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The latest beta from Firefox introduces Panorama, a new tab-grouping feature that makes it much easier to manage tabs. See how to use it in this video.

Want to try it out for yourself? You can download Firefox 4 beta 4 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The current version of Firefox will likely be the end of the road for people using PowerPC Macs.

A final decision will be based on usage data that's better than what Mozilla possesses right now, but technical difficulties raised by Firefox 4 improvements mean at a minimum that it's a strong possibility only Intel-based Macs will be able to run the new browser.

"I am gathering data on the number of PPC users we have, but the likely outcome is that we will not be supporting PPC [PowerPC] for Firefox 4," said Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, in a mailing list posting on Tuesday.

Major changes are a fact of life in the computing industry, but it's never easy to decide when users of older technology should no longer be supported. Keeping new software compatible with old hardware--and conversely, making sure new hardware can run old software--can be an expensive proposition when there are few users of the older technology left.

But Mozilla's Firefox now is used by hundreds of millions of people, and even a small fraction of them can be a large number in absolute terms. It's a plight of widely used software; for comparison, Microsoft has extended the lifespan of Windows XP several times beyond its original plans.

Dropping support for older machines, of course, can make those with the machines angry. Mozilla faced disgruntlement when it decided to cut off Firefox support for Mac OS X 10.4 after version 3.6. Using an old browser also exposes people to security risks, though Mozilla maintains older Firefox incarnations for a time after new versions supplant them.

The writing has been on the wall for PowerPC Macs for more than five years. Apple announced in June 2005 it would move to Intel processors instead of the PowerPC models built by IBM and Motorola. The two processor families use different instruction sets, so programs written for one don't run on the other without significant work.

Why phase out support?
Beltzner pointed to two new features that make Firefox 4 on PowerPC difficult. First is out-of-process plug-ins, which moves software such as Adobe Systems' Flash Player to a separate memory region to protect the main browser from crashes. This feature arrived in Firefox 3.6 for Windows, but for Macs is coming with Firefox 4.

Second is the just-in-time compiler for Web-based JavaScript programs. Faster JavaScript is a key area in the browser market competition right now, since it speeds up many complex Web sites and helps Web developers build more complicated user interfaces. Firefox is pulling in technology used in Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, rival browsers based on the WebKit browser project, to help speed JavaScript.

"I believe that Firefox 4 should be relatively faster and superior to previous versions--so to be better than Firefox 3.6. Two of the significant mechanisms for performance improvement will not be available for PPC based computers, and so we are not planning on extending Firefox 4 support to those architectures," Beltzner said in another mailing list message.

It's possible a version of Firefox for PowerPC could be built without those features, he added--but it probably wouldn't be called "Firefox." "I suspect that we won't brand any of those builds as 'Firefox' though, but that would be a discussion with whomever wishes to publish those builds, as usual," he said. "Our goal is to deliver a consistent Firefox experience across platforms."

Beta schedule slip
Plans are changing for building the next test versions of Firefox.

Mozilla released Firefox 4 beta 4 Tuesday and had hoped to "freeze" the code base for beta 5 this Friday, a step that locks most development out as a new version of the software is built. This fifth beta had been planned as a significant milestone: the first test version to have all the Firefox 4 features built in, if not fully tested.

However, Mozilla is having trouble meeting that goal.

In meeting notes published Tuesday, Belzner proposed making the sixth beta the last to get new features. The target date for the beta 6 code freeze is September 10.

Mozilla is assessing the priorities for that release. Priorities include performance, a better user interface that could help attract people to upgrade, and the new Jetpack extensions framework that could make it easier to upgrade Firefox without forcing add-on programmers to rebuild their software.

And one important Web technology development looks like it won't be ready in time for Firefox 4: IndexedDB, which builds database abilities into the browser so that Web applications can work offline, among other things. "IndexedDB unlikely to be included (spec is changing rapidly, security implications to be resolved," Mozilla said in notes for a weekly meeting.

Another development, the WebSocket interface, is "likely to be included, but only as...experimental," the planning notes said. The WebSocket interface opens up a communication channel between the browser and a server, making it easier to build a Web site or application that's continuously updated.

The PowerPoint Web App now lets you tap into Microsoft's online library of clip art.

(Credit: Screenshot by Lance Whitney/CNET)

Although officially only two months old, Microsoft's Office Web Apps is already growing up a bit.

To satisfy just some of the many user requests for new features, Microsoft this week updated its online version of Office with enhancements to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

One of the most requested features, according to a company blog post, was the ability to print from the Word editor. Previously, you could only print from the Word viewer. Clicking on the File menu in the Word Web App editor now displays a Print command that lets you send a document to your local or network printer.

Excel also boasts a couple of useful improvements. You'll now find a new way to insert and tweak your charts. Clicking on the Insert tab gives you the ability to add different types of charts and modify them similarly to the way you can in Excel 2010. Those of you who use the autofill feature in Excel will now find it in the online version as well. Autofill lets you enter a number, date, or similar item in a cell and then populate the adjacent cells with the next several items in that sequence.

Finally, the folks in Redmond have brought clip art to the PowerPoint Web App. Clicking on the Insert menu and choosing Clip Art lets you search for and add royalty-free artwork from Office.com's library of more than 200,000 images.

Microsoft has also been busy with Docs, the Facebook Office app created by the gurus at its Fuse Labs group.

