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Internet Explorer holds onto top browser crown while Chrome and Firefox tussle over second place
Both Net Applications and StatCounter have released their figures for browser market share for 2011 and it makes for largely unsurprising reading. Internet Explorer's full share has dropped but it still maintains the top spot -- a 52 percent share according to Net Applications and 39 percent according to StatCounter. Meanwhile, second place remains tantalizingly within reach for Chrome, which has made headway catching up with Firefox, whose growth had apparently stalled during 2011. According to Net Applications, Firefox held a 21.8 percent share of browser users this month, while Chrome reached 19.1 percent, up just under 8 percent and capping off a second year of impressive growth. Meanwhile, StatCounter pegs Google's browser at second place for the end of the year, claiming 27.3 percent versus the 25.3 percent share grabbed by its vulpine rival. Unsurprisingly, the Windows Team Blog takes a different slant on recent browsing trends, trumpeting that its latest version, Internet Explorer 9, continues to grow on Windows 7. This is, however, balanced out by a corresponding drop in the users of its predecessor, IE 8. Better luck next year, eh, Microsoft?
Chrome stable channel hits version 16, adds multi-user sync support (video)
Subscribers to the beta and dev channels of Google's browser have been enjoying the fruits of the company's syncing labor for sometime now. But, with the stable release of Chrome 16, the Mountain View crew is finally bringing those features to less adventurous users. An entry in the wrench menu offers you the option to "sign in to Chrome," automatically syncing your installed apps, extensions, bookmarks, browsing history and settings. But, if you've got more than one user sharing the same PC, you can keep your experiences separate and customized by adding new users from the "Personal Stuff" page in the options menu. Then you're just a couple of quick clicks on the user menu (that new icon in the upper left- or right-hand corner depending on your OS) away from alternating between sets of synced data. Head on after the break for a quick video demo.
PS Vita shuns multiple accounts and in-game web browsing, disappoints FAQ lovers everywhere (Updated)
Have a tendency to get stuck in games? Keep your laptop handy, the PlayStation Vita isn't going to make getting tips any easier -- an interview from AV Watch has revealed that Sony's next generation handheld is a little stingy when multitasking. The console's friends list, music and Twitter clients are in, but web browsing is out, blocked to ensure the Vita has more resources available for running games. This limitation could be off-putting to gamers who are used to mid-game internet FAQ checks to guide them through difficult bits of gameplay, a trick Nintendo's 3DS handles smoothly. Family members hoping to share a console might run into a roadblock as well, as the Vita appears to be fairly conservative about its relationships -- allowing only one PSN account per console. Sony's Brad Douglas recently mentioned on Twitter that swapping accounts was possible, but that switching required a factory reset. Potential deal breaker? For some, maybe. For others? Just another item to the growing list of things we hope to see in a future update.Update: So, turns out the PS Vita is not -- we repeat, not -- limited to one account per console. It is, however, limited to one account per memory card. Those proprietary storage sticks are tied to a particular PSN account, but multiple people can use the same device simply by swapping the cards.
Hacksugar: Send URLs from your PC to your iPhone
This morning, Beloved Leader Victor introduced me to my new favoritest hack for the iPhone ever -- if "ever" means "earlier this morning." It's a really good hack though. What you do is this. In Safari or Firefox or whatever your favorite browser is, create a new bookmark, which I include here for your copying pleasure. This bookmark comes courtesy of Coldbeans software and what it does is converts the URL for your current page to a QRCode and displays it in a floating window. Being basic Javascript, it runs across platforms and browsers. Essentially, you should be able to use it any modern browser. Create a new bookmark, set the destination as the javascript I linked above, and name it something like QRCode. Then, when you come across a web page you want to share, select the bookmark and let it generate a QRCode. From the iPhone side, use any of the millions of free QRCode clients to scan your computer. Instantly, the URL transfers, allowing you to copy it, view it, send it in email, etc. Victor tells me he uses this to load up his iPhone with amusing YouTube Videos, but you probably have far more respectable reasons for transferring URLs.
Chrome to gain plug and play gamepad support and WebRTC video chat in 2012
Seems like Big G updates its browser of choice with fresh features every time we turn around, and one of Google's own, dev advocate Paul Kinlan, revealed that another spate of upgrades are arriving for Chrome early next year. The headliner is plug-and-play support for gamepads, but native support for cameras, microphones and open-source video chat framework WebRTC are on the docket too -- features that give Chrome some considerable gaming chops when combined with its existing WebGL and HTML 5 prowess and, he says, could bring OnLive to the web without plugins. If you thought Angry Birds on a browser was a great, we can't wait to see what's in store when a proper controller and integrated video chat are involved.
