Google has updated the stable channel of Chrome for Android to Chrome 26, which offers two new syncing features designed to save you a bit of time on mobile devices.

You can grab the latest version of Chrome for Android from the Google Play Store.

This release has two noteworthy features — password syncing and form autofill syncing. Keeping track of passwords is a pain and let’s face it, most mobile password managers leave much to be desired. With the new Chrome for Android you can sync and access your saved passwords across devices.

Even if you prefer not to have Chrome store your passwords for you, the form autofill syncing is equally handy — especially given how tedious it can be to fill out forms using your mobile device’s tiny keyboard.

Like all of Chrome’s syncing features, you’ll need to be signed into your Google account to use the new password and autofill sync.

This release also fixed a few bugs and offers some modest performance and stability improvements. For more details, see the Chrome blog.

‘Servo,’ bring Firefox into the massive, parallel future. Image: Andreas Levers/Flickr

Mozilla wants future versions of Firefox to be able to “take advantage of tomorrow’s faster, multi-core, heterogeneous computing architectures,” writes Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich on the company’s blog. To make that happen Mozilla is developing a new browser engine dubbed Servo.

While Servo is likely several years from being a finished product, it’s an important step in the direction of faster browsers and more capable web apps. Right now you can throw all the cores you want at Firefox, but sadly it won’t be any faster because it isn’t threaded. Servo will help Mozilla build a multi-threaded version of Firefox that will not just speed up the browser, but could enable a whole new class of web apps.

Samsung’s involvement in the project also hints at another reason for Servo — a more powerful engine behind Mozilla’s mobile Firefox OS.

Servo is not an extension of Gecko, Firefox’s current rendering engine, but an entirely new beast written specifically to take advantage of modern, massively parallel processing hardware.

Servo is written in Mozilla’s homegrown Rust programming language, a C++ style language that attempts to provide more security by avoiding memory corruption and buffer overflows, a common attack vector in today’s browsers. Eich calls Rust “safe by default” and says that Rust will stop “entire classes of memory management errors”, helping to eliminate a common cause of not just security flaws, but browser crashes.

As part of the announcement Mozilla has released Rust 0.6, which contains code contributed by Samsung in its effort to port Rust to ARM processors and Android. For more on Rust, check out the project’s website and FAQ or browse the code on GitHub.

It’s going to be a little while, but in a not too distant future Servo may bring a speedy new Firefox to a tablet or phone near you.

Most likely you’ll go your way and I’ll go mine. Image: sacks08/Flickr

Google has announced it is forking the WebKit rendering engine to create Blink, a new rendering engine for all Chromium-based web browsers — notably Chrome, Chromium, Opera and their mobile counterparts.

Blink will make its web debut in Chrome 28 (and Opera 14). Based on Google’s Blink FAQ and initial announcement, expect Blink to diverge significantly from the WebKit project.

That means web developers will soon be back to testing their sites in both Chrome and Safari. Of course, as has been pointed out in the past, there have always been enough significant differences between the two that you should have been testing in both anyway.

Among the good news in the announcement is Google’s decision to not use CSS prefixes for new features. Instead Blink will follow Firefox’s lead and use flags to enable experimental features. That means developers can test and use new features by setting the appropriate flag in about:flags. Blink will carry over support for all currently existing -webkit- prefixes, but will be removing the prefixed features in favor of the unprefixed rules as soon as it is safe to do so.

The other good news is that there are once again four major rendering engines on the web.

As much as web developers might like to see the web have a single rendering engine that all browsers use, that sort of monoculture doesn’t lead to a healthy web. It’s interesting to note that Google’s fork appears to be motivated by this very problem, albeit from a browser maker’s angle — the sheer number of projects using WebKit meant development wasn’t moving fast enough for Google.

Adam Barth, Software Engineer at Google, writes on the Chromium blog that Google’s decision to fork WebKit was “not an easy decision.” But Google believes that “having multiple rendering engines — similar to having multiple browsers — will spur innovation and over time improve the health of the entire open web ecosystem.”

