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Future Firefox to Bring PDF, WebCam Streams to the Browser

Scott Gilbertson — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:51:24 +0000

W.T. Monkey loves WebRTC. Image: Screenshot

Firefox 18 is out the door, which means Mozilla has bumped up all the pre-release channels, showcasing features coming soon to a final release near you.

If you’d like to try out a pre-release version of Firefox, head on over to Mozilla’s channel download page and grab either the Beta or Aurora releases. (The former is a bit more stable, but both are pre-release software so proceed with caution.)

The Beta channel contains Firefox 19, which is six weeks away from release and features a few modest improvements, including a baked-in PDF viewer based on PDF.js. It may not mean the end of those annoying (and untrue) buttons that say “you need Adobe Acrobat to view this file,” but at least you don’t, well, need Acrobat just to view a PDF.

The Aurora channel has been bumped up to Firefox 20, which contains a far more interesting new feature — support for capturing local camera and microphone streams with the getUserMedia API.

Here’s how Mozilla describes getUserMedia:

[getUserMedia] is a new HTML5 DOM API that allows the browser to capture local camera and/or microphone streams directly, and not through third party plugins. This means JavaScript developers can now quickly and easily write code to access the user’s camera or microphones (with the user’s permission, of course) without having to install anything because the support is already inside the browser.

There’s a demo page you can try out over on Mozilla’s GitHub page.

The getUserMedia API is just the first of several components that make up WebRTC, a set of APIs which enable real-time, interactive, peer-to-peer audio/video calls and data sharing. Two other pieces of the WebRTC puzzle — PeerConnection and DataChannels — can be found in the Firefox Nightly channel, for those who really enjoy living on the edge (you’ll still need to enable them in about:config, set the media.peerconnection.enabled option to true).

Firefox’s six week release cycle means that — barring unforeseen problems — the PDF viewer will arrive in final form sometime in early March, with the getUserMedia tools coming in mid April.

Aurora Preview Brings Faster ‘SPDY’ Protocol to Firefox

Scott Gilbertson — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:15:03 +0000

Mozilla recently pushed Firefox 11 out the door and onto the web, which means the Beta and Aurora channels for Firefox early adopters have also been updated.

If you’d like to try either early release, head over to the Beta download page or the Aurora download page, depending on how far out on the bleeding edge of Firefox development you want to go.

Firefox 12, currently in the beta channel, brings a handful of improvements, including some refinements for Firefox’s new built-in developer tools. The beta currently offers updated versions of the new Page Inspector, the Web Console panel and the JavaScript Scratchpad.

Much of what’s exciting about the Firefox roadmap is to be found in the Aurora channel, currently showcasing Firefox 13. Here you’ll find support for the new SPDY protocol — a faster alternative to HTTP — enabled by default. SPDY, which began life at Google, is in the early stages of the standardization process, but when it finally arrives it should make many webpages load twice as fast as they do now over HTTP. Currently not many websites are serving pages over SPDY, though Twitter recently started doing so where possible. On the browser side, Google Chrome already offers SPDY support, as does Firefox 11, though until Firefox 13 hits prime time, SPDY support is disabled by default.

Firefox 13 will see some significant changes for Firefox on Android, with support for multitouch events and a new screen orientation API.

The biggest news in Firefox 13 for developers is that Mozilla is changing the User Agent string to report the type of device — “Mobile” or “Tablet.” That means if you’re relying on a device detection script (and this is a reminder of why you probably shouldn’t be) it’s time to update your device list.

Firefox 13 will also drop the prefix from a couple of CSS elements, namely border-radius and box-shadow. Hopefully you’ve been following best practices and including the non-prefixed CSS rule along with your prefixed versions, otherwise Firefox 13 will stop rendering your rounded corners and drop shadows.

For more info on everything that’s coming in Firefox 13, read through the list of improvements over on the Mozilla Hacks Blog.

Beta Update: Firefox 8 Offers Smarter Tab Restore

Scott Gilbertson — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:28:29 +0000

The official release of Firefox is now at version 7, which means that all the other Firefox channels have also been bumped up. Nightly now sits at version 10, Aurora at 9 and Beta now contains Firefox 8, which has several new features worth noting, including more control over add-ons and the ability to limit which tabs load on restart.