StormDriver social web app gets alpha release, booming launch video
You're not really reading this. Okay, you are reading this, but the problem -- we're told -- is that you're reading it like a little Pac-Man trapped in a blind maze, in which all the other Pac-People surfing this page are hidden from view. Don't you want to smash those walls down? Don't you want to immerse yourself in that sweaty throng of humanity? Oh, you do? Then you need StormDriver, a social web app which has just started alpha testing. Similar to the RockMelt browser that came out last year, it's an overlay that allows geeks on the same page to interact with each other, rate content and follow real-time feeds that point them towards hot sites and discussions. The video and press release after the break make it all sound very enticing, but remember the ancient phrase: never pull down a fence until you know why someone put it up. Update: if you want early access to the system, leave your email address at the source link.
Twitter-enhanced Firefox 8 officially available for download, Android version updated
Those watching the FTP servers may have been able to snag it a bit early, but Mozilla's now announced that Firefox 8 is officially available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. The big addition, such as it is, is built-in Twitter search, which will let you search for topics, hashtags or usernames right in the main search box. You'll also get the usual raft of performance and security improvements, as well as some new ways to manage tabs and add-ons. Alongside it comes a new version of Firefox for Android, which includes a new password manager, and the ability to add home screen icons for bookmarked pages or web apps.
Internet Explorer does less than 50 percent of world's web surfing, Chrome on the come-up
It's been a long and winding road for Internet Explorer, Microsoft's venerable web browser, and for over a decade it's been the browser of choice for most netizens. According to Net Marketshare's latest numbers, however, IE now enables just under half of the world's total -- meaning mobile and desktop combined -- web traffic after owning 95 percent of the browsing market seven years ago. The decline is at least partially due to a rise in mobile web browsing and an increasing Chrome user base. Of course, Microsoft's finest still has a healthy 52.63 percent desktop market share, which gives it a sizable lead over the competition from Firefox (23 percent), Chrome (18 percent), and Safari (five percent). There's plenty more graphs and charts to show you exactly how the browser war is going, so hit the links below for the full pie-chart treatment.
Android Browser leapfrogs Opera Mini, but Safari increases its lead
Web browser warriors have some more statistical firepower to play with, now that Net Applications has released the latest usage figures for mobile browsers. Google's vaguely titled Browser has inched up from a 16.3 percent share last month to 18.7 percent, counterbalanced by Opera Mini, which declined from just under 19 percent to 13.1 percent. Similarly, both Symbian and BlackBerry's mobile browsers dropped a few percentage points, down to 2.6 and 2.4 percent respectively. While rumors of a mobile-friendly version of Chrome continue to bounce around, there remains a substantial gap between second-place Android and the current mobile browser boss, Apple's Safari, which has now extended its dominance from 55.6 percent to 62.2 percent. The battle of the browsers wages on.
Nintendo's eShop plans: premium DLC, game demos, smartphone shopping, relevancy
Nintendo's latest earnings report may be a litany of woe, but at least the outfit's semi-annual financial results briefing bore good news: the 3DS eShop is about to get a kick in the pants. Today's 3DS store gets the job done, but it's hampered by disorganized categories, limited accessibility, and poor download management. Want something better? It's on the way -- a late November update is slated to bring "sleep mode" background downloading to the fledgling console, and opens the door for publishers to release in-game premium DLC and "limited-play" demos. Nintendo is even taking steps to address the handheld's lousy shopping experience, announcing a companion website where users will be able to browse the eShop from a PC or smartphone. Eventually 3DS owners will be able to buy content directly from the eShop website, but at launch shoppers will need to scan a QR code with the handheld to make a purchase. It's not a perfect plan, but at least it's a start. Baby steps Nintendo, baby steps.
Firefox 7 now officially available, promises 'significantly' reduced memory usage
A new version number for a browser release may not be quite as major as it used to be, but Mozilla is promising a few fairly big improvements with the just-released Firefox 7. The biggest of those are all in the performance department, including "significantly" reduced memory usage (up to 50 percent less in some cases), and a new version of the hardware-accelerated Canvas that promises to speed up HTML5 sites. Also making its debut is a new Telemetry feature that lets users anonymously provide browser performance data to Mozilla if they choose to opt-in. Hit the links below for the complete rundown and download link.