Google has outlined a new policy regarding experimental new features that differs significantly from WebKit’s here’s-a-new-feature-just-ship-it policy. Blink will instead limit new features to those that have at least been proposed as standards and preferably already have at least one other implementation. In those cases where WebKit is the source of a new feature, Google has pledged to “propose an editor’s draft (or equivalent) to the relevant standards group” and “discuss the feature publicly with implementers of other browser engines.”

For web developers little will likely change in the sort term. The first browsers with Blink at their core will not be on the web for some months and when they do arrive they will at first differ little from WebKit. The longer term picture will likely look pretty much like the web before Opera killed off its Presto rendering engine last month — four major browsers with minor differences between them that require testing to ensure total support.

There’s also the question of what happens to the WebKit project. Google has been one of the driving forces behind WebKit for some time. Now those contributions are gone and it’s up to other WebKit supporters — Apple, BlackBerry and Samsung, among others — to pick up the slack (with Samsung joining in Mozilla’s next-gen rendering engine project it’s unclear exactly how much commitment Samsung has to WebKit).

For more background on the Blink announcement, see Google’s FAQ. For one of the best all-around, unbiased looks at what Blink means for the web, see Peter-Paul Koch’s write-up over on the QuirksMode blog.

Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey.

To go along with the desktop release of Firefox 20, Mozilla has updated Firefox for Android.

The latest version of Firefox for Android is available in the Google Play Store.

Like its desktop cousin, Firefox for Android features a new per-window private browsing mode, which makes it easier to log in to two separate accounts for the same service at the same time — think Gmail for home and work, or personal and work Twitter accounts.

In addition to the new features found in the desktop release, Firefox 20 for Android offers a number of small fixes that improve the mobile interface. For example, the virtual keyboard no longer automatically comes up when you view your bookmarks, making it possible to see more of your actual bookmarks (if you tap the search field, then the keyboard will come up). The Top Sites list in your about:home page is now customizable.

Less welcome, the ‘Quit’ menu item has been removed from Firefox versions running on Ice Cream Sandwich and higher. That’s in keeping with Android platform conventions, but if you used the Quit menu regularly, it’s annoying. Fortunately the QuitNow add-on more or less covers the same ground.

Mozilla also continues to bring features to older versions of Android, adding support for H.264 video and AAC/MP3 audio hardware decoders to phones running Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

For more details on everything that’s new in Firefox 20 for Android, be sure to check out Mozilla’s release notes.

Firefox 20 offers an easier way to avoid prying eyes. Image: Andy Roberts/Flickr

Mozilla turned 15 this week and the company is celebrating with a new release of its flagship Firefox web browser.

If you’re already using Firefox the latest version should arrive shortly. If you’d like to take the latest release for a spin, head on over to Mozilla’s download page.

Among the new features in Firefox 20 is a revamped per-window private browsing mode. The new private browsing mode mirrors what you’ll find in Google’s Chrome browser and is really how Firefox’s private browsing mode should have been all along.

Now when you want to start a private browsing session in Firefox you simply select the new “New Private Window” menu option. That will open a new window noting that Firefox will discard any history, search history, download history, web form history, cookies, or temporary internet files for sites you visit in that window. Any files you download and pages you bookmark will be kept.

The new per-window model is much more intuitive than the old method of private browsing which put your normal browsing session on hold, hid it away somewhere and opened a new, private session. Now it’s easy to have private windows right alongside normal windows, very handy for those who, for example, need to log in to two different Gmail accounts simultaneously.

The other major visible change in Firefox 20 is the redesigned downloads window. Mozilla proposed the new download toolbar button and overlay window design so long ago that Apple’s Safari browser has already long since copied and released its own version.

While Firefox might not be the first to get its proposed downloads interface to the web, it’s welcome nonetheless and alleviates the need to cycle through windows or hit keyboard shortcuts just to see if your downloads are done. The button also helpfully converts to a progress bar when you’re actually downloading something.

To see additional info beyond what’s available in the new overlay, just click the “show all downloads” button at the bottom of the list.

One interesting aspect of the new “Show All Downloads” window is that you may discover your history of downloaded files is larger than you think. If you’ve been clearing your download history by clicking the “Clear List” button in the old downloads window, well, that button was quite literal — it just cleared the list. It didn’t actually remove anything from your downloads history. This can be incredibly good news if you’ve misplaced a file or slightly disconcerting if you thought you were deleting references to any sensitive files you may have downloaded. To really clear your downloads be sure to use Firefox’s “Clear Recent History” menu, which has an option to actually delete everything in your download history.

