Author: Arpit Kumar

The reality of Browser Ballot Screen

Windows 7 Browser Ballot Screen went live for European Union, and as expected Microsoft is not ready to lose the game so easily. Microsoft is tracking user clicks and the algorithm to decide random appearance of browsers is also being criticized.

Now, Download Squad has revealed another fact about Browser ballot screen: 5 out of 7 ’secondary’ browsers featuring in ballot screen use Microsoft’s Trident rendering engine! A comment posted by richquick in a forum has attracted attention towards this fact. Avant, Green Browser, Maxton, Slim and Sleipnir use the Trident engine, and hence 6 (including IE) out of 12 (i.e.; 50%) browsers provided through the Browser ballot screen are powered by Microsoft technology.

Firefox, Flock and K-Melon run on Gecko, the open source browser rendering engine developed by Mozilla. Moreover, Sleipnir provides an option to switch to Gecko, and Maxthon is planning to support WebKit in future.

Adblock Plus is the Best Open Source Firefox add-on

Firefox add-on Adblock Plus is the most essential tool to browse internet safely. Recently , Adblock Plus has been awarded the Linux Media Award for the best open source Firefox extension. Congratulations to Wladimir Palant!

Google Chrome gets Geolocation capabilities

Google Chrome dev channel has integrated geolocation APIs. It will help “location-aware” websites to track visitor’s geographical information and serve content accordingly.

Firefox Personas Are Coming To AMO Soon

Mozilla has decide to upgrade Personas by migrating the entire gallery to addons.mozilla.org (AMO). Moving to the AMO will integrate Personas with the Firefox ecosystem to a greater extent. Featuring in AMO will enable many existing AMO features with the Personas; like ratings and reviews, usage statistics, designer profiles for developers, support for more languages, tagging and searching etc.

Mozilla is also planning to add more new features to the Personas, like:

• Theme capability
• Dynamic Personas
• Personas for subwindows
• Self hosted Personas, similar to recently introduced “Self hosted Add-ons”

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Browser Saturday: Firefox In Technology of the Decade, Arora is Alive, Chrome Flash Extension and MS Browser Ballot
• Microsoft Tracking User Browser Choices In Browser Ballot Screen
• Windows 7 Browser Ballot Screen Goes Live, Lobbyists Want To Take It Global
• JaegerMonkey, Opera 10.5 Beta, Mozilla Ubiquity And 3 New Chrome Extensions [Browser Saturday]
• EU Drops Anti-trust Complaint Against Microsoft: Microsoft Agrees To Bundle Up To 12 Alternative Browsers With Windows

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Welcome again to our weekly column Browser Saturday, where the Techie Buzz team will try to aggregate the latest innovations and updates around the browser world. Check the previous post here.

Mozilla Developers Working On A New JavaScript Optimizer: JaegerMonkey

Mozilla developers are now working on a new JavaScript optimizer for Mozilla based browsers like Firefox. This new project, named JaegerMonkey (or JägerMonkey), will replace Mozilla’s current JavaScript optimizer TraceMonkey. JaegerMonkey will have the features of TraceMonkey and Nitro (WebKit’s JavaScript engine) both.

Developers Dave Mandelin and David Anderson have blogged about this project. David writes:

Mozilla’s JavaScript optimizer, TraceMonkey, is pretty powerful. It carefully observes loops and converts them to super-fast assembly. We call this “tracing”. That’s great and all, but there’s a problem: sometimes tracing doesn’t work. Loops can throw curveballs that cause tracing to stop. Especially with recursion, or lots of nesting, it can be very difficult to build good traces on complex code. Other JavaScript engines, such as Nitro (present in WebKit/Safari), take a simpler approach. Instead of compiling loops to assembly, they compile entire methods (functions) to assembly.

We’re taking the tried-and-true approach of other vendors, and bolting trace compilation on top. Once the two are interacting seamlessly, you’ll have a much more consistent – and fast – JavaScript performance experience.

This project is in the initial phase at the moment, and the team is very excited about it. After its implementation, Mozilla based browsers will have super fast JavaScript rendering speed, similar to WebKit based browsers.

Opera 10.50 Beta For Windows And Mac

Opera 10.5 Beta for Mac platform has been released. This release includes some exciting features like Growl notifications, unified tool bar and Multi-touch gestures. The Opera team has also released 10.5 beta 2 for Windows.

Where is Mozilla Ubiquity?

Erez Zukerman of DownloadSquad has posted about the current development status of Mozilla Ubiquity.  This post was widely discussed among developers, and finally Aza Raskin, the head of User Experience for Mozilla Labs, has replied Erek’s post. Raskin writes on his blog:

Ubiquity is currently on the back burner, with the core Ubiquity people now working on Jetpack (myself and Atul Varma) and Test Pilot (Jono Xia). In the next couple of months I will be focusing on a new project that incorporates some of the learnings from Ubiquity and Taskfox.

Surprisingly, this post has been removed from Raskin’s blog (though accessible using Google cache). The homepage of Ubiquity project at Mozilla Labs has been updated now, and discusses the current status of Ubiquity: The purpose of an experiment is to learn something – not necessarily to make a product.