If you’d like to give the beta channel a try, just head on over to the Firefox channels page and download the beta release. Those of you already on the beta channel should be updated to the latest version the next time you restart Firefox.

Perhaps the most useful new feature in Firefox 8 is the ability to selectively restore tabs. If you use a lot of tabs you know that closing the browser with dozens of tabs open, and then firing it up again the next day, makes for a very slow restart. You’re left waiting for all those tabs to reload when all you want to see is one of them.

That’s why Firefox 8 adds an option to change the way Firefox reloads tabs when it starts. Using the new setting you can tell Firefox to only load the focused tab when it restarts. That way the tab you want loads and you don’t need to wait for all the rest to finish. Background tabs then load when you select them.

To enable the new tab restore features, head to Firefox’s Preferences and look for it under the General tab.

Firefox 8 also gives you more control over add-ons installed by third-party software. Now any add-ons you don’t explicitly install are disabled until you opt-in. That stops less than scrupulous developers from hijacking Firefox without your knowledge.

The latest beta of Firefox adds some new developer features as well, like support for the HTML5 contextmenu attribute, a part of the menu element that allows developers to add items directly to the browser’s right-click menu. More details about what’s new for developers can be found on the Mozilla developer wiki.

Other new features in the beta channel include a new default search option for Twitter, some better animations when dragging tabs around and improved security for websockets, which were just recently re-enabled in Firefox 7.

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New IE9 Preview Arrives, Now With More JavaScript Power

Michael Calore — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:01:29 +0000

Internet Explorer 9 Beta on the Windows 7 desktop

Microsoft pushed out another preview release of Internet Explorer 9 Wednesday. This is not a new beta release — we’re still months away from the official release of Internet Explorer 9 — but we’re definitely approaching the finish line.

Wednesday’s release, dubbed Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 7 (whew) includes a big performance boost with a newly revamped JavaScript engine inside of it.

The last preview release of IE9, which only arrived a few weeks ago, saw increased support for web standards. But Microsoft made it clear to us during a phone briefing that Wednesday’s release is all about speed and performance.

To that point, PP7 contains an updated version of the Chakra JavaScript engine. This new engine for IE9 was first introduced at Microsoft’s PDC developer event in November 2009. During the last year, the company has been improving Chakra to the point where it’s now scoring over 300 percent higher on the WebKit SunSpider benchmark than it was at launch.

Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin from the IE team says the new release scores 234.6 ms on SunSpider’s JavaScript execution performance test. Read more about the testing stuff on the IE Blog.

While some browsers are certainly faster than others, the major browser vendors continue to tweak their internal workings and make small improvements to speed. JavaScript performance is particularly important, since modern web applications like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter rely heavily on scripted actions. A faster browser means a snappier web app. Just last week, Mozilla released a new beta of Firefox 4 that included revamped code for its JägerMonkey and TraceMonkey JavaScript engines.

You can download this early version of the next IE browser directly from Microsoft. It’s available for PCs running Windows 7 and Vista. Also, this platform preview can be installed alongside IE9 Beta or IE8 with no problems.

Once you grab it, head over to the company’s demo playground and put the new browser through the paces. Be sure to report your results in the comments.

The whole “beta” versus “preview” thing is totally confusing, we know. But it wouldn’t be a Microsoft release if the versioning convention didn’t make your head spin.

Microsoft debuted the first beta of Internet Explorer 9 in September. But Wednesday’s release is not a second beta, it’s the seventh platform preview. Beta releases are considered to be almost totally stable and are intended for a more general audience. Platform previews are on the bleeding edge, and may contain code that isn’t as thoroughly tested. So, this release is primarily aimed at developers.

IE9 Beta is doing spectacularly well, however — Microsoft says its beta release has been downloaded 13 million times since its release two months ago. It has also been receiving kudos for its expanded support of web standards like HTML5, CSS 3 and WOFF.

The next IE9 beta will arrive some time in the near future. After that, the browser will move to the release candidate stage.

Microsoft’s Gavin says the IE9 pre-releases “continue to be quality-driven” with no specific public roadmap.

“The rapid adoption and the feedback we’ve gotten from developers have put us on a very good path to a release candidate,” he says.