Sleipnir for OS X arrives in beta, touts group tab management and sync
If you're the kind of person that loves to live on the wilder side of internet browsing, today you're in luck. Sleipnir is a new OS X web browser that has a few twists, particularly when it comes to tab management. Developed by Japanese outfit Fenrir, Sleipnir first arrived on the iPhone (which we covered here) and then the iPad, and now it's arrived in beta form for Mac OS X. Like any other browser, Sleipnir does the standard job of visiting websites fine, but where it shines most is through group tab management. In Sleipnir the address bar takes a step back and tabs take center stage. All tabs are thumbnail previewed. And similar to Safari's Show Top Sites tiled preview of you most visited webpages, Sleipnir does the same, but takes it a step further. By clicking and dragging tiles of your favorite websites, you can arrange them into groups specific to context and category for later reference and easy access. For instance, a collection of tiles relevant for News or Social Networking. It's like creating bookmarks, but with tabs and tiles instead of text and website addresses. It's all very visual. And don't worry, bookmarks aren't replaced, they're enhanced with colored labels, or what Sleipnir calls Smart Bookmark Management. If you use Sleipnir on your iPhone and iPad too, all your bookmarks and tile groups are synced up to Sleipnir for Mac using Fenrir's free Fenrir Pass. Sleipnir beta for Mac is compatible with OS X 10.6 and 10.7 (though Lion's full-screen mode is not supported yet) and is available as a free download now (and even though it's in beta form, it runs remarkably smoothly). So if you're a little bored of the usual suspects (Chrome, Safari, Firefox), you may want to try something a little different and give Sleipnir a spin. [Via MacStories]
WebKit turns 10, celebrates a decade of speedy, standards-compliant browsing
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.
Mozilla officially releases Firefox 6, wants to show you how it's done
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.
Firefox 6 breaks out ahead of schedule, gets official August 16th
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.
Chromium's experimental touch UI demoed on video, made for meaty fingers
Google was pretty adamant at I/O that Chrome OS would not be coming tablets, but that hasn't stopped its open-source cousin from adding some touch friendly features. Chromium (the browser, not the OS) got its first tablet tweaks back in June, but this is the first time we're seeing them on video. While the larger icons, widgets, and virtual keyboard, may eventually make their way onto the rumored Seaboard, there's no guarantee these (obviously still early) experiments will ever debut as part of Chrome OS or even the browser. Check out the video after the break for a brief glimpse of this work in progress and, if you're feeling adventurous, hit up the more coverage link to download the latest source code -- just make sure to compile with 'export GYP_DEFINES="touchui=1"' to unlock the finger-friendly face of Chromium.
Google's Chrome 13 brings 'Instant Pages' to the masses, saves precious seconds of your life
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 über-swift search in action's below.
Camino 2.1 now in beta, features improved plug-in control
Camino, an open source third-party web browser for Mac OS X, released a beta of version 2.1 last week. According to the release notes, new features in Camino 2.1 include: Enhanced Location Bar Autocomplete: The location bar's autocomplete feature now displays results in a single list, using an improved ranking algorithm. Improved Plug-in Control: Camino now disables certain insecure or incompatible versions of common plug-ins. In addition, Camino now supports loading plug-ins from the profile's "Internet Plug-Ins" folder. Gecko chrome and component registration: Camino 2.1 Beta 1 supports loading components and chrome from the profile, making it easier to use some simple Gecko extensions. Camino 2.1 Alpha was released in January, and version 2.0 was released in late 2009. The somewhat stately development pace has meant Camino's fallen behind the feature sets of big-name browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, but this latest release should get the browser closer to being caught up with its more famous cousins. Camino 2.1 beta is a free download, with all the usual caveats that apply for running beta software. The latest stable release is Camino 2.0.7, released in March.
Graphing calculator web browser lets you visit your favorite sine wave fan sites (video)
Graphing calculators: essential tools for math education or low-res Game Boys? The debate rages on. Advocates of non-mathematical applications for the devices have scored a major victory with the introduction of Gossamer, a new web browser for various TI graphing calculators, which lets users visit some very basic versions of webpages, using the CALCnet and globalCALCnet protocols. The 1.0 version can request, display, and scroll pages. Logging in will bring you to a portal with links -- the application's developer has promised to add the ability to directly enter URLs in a future version, however. There's a demo video after the break, though you may want to wait until after math class to check it out.
There's a web browser hiding inside the iriver Story HD, but it's pretty shy
Looking for a way to surf the web on your new iriver Story HD? The Digital Reader's got you covered, with a nifty, albeit not totally satisfying hack. As it turns out, the Story HD's much-ballyhooed Google eBookstore operates as a mobile version, rather than an app, meaning you can use it to access other pages -- if you know the trick. All you have to do is navigate to the first Help page within the eBookstore, where you'll see a list of links running across the top. The Books link leads to books.google.com, from which you can jump to google.com, effectively putting the internet at your fingertips. The major downside, however, is that iriver's hidden browser won't give you an address bar, though it does offer basic refresh and page-flipping capabilities, located within the options menu. It's certainly not as fluid as the WebKit-based browser you'll find on Amazon's third-generation Kindle, nor is it as straightforward as that experimental feature buried within the Nook WiFi -- but at least it's there. If you're interested in digging it up, hit the source link for more details. [Thanks, Nate]