3 New & Useful Chrome Extensions – try them now!

1. SEO Site Tools: A useful extension for web professionals. Pulls tons of on-page and off-page metrics, social media stats etc. for any site.
2. Skeet: A brand new Chrome extension for twitter users. Attractive and simple UI, feels like Twhirl!!
3. Chrome Lock: This extension claims to lock Google Chrome, and hence it prevents unauthorized use of the browser when you are not at your desk. Users can set their password to unlock the browser. Unfortunately, it is not working at my end (Windows, 5.0.335.0 build 39559), but many users have posted positive reviews.

Also Check: Best Chrome Extensions You Should Definitely Download

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Mozilla JaegerMonkey – Bringing Speed Back To Firefox
• Browser Saturday: Firefox In Technology of the Decade, Arora is Alive, Chrome Flash Extension and MS Browser Ballot
• Chrome for Mac Beta Adds Extensions and Bookmark Sync Support
• How to Enable Opera-Like Smooth Scrolling In Google Chrome [Extensions]
• Opera 10.5 Beta Released – Claims to Usher In a New Era of Browser Speed

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Firefox’s Private Browsing Mode enables users to browse the web privately. It empowers users to surf websites without storing browsing data (URLs, cookies, page content etc.). But, now Mozilla has discovered that Private Browsing Mode (PBM) in Firefox is partially broken, and browsing data get stored even if a user has enabled PBM.

According to a blog post on official Mozilla Add-ons blog, this flaw generates because of Firefox Add-ons:

Add-ons have the ability to obtain and store browsing data, and some of these add-ons may not be taking PBM into account. This is a breach of the user’s privacy expectations when using PBM, so we will be updating our policies shortly, requiring add-ons to respect PBM.

Mozilla has announced to update user privacy policies soon. To overcome this problem, Mozilla has planned two different “levels” of privacy support:

• If an add-on stores browsing data in any way, it must support PBM. This support cannot be disabled in any way.
• If an add-on stores some other type of personal data, support for PBM is optional.

In the referred blog post, Mozilla has suggested add-on developers to ensure PBM support for their add-ons. This is another issue discovered with Firefox add-ons recently. Few weeks ago, two experimental add-ons were found to be infected with trojans. Although, later Mozilla informed that these reports were false.

Moreover, Google Chrome disables all extensions in PBM (incognito mode).

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Toggle Private Browsing In Firefox 3.1
• OperaTor Brings Private Browsing Mode To Opera Lovers
• Firefox 3.1 to Include Private aka Porn Mode
• Stealther Adds Private Mode Surfing to Firefox
• How to Start Private Browsing Session in Google Chrome?

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Welcome to the first post of our new weekly column Browser Saturday, where the Techie Buzz team will try to aggregate latest innovations and updates around the browser world.

Firefox is one of the 25 Technologies that changed the decade

The eWeek.com has listed Firefox among the 25 technologies that changed the decade. Firefox is at 9th place. eWeek says:

Just a few years ago, the future of the Web and the browser looked bleak. Internet Explorer dominated the market, and Microsoft wasn’t interested in browser innovation. But when Mozilla released Firefox, we finally got real browser choice and innovation.

Firefox is the only software product in Top 10. OpenOffice.org, Gmail, Ajax and iPhone are the other names in the list.

Arora is not DEAD!!

Arora is a light-weight cross-platform WebKit based browser, which comes with a unique feature: built-in Ad blocker. I personally appreciate Arora (& it is my alternate browser!). Unfortunately, the development process is too slow and users were suspecting if the project has been abandoned. But Benjamin Meyer, the main developer behind Arora, recently responded to a mail thread and explained his future plans. Meyer told:

I did suspend my own development for several months while I determined if I could actually work on Arora and related libraries at my new place of employment (My old company TorchMobile was bought by RIM).  At the end of the summer there was a ton of development mostly by me trying to get the adblock stuff in.  Going from that to nothing doesn’t look good in retrospect.   More recently I have been reviewing various patches and some have gone in.  I will be making another release in the near future.

Another Chrome Extension To Download Flash Videos in official gallery. Will Google remove it too?

Flash Video Download is a new extension for Google Chrome. It enables users to download flash videos from the sites like dailymotion and YouTube. The extension is hosted in the official Chrome extension gallery (owned by Google). In past, Google had removed such extensions from gallery because such extensions violate gallery policies to not create extensions that enable the unauthorized download of streaming content or media.

Interestingly, now there are many similar extensions featuring in gallery (another here). Will Google remove these extensions again?

Microsoft reveals browser ballot screen

Microsoft has revealed the browser ballot screen, which will be available to Windows users in EU soon. Download Squad reports that the rollout begins from the next week.

Techie Buzz has already told users about EU’s anti-trust complaint against Microsoft.

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Google Chrome Adds Extension Support to Stable Build
• Lastpass Extension for Google Chrome
• Google Chrome Extensions vs Firefox Add-ons: Head to Head Comparison
• Google Chrome Extensions Officially Open
• Sticky Notes Extension For Google Chrome

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