Though Microsoft wouldn’t comment on it, our best guess puts IE9′s final release sometime during the spring of 2011.

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Internet Explorer 9 Beta Drops. It’s Lean, Fast and Modern

Michael Calore — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:24:09 +0000

Internet Explorer 9 Beta on the Windows 7 desktop

Microsoft will release the first beta version of its new Internet Explorer web browser Wednesday morning.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be made available for download shortly after it is announced at a launch event in San Francisco, around 10:00am Pacific time. We’ll post a download link for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users as soon as we have one.

The final version of IE9 is still some months off — Microsoft wouldn’t commit to a definite time frame for the browser’s release when we asked. But we’ve spent a few days in IE9 Beta’s company, and so far, it has proven to be a thoroughly modern machine. The world’s most-sed browser is getting a new look, much expanded support for HTML5 and other 21st century web technologies, and a big speed boost.

Quite a change. Microsoft has a reputation for being an also-ran when it comes to browser innovation. When IE8 arrived in March 2009, we found it rich in features, but lacking in support for the emerging standards powering the shiny apps that make the web exciting. IE8 was faster and more secure than its predecessor, but when it came to speed and productivity, it wasn’t up to snuff with its peers — Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera. In fact, it was a bit of a snooze.

A year and a half on, Microsoft has smelled the coffee and is wide awake at the wheel. IE is fit to play in the same league as the other browsers.

Keep in mind, IE9 Beta is still pre-release code, so it may not run perfectly. But there’s enough new going on here — especially that speed boost — to make the download a must for the curious who want a taste of IE’s future.

A new look

The most striking difference between this browser release and the IEs of old is the new user interface. It’s sleek and minimal, and — what are those? — it now has the inverted top-tabs, which are quickly becoming common.

We first caught wind of this design change when a screenshot of the new IE9 leaked onto the web. It decreases the amount of real estate the browser consumes on screen and makes way for more content.

Another shot of IE9 Beta. Click for larger.

“The browser is the stage and the backdrop, but the website is the star of the show,” Microsoft general manager of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch tells Wired. “We think the browser should totally take a back seat to the sites.”

Freeing up those extra pixels with a minimal top bar is a path others in the industry are taking. Chrome shipped with the tabs-on-top look two years ago, Mozilla has adopted it for Firefox 4, and Safari has flirted with in the past. Opera offers a few different choices for where to put your tabs.

Other notable details: a unified search and URL bar (a la Google Chrome) where you can get search suggestions as you type. Bing is the default, but you can add Google, Wikipedia or a host of other engines. There’s also an enlarged back button, (a la Firefox) and a noticeable lack of menu items in the main bar. Something else new in IE9 is the New Tab window with thumbnails of your most commonly-visited sites, which looks much like what you’ll find in Safari, Chrome and Opera. A nice addition here is a little bar in each thumbnail that shows how much time you’ve spent on each site.

The reason these same design themes (top-tabs, unified URL bar) keep showing up in all the browsers is that they just make sense from a usability standpoint. Designers use a constantly evolving visual language to suggest interactions. It’s no different than the way advertisers, filmmakers and visual artists borrow ideas from each other to trigger certain emotions and reactions in an audience.

So we can’t cry “copycat.” Plus, IE9 does offer some unique UI enhancements you won’t find elsewhere.

One is the new notification system — instead of a pop-up in the middle of the screen or at the top (“You need to install Flash!”), you see only a slim notification about as tall as your index finger slide up from the bottom of the screen.

But the coolest new innovation is the ability to “pin” a web page to your Windows taskbar.

Pinned sites

Instead of bookmarking a site, clicking the “favorite” star or dragging a favicon to the bookmarks bar — all of which you can still do, of course — you can drag the favicon to the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Once it’s there, the browser’s buttons will change color to match the color of the favicon, making the browser feel more like a site-specific tool than just an all-purpose piece of software.

“We’re saying ‘Look at the site!’ instead of ‘Look at the app,’” Hachamovitch says.

Something else happens in the taskbar that enhances this effect.

It works sort of like a Fluid app or a Prism app. Click on the favicon in the taskbar and the site launches in a new, single-tabbed window. Right-click on it and you get a jump list — a list of actions specific to that website like “Top Stories” or “Latest Photos”.

