google Now for iOS, voice search in Chrome for iOS will read back to you your query as it pulls up the familiar blue-link list of Google search results.

One interesting difference between voice search on Chrome for iOS and Chrome … Read more

The Android version of Chrome has begun carving a niche for itself in the mobile browsing market.

In May, usage of the mobile version of Google's browser on smartphones and tablets accounted for an all-time high of 3.2 percent, according to Net Applications' usage statistics. That figure may not sound like a lot, but the browser only crossed the 1 percent threshold in November 2012, and it's now surpassed Microsoft's IE at 2 percent of mobile browser usage.

At the same time, Google's unbranded Android browser, which predates Chrome, appears to be waning. Its usage … Read more

With a project called Portable Native Client now making its way into Chrome and potentially onto the Web itself, Google is violating its own principles for its Blink browser engine, a Mozilla programmer said Friday.

Portable Native Client, or PNaCl, is a Google technology to let Web apps run specially created software at nearly the speed of the native apps that run on operating systems like Windows or iOS. It plugs into the browser with an interface called Pepper.

Mozilla representatives have been frosty toward Native Client for years, but one programmer, Robert O'Callahan, issued a new criticism Friday, … Read more