It’s also worth noting that the new downloads manager works with the private browsing mode as well. You can manage downloads within private windows via a separate downloads interface which is then scrubbed when the private session is closed.

For more details on everything that’s new in the revamped download dialog, read through Firefox developer Mike Conley’s post on the new download manager.

Firefox 20 has a few goodies under the hood for web developers, including support for WebRTC‘s getUserMedia API, which allows developers to access the user’s camera and microphone (with permission) for things like Skype-style video calls. The stable release of Firefox still doesn’t offer full support for WebRTC, but future releases will continue to add more features over time.

For more details on everything that’s new in Firefox 20 — including some speed improvements for page loads and downloads — see Mozilla’s release notes.

Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

Microsoft has updated its modern.IE website with some new tools for testing sites in IE 10 and earlier versions of Internet Explorer.

Launched earlier this year, modern.IE aims to simplify the sometimes arduous process of getting websites to work in older versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. The site also serves to promote web standards and help developers avoid mistakes like only supporting WebKit browsers — roughly the modern equivalent of the regrettable “works best in IE6″ websites of 2001.

Today’s updates for modern.IE address the most common user suggestions and include some new virtual machines for testing IE10 on Windows 7 and IE8 on Windows XP, better results from the site scanner (which now handles URLs behind a firewall) and some more translations.

The big news for Mac developers though is that Microsoft is offering a limited number of “Windows QuickStart kits” for Mac — which consist of Parallels Desktop 8 and Windows 8 on a USB stick — in exchange for a $25 donation to charity (plus $8 shipping). That’s a pretty awesome deal and as of this writing the site has slowed to a crawl, presumably under the heavy load of interested developers.

Microsoft has also announced a new partnership with the Webby Awards to create the new Webby Award Winners Gallery and Archive. The site showcases Webby nominees and winners all the way back to 1997. The design is responsive and takes advantage of some IE 10-only features, like touch events, but it works in all modern browsers as well.

Amazon’s desktop-centric Cloud Drive syncing. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey

Amazon has quietly joined the ranks of cloud-based file syncing services like Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft’s SkyDrive. The company’s Amazon Cloud Drive — previously limited to a rather primitive web-based interface — now offers desktop file syncing tools like those found in Dropbox.

To test out the new Cloud Drive syncing, grab the new desktop app for Windows or OS X (sorry Linux fans, currently there is no desktop client for Linux).

Once you’ve installed the new Cloud Drive app, you’ll find a new folder on your drive — drop whichever files you’d like to sync into that folder and they’ll automatically be sent to Amazon’s servers. You’ll then have access to them on any computer with Cloud Drive installed and through the Cloud Drive web interface, though what you can do with files in the web interface is extremely limited.

It’s worth noting that the Cloud Drive app requires Java. As our friends at Ars Technica point out, that means users with newer Macs will be prompted to install Java as well (the Windows app comes with Java bundled).

There’s also no mobile apps for any platform (there is an Android Photo app, but all it does is send photos from your phone to Cloud Drive). In fact, while Cloud Drive will sync files between desktops, beyond that there isn’t much to see yet.

Part of the appeal of any web-based sync tool is ubiquitous access, not just via the web but in your favorite mobile apps as well and in that space Dropbox clearly has a huge lead over Cloud Drive.

Amazon offers 5GB of Cloud Drive storage for free, with additional storage available at roughly $.50/GB, which is down from the $1/GB price back when Cloud Drive first launched. That’s on par with SkyDrive’s pricing and roughly half the price of Dropbox. In this case though — at least right now — you get what you pay for. Amazon has the makings of a Dropbox competitor but it still has a lot of catching up to do.

Look Ma, no floats! Image: Abobe

While it’s possible to create amazingly complex layouts using tools like CSS floats, positioning rules and the odd bit of JavaScript, none of those tools were actually created explicitly for laying out content, which is why it’s amazingly complex to get them working the way you want across browsers.