Hachamovitch says Microsoft is responding to users’ desire to go directly to a website from the desktop. He cites internal Microsoft data that shows only about ten percent of IE users actually launch sites from the bookmark bar. The rest type URLs or click a link somewhere on the deskop.

“We’ve spent fifteen years developing a browser UI, and nobody’s using it,” he says. “What actually gets used is the landscape around the browser.”

These action inside the jump lists can be defined by site developers, who can add whatever they want by adding some markup to their pages (We weren’t supplied with examples of this markup in time for Wednesday’s launch, but we’ll provide details as soon as we can). There are also default actions to close the window and to start an In-Private browsing session, so if there’s no special markup added to the page, at least those will appear.

Performance

As we noted in the most recent preview releases, IE9 earns big points for performance improvements. It’s the same story with Wednesday’s beta.

IE9 Beta owes much of its speed boost to the new hardware acceleration features inside the browser. It passes off the most complex rendering tasks — animations, video, and heavily-styled text — to the graphics processor, and its new JavaScript engine (which Microsoft calls “Chakra”) is capable of using your PC’s extra processing cores to execute scripts on pages.

We first saw these hardware acceleration enhancements in the third preview release of IE9, and we’ve seen other browsers incorporating similar features recently, as well. Firefox 4, now in the beta stage but due in a month or two, has similar hardware acceleration features that tap into the same Windows 7 APIs that IE uses (Firefox’s extra hardware sauce is only available on Windows builds for now). Also, Google Chrome has begun including hardware acceleration for compositing in both Chrome 6 and Chrome 7 builds for Windows.

Since this is still a beta, we’re likely to see very close to the same level of performance when the browser ships. Between now and then, you may encounter some quirks and bugs.

The enhancements to the JavaScript engine were evident when I ran some of Microsoft’s official demos on its test drive site, as well as in the SunSpider benchmark suite. In real-world applications, like Gmail and Facebook, the browser’s speed and behavior was very close to what I normally see in Chrome and Firefox. There were a few things that didn’t work as advertised, like the chat windows in Gmail. They failed to minimize properly, preferring to dumbly blink when I clicked on them.

Developer’s tools are built in (just hit F12) if you want to dig into the DOM or measure performance.

Web standards

Internet Explorer 9′s support for both established and emerging web standards is sure to be sharply scrutinized. It’s an area where previous versions of IE have lagged considerably. For years, Microsoft was loathe to adopt support for unratified standards, considering them a moving target and thus a waste of time. As such, IE8 contained only partial support for HTML5 and newer CSS 3 components.

With IE9 Beta, we see a reversal of that stance. IE9 supports much of HTML5, and there’s a new parser to handle the new markup language. There’s support for native playback of audio and video files, and the Canvas element, with support for animated 2D polygons and text. HTML5 selection is supported, but not drag-and-drop or Microdata.

The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) standard is supported, and like other animation and media features in the browser, it can take advantage of hardware acceleration.

There’s finally real support for CSS 3 in this release — media queries, borders and backgrounds, selectors, the fonts module and the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) rich type standard, among other things.

Web standards support in IE9 isn’t perfect (who can claim that?), but it’s certainly admirable. Most importantly, IE9 is likely to be a boon for the web when the final version ships sometime in the coming months.

Once all the Windows 7 and Vista users out there update to the final version of IE9 — either manually or automatically — the web will begin its shift to a new era where the large majority of browsers can handle more complex graphics, behaviors and markup. Which is not to say the web won’t still be fractured and forked in various ways (vendor-specific capabilities will probably always be around), but the browser’s arrival will signal a much-needed step forward.

What’s next?

Internet Explorer 9 will arrive either later this year or early 2011 — Microsoft isn’t saying. And that brings up a danger point.

The number two and three browser vendors have all sped up their development cycles. Chrome is releasing new code every six to eight weeks, and Mozilla is committed to pushing out new Firefox releases every six months. Microsoft has made no mention of its intent to speed up its own browser release schedule, so it’s likely Internet Explorer 10 is a year or two off. Meanwhile, the competition will continue to deliver improvements at a pace that far outstrips Microsoft.

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Fourth Firefox 4 Beta Adds ‘Panorama,’ Hardware Acceleration

Scott Gilbertson — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:32:16 +0000

Mozilla has released the fourth beta for the upcoming Firefox 4 browser. The latest pre-release version of Firefox 4 brings several new features including a new tab-organization tool, hardware acceleration in Windows 7 and support for the HTML5 video-buffered property.

If you’d like to help Mozilla test beta 4, you can grab Firefox 4 beta 4 for all major operating systems (and more than 30 languages) from Mozilla’s beta download site.

The big news in beta 4 is the Panorama feature (it used to be called Tab Sets, and Tab Candy before that — hopefully this name sticks). We looked at in depth when it hit the nightly builds.

Panorama allows you to group and quickly switch between related clusters of open tabs. Designed for those of us over-stimulated freaks who frequently have dozens of tabs (or more) open at one time, Panorama allows you to conquer tab chaos: for example, grouping tabs for work together and tabs for fun together, and then quickly switching between groups.

The feature works a bit like multiple desktops in your operating system — a la Expose on Mac OS X — except in this case it’s just web pages inside a single browser window. Here’s a video by Firefox designer Aza Raskin showing the latest version of Panorama in action:

Firefox beta 4 also brings what’s fast becoming the new hotness in web browsers: hardware acceleration. Like graphics-intensive games, the idea behind hardware acceleration is to shift some of the work from your PC’s main processor to the graphics card, which will speed up page-rendering, particularly text and graphics. The coming Internet Explorer 9 and future versions of Google’s Chrome browser will both take advantage of hardware acceleration.

Firefox is planning to do the same, but, as Mozilla’s Mike Shaver recently posted on Twitter, the hardware-acceleration features are currently disabled by default in beta 4. If you’d like to see Firefox take advantage of Windows’ Direct2D interface — regardless of the bugs that may exist — Mozilla has some instructions on how to enable it in beta 4.

The Mozilla road map still calls for the hardware-acceleration features to make the final release of Firefox, which presumably means we’ll see at least one more beta before Firefox 4 moves to the release-candidate stage.

The latest beta also brings support for HTML5 video’s buffering property, which means Firefox can accurately determine which time segments of a native web video can be played without having to pause while more data downloads. The end result is that the progress bar appears nonlinear and makes it easy to determine which parts of the video are available.

If you’d like to know everything that’s new in Firefox 4 beta 4 since the release of Firefox 3.6, Mozilla has put together a handy list of new features (including a few that aren’t quite finished). The list is quite extensive, and Firefox 4 is shaping up to be one of the biggest updates in some time.

While Mozilla still does not have a firm release date, Firefox 4 is expected to arrive in final form some time before the end of 2010. We’re expecting it in late October or early November.

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Next Firefox 4 Beta Arrives, Now With Multi-touch

Michael Calore — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 18:45:48 +0000

Mozilla has released the latest beta version of its Firefox 4 browser. You can grab Firefox 4 beta 3 for all major operating systems and over 30 languages from Mozilla’s beta download site.

The big addition to this beta is support for touch events inside the browser on Windows 7 machines. Windows 7 ships with built-in support for multi-touch actions on touchscreen tablets, desktops and laptops, and now Firefox is able to access that magic and let you interact with websites by touching them. The result is stuff like this:

Also new to this release is an enhancement to the JavaScript capabilities within Firefox. If you’ve been keeping up with all the latest JavaScript and HTML5 web app demos we’ve been showing you over the last few months, you’ve probably noticed that animations with many moving parts tend to be much smoother and faster in Chrome and Safari. This new version of Firefox gives scripted animation performance a significant boost, so the speed difference is less noticeable.

These new features join the enhancements already introduced in previous pre-release versions of Firefox 4, like the new tabs-on-top interface and the addition of App Tabs.

The tabs-on-top setting can be toggled in the browser's View menu.

The move to tabs-on-top is a growing trend among browser vendors. Chrome and Opera do it, and Safari has flirted with the look. While some within the Firefox user community fear Mozilla is making the switch just to chase the latest design fad, the change is less about a trend and more about the evolution of the web as a platform — these UI tweaks turn the tab bar into something much closer to a dock or a task bar.