Soon, however, you’ll be able to throw out your floats and embrace a better way — the CSS Flexible Box Model, better known as simply Flexbox. Flexbox enables you to create complex layouts with only a few lines of code — no more floats and “clearfix” hacks.

Perhaps even more powerful — especially for those building responsive websites — the Flexbox order property allows you to create layouts completely independent of the HTML source order. Want the footer at the top of the page for some reason? No problem, just set your footer CSS to order: 1;. Flexbox also makes it possible to do vertical centering. Finally.

We’ve looked at Flexbox in the past, but, unfortunately the spec has undergone a serious re-write since then, which renders older code obsolete. If you’d like to get up to speed with the new syntax, the Adobe Developer Blog recently published a guide to working with Flexbox by developer Steven Bradley.

Bradley walks through the process of using Flexbox in both mobile and desktop layouts, rearranging source order and elements to get both layouts working with a fraction of the code it would take to do the same using floats and other, older layout tools. The best way to wrap your head around Flexbox is to see it in action, so be sure to follow the links to Bradley’s demo page using either Chrome, Opera or Firefox 20+.

For some it may still be too early to use Flexbox. Browser support is improving, but obviously older browsers will never support Flexbox, so bear that in mind. Opera 12 supports the new syntax, no prefix necessary. Chrome supports the new syntax, but needs the -webkit prefix. Like Opera, Firefox 20+ Firefox 22 supports the unprefixed version of the new spec. Prior to v22 (currently in the beta channel), Firefox supports the old syntax. IE 10 supports the older Flexbox syntax. Most mobile browsers support the older syntax, though that is starting to change. [Update: Mozilla developer Daniel Holbert, who is working on the Flexbox code in Firefox, wrote to let me know that the Flexbox support has been pushed back to Firefox 22. Actually the new Flexbox syntax is part of Firefox 20 and up, but until v22 arrives it's disabled by default. You can turn it on by heading to about:config and searching for layout.css.flexbox.enabled pref. Set it to true and the modern syntax will work.]

So, as of this writing, only two web browsers really support the new Flexbox syntax, though Firefox will make that three in the next month or so.

But there is a way to work around some of the issues. First off, check out Chris Coyier’s article on mixing the old and new syntaxes to get the widest possible browser support. Coyier’s methods will get your Flexbox layouts working in pretty much everything but IE 9 and below.

If you’re working on a personal site that might be okay — IE 9 and below would just get a simplified, linear layout. Or you could serve an extra stylesheet with some floats to older versions of IE (or use targeted CSS classes if you prefer). That defeats some of the benefits of Flexbox since you’ll be writing floats and the like for IE, but when usage drops off you can just dump that code and help move your site, and the web, forward.

Unreal 3 engine in Firefox.
Screenshot: Webmonkey.

Mozilla has partnered with Epic Games to bring the Unreal 3 gaming engine to the web. The result is a high-end gaming engine that could change the way you think of web-based games.

The Unreal 3 engine has previously been ported to Flash, but this is the first time a plugin-free (and therefore mobile-friendly) version has been built for the web.

Mozilla is hoping this project will help turn the web into a more serious gaming platform capable of running top-tier console titles.

Combining WebGL, Emscripten, a tool for compiling C++ apps into JavaScript, and the brand new asm.js, Unreal 3 for the web can, according to Mozilla, “rival native performance.”

While the Unreal 3 port is incredibly cool, there are still some stumbling blocks on the path to the web as a top-tier gaming platform, not the least of which is that load times for most games would be massive. Think hours, not minutes, to stream the complex graphics from a server to your mobile device — probably not something anyone particularly wants to sit through.

In other words, while Mozilla and Epic have made some impressive progress bringing Unreal 3 to JavaScript, it’s still going to be a while before you’re playing your favorite console games on the web.

However, Mozilla says it is “working with premium game publishers such as Disney, EA and ZeptoLab who are using the same technology to bring performance optimizations to their top-rated games.” The company is also hoping other browsers will make it possible to run the Unreal engine in their own JavaScript engines. The Chromium project is already discussing just how to do it.

For more on the project and to catch a glimpse of Unreal 3 running in the browser, check out the video below.