Keep in mind, Firefox 4 is still a pre-release browser, and it may not be entirely stable. But it should be stable enough for daily use, and it will give you a heads up on all the new goodies on the way when Firefox 4 is officially released this October or November.

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Second Beta Release of Firefox 4 Arrives

Michael Calore — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:24:06 +0000

The second beta release of the next version of Firefox is now available.

Download Firefox 4 Beta 2 from Mozilla and test it out. Windows, Mac OS X and Linux builds are available in multiple languages. We were originally expecting it to arrive last Friday, but the release was delayed a few days for quality assurance testing.

Keep in mind, this is a pre-release version of the browser, and it may not be entirely stable. But it should be stable enough for daily use, and it will give you a heads up on all the new goodies coming in Firefox 4 when it’s officially released this fall.

Tuesday’s release has a number of new features, including support for CSS 3 transitions, better handling of retained layers on pages and a new feature in the add-ons manager that confirms when an add-on has been installed. There are also the requisite performance boosts and stability improvements, so if you’re running beta 1, definitely consider upgrading.

The feature sure to generate the most chatter is something new for Mac OS X users: a new tabs-on-top interface. Windows users got the tabs-on-top look as the default interface in beta 1 earlier this month. With beta 2, the change arrives on Macs. The new beta also enables App Tabs, a similar concept that lets you miniaturize the tabs for common web apps — e-mail, your calendar or other apps you use multiple times a day — and store them in the tab bar for quick access.

The tabs-on-top setting on Mac OS X can be toggled in the browser's View menu.

The move to tabs-on-top is a growing trend among browser vendors. It was popularized by Google Chrome, which has shipped with top tabs as the default since its birth two years ago. Reaction has been mixed — Opera now puts the tabs on top, and Safari tried the same thing in a beta release thing before abandoning it. And there are some within the Firefox user community who fear Mozilla is making the switch just to chase the latest design fad.

Mozilla’s lead user experience designer Alex Faaborg defends the decision, saying it has nothing to do with fashion. By putting the tabs on top, he says, Firefox 4 will be better equipped to run web applications that sit in their own tab.

These UI tweaks turn the tab bar into something much closer to a dock or a task bar — a fitting change, since the browser is becoming something much closer to a GUI for an operating system. Of course, if you don’t like your tabs up top, you can always choose the old look in the browser’s View menu.

The final browser is expected in October or November, and you can read our preview of Firefox 4 on Webmonkey.

Illustration at the top courtesy of Mozilla.

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Google Chrome 6 Beta Is Right Around the Corner

Michael Calore — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:45:55 +0000

The beta version of Google’s next browser is expected to ship soon, as the developer-channel release of Chrome 6 has just seen a code freeze. This is the point at which new features stop being added, and everything that’s already in the browser gets inspected, tested and tightened. We should expect Chrome 6 Beta within a few weeks.

Google’s browser is in an enviable position right now. It recently passed Safari in user share (according to StatsCounter) and it’s gaining on Firefox and IE. Also, in a market where raw speed is the most important metric, Chrome is enjoying a solid reputation as the one of the fastest — if not the fastest — browser on the scene.

Let’s take a look at what’s coming in Google Chrome 6 Beta. We downloaded the most recent dev-channel release of Chrome (6.0.466.4 on a Mac) to test all these new features.

New checkboxes in the syncing panel

Extension syncing — Google Chrome already lets you sync bookmarks and themes across multiple installations. Likewise, you can set up two or more instances of Chrome to run the same extensions. Read our previous coverage of this new feature. [An earlier version of this post inaccurately stated that history syncing was coming to Chrome 6, and it is not -- apologies for the oversight, and thanks to reader Martey for pointing it out]

New menu button — Chrome has consolidated the menu button to the right of the URL bar. There used to be a Tool button and a Page button, but now it’s just a Tool button, and it contains the browser’s most-used menu functions. It exhibits similarities — functionally, not visually — to Firefox 4′s new Firefox Button.

Native PDF integration — Chrome 5 added built-in support for Adobe Flash, and version 6 adds similar support for PDFs. An in-browser PDF viewer will ship with the next browser. PDFs can be viewed, searched and navigated in a tab, just like a web page. The PDF experience is also sandboxed like any other app, keeping things secure. Printing isn’t quite there yet. If you’re running the dev-channel release, type about:plugins into the URL field to enable the Chrome PDF viewer.

UI changes — Aside from the new menu button, some additional polish has been applied to Chrome’s chrome. There’s a new green padlock icon in the URL bar to indicate a secure HTTPS connection, slight changes to default skin, and a less cluttered new tab page.

New menu button

Some much-awaited features were left on the drawing board, such as full-screen HTML5 video playback and a tabs-on-the-side option.

The current dev-channel release also shows no sign of Google’s Native Client technology, or its Web App Store — the mechanisms you’ll eventually be able to use to find and install popular apps — and those created by third parties — in your browser.

Install a web app? Google explains: “An installed web app could be separated visually from other tabs, could integrate better with the OS, and could be granted increased permissions.” Installed apps would be able to discern your location, store data on your local machine and use your camera, among other things. The installed apps would sit in your tab bar at the top of Chrome, where they’d look and behave like bookmarked web pages. Firefox has seen this coming, too: The next version of Mozilla’s browser will move the tabs to the top.

This app-friendly shift is a natural progression for the browser. App stores for our iPads and smartphones are leading us towards a more app-centric world, and advances in HTML5 and JavaScript have led to web apps that look and behave more like single-serving native applications. As the internet becomes a full-blown operating system — flush with APIs, storage clouds, public databases, connected sensors and ubiquitous Wi-Fi access points– the web browser is in a position to become the desktop for that operating system.

To get an early peek at installable Google apps, you’ll have to jump through some hoops of fire. Google Operating System has some instructions for the brave.

[Hat tip to Stephen Shankland, who noted the version 6 code freeze on CNET's Deep Tech blog. There you'll also find a comprehensive list of what Google left out of this beta cycle].

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Firefox 4 Beta 1 Now Available for Download

Michael Calore — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:57:49 +0000

The next major milestone of the Firefox browser has been released into the wild.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. We were expecting it last week, as Mozilla had initially estimated the first beta would be available in June, but it’s here now. This release is for the adventurous only — it’s the first beta so it’s stable enough, but not rock-solid. So, if you’re eager to get an early peek at the next generation of Firefox, go forth and download.

The thing that probably matters most to everyday users is speed, and after using it for an hour or so, I can report that Firefox 4 is noticeably much faster than the various 3.x builds on my desktop.

Page load times are speeding up substantially across all the browsers now — Chrome and Safari recently received upgrades with hefty speed boosts, the new Opera 10.6 is on par with those releases, and the new Microsoft IE 9, due later this year, is also showing off some impressive speed in its current release, Platform Preview 3. Speed is one area where Firefox has recently drawn low marks, with some users switching to Chrome simply because it’s so nimble. But Firefox 4 appears set to change that when the final version arrives in a few months.

We covered much of what’s new in our Firefox 4 preview in May, but there are two new features in Tuesday’s release.

First, there’s a new look for Windows users. Tabs are now on top by default (a la Chrome). Mac and Linux users will get this feature as a default in subsequent betas. If you want to try it now, just go to View > Toolbars > Tabs on Top to enable it. Windows users, you can switch the option off using the same method if it’s not your thing. Also new for Windows people is the orange “Firefox” button in the top left. Click it and you get a dropdown filled with the most popular application menu items.

The new Firefox button. Click for larger.

The other new feature — and this is for all OSes — is an integrated Feedback button next to the search box. Click it to report anything that Firefox did to “make you happy” or “make you sad” (Mozilla’s actual wording). The Feedback system incorporates the Test Pilot add-on from Mozilla Labs to collect and anonymize the feedback.

Other big stuff in this beta:

Support for WebM video
More support for emerging web standards like CSS 3, Canvas and Web Sockets
Better page-rendering performance, including a new HTML5 parser
Crash protection that prevents bad plug-ins from blowing up the whole browser
New add-ons manager
Recently updated Jetpack SDK for new-style lightweight add-ons

Syncing, hardware acceleration and new themes for Mac OS X and Linux are coming soon, probably in the next beta release. So stay tuned.

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