Courtesy of the new round of changes to Docs, you can now tag your documents with keywords to help you better organize and track them down. You can also search for public documents based on name, Facebook page, or tag. Docs itself sports a new look and feel designed to make it more user-friendly. Both the keyword tagging and search options were among the features most requested by Docs users, according to Microsoft's Docs blog.

A screenshot of Internet Explorer 9 briefly posted on Microsoft's Russian Web site.

(Credit: ZDNet)

Thanks to Microsoft's Russian subsidiary, the world now has a pretty good idea of what Internet Explorer 9 will look like.

The Russian folks were kind enough to briefly post an image and some details that had yet to be shared about the browser. And although they pulled it down, ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley captured the information and screenshot.

More than anything else, the screenshot shows a browser that attempts to offer a minimalistic user interface and leave as much room as possible for the Web sites. When combined with the browser's hardware acceleration, the hope is to pave the way for Web sites that are as application-like as possible.

Microsoft declined to confirm the details Wednesday of what had been posted to its Russian site.

However, the look is consistent with what IE team member Ryan Gavin told CNET earlier this month about the planned appearance of IE9.

"The browser is the theater," Gavin said in the interview. "We're not the play."

The browser appears to go as far as to allow people to pin certain sites to the desktop and open them in their own windows without any clear indication that they are using IE at all. According to Foley's Bing translation of the Russian site, there will be certain sites that are "recognized" or "protected" and can be pinned to the taskbar and launched with their own icons.

Microsoft plans to release a beta of the browser at a September 15 event in San Francisco, although this latest leak clearly steals some of the thunder. Up to now, Microsoft had offered several technical previews of the underlying engine, but had yet to show or talk in detail about how the browser would look.

The invitations for the event do mention "the beauty of the Web" and "unlocking the native Web."

Until now, though, the focus had been on several key features of the browser's engine, including the hardware acceleration capabilities, improved JavaScript engine, and broader support for HTML5 and other standards. Microsoft first showed those features at the Mix10 event in March in Las Vegas, though it had talked about hardware acceleration as far back as last November's Professional Developer Conference.

The details on the Russian site reveal a browser that borrows much from Windows 7, including the ability to tear off browser tabs and have them "snap" to a particular part of the screen, similar to the way documents and applications already do in the latest version of Windows.

There is also a unified search and address bar, something already seen in Google's Chrome. However, having learned from criticism of Google--as well as its own considerable issues with regulators--I'm hearing that Microsoft will make the choice of whether to let the bar suggest sites as you type a completely opt-in affair.

A few ads from Craigslist's adult services section for Manhattan on Wednesday morning.

(Credit: CNET staff via Craigslist)

Craigslist's adult services section is under fire once again.

Attorneys general from 17 states sent a joint letter (PDF) on Tuesday that asks the site to immediately remove the section because it promotes prostitution and child trafficking.

In the letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and founder Craig Newmark, the attorneys general state that ads for both adult and child prostitutes are "rampant" on the site. And because Craigslist cannot or will not adequately screen these ads, the attorneys general said, the section should be taken down.

Asserting that women and children are being exploited by the ads, the attorneys general cited the case of two girls who said last month that they were trafficked for sex through the site. The two girls wrote an open letter to Craigslist that appeared in ads in The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle, in which they asked the company to remove the adult services section.

Craigslist responded to the girls' open letter in a blog post, in which it asked for police reports and further information so that it could investigate. The company stated that it works with law enforcement to go after people who break the law by misusing the site.

In another recent blog post, Craigslist touted its manual screening process. The company noted that since May 2009, all ads are screened by attorneys to make sure that they adhere to Craigslist's guidelines. The blog reported that 700,000 ads have been rejected since this process was implemented.

But Craigslist's screening process has failed to satisfy the attorneys general, who told the company in their letter that "your much-touted 'manual review' of Adult Services ads has failed to yield any discernible reduction in obvious solicitations."

The attorneys general also accuse the company of a "blame the victim" mentality, claiming that it has been putting the onus on victims and law enforcement by criticizing them for not providing Craigslist with police reports to document alleged crimes.

The state officials acknowledge that taking down adult ads would result in a loss of revenue for Craigslist. "No amount of money, however, can justify the scourge of illegal prostitution, and the suffering of the women and children who will continue to be victimized, in the market and trafficking provided by Craigslist," their letter states.

The 17 attorneys general who co-signed the letter hail from Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

In response to the letter, Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best sent the following statement to CNET:

"We strongly support the [desire of the] attorneys general...to end trafficking in children and women, through the Internet or by any other means. We hope to work closely with them, as we are with experts at nonprofits and in law enforcement, to prevent misuse of our site in facilitation of trafficking, and to combat such crimes wherever they appear, online or offline."

Tuesday's letter follows a subpoena issued by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in May, in which he asked Craigslist for documents detailing its ad-screening process and the revenue it brings in from its adult services section.

The current focus is not new. Last year, several attorneys general met with Craigslist to discuss their concerns over the adult ads. Led by Blumenthal--who at the time said Craigslist operates an "online brothel"--the officials pressed the site to eliminate the adult section. In early 2009, the sheriff for the Chicago area filed a civil suit against Craigslist over what was then called the "erotic services" section, though a judge later threw out the suit.

Other events have also put Craigslist's adult ads under a microscope. Last year, Boston University medical student Philip Markoff was arrested on charges that he killed a woman he met on Craigslist. The so-called "Craigslist killer" was recently found dead in his jail cell after apparently committing suicide.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PDT to include a response from Craigslist.

(Credit: U.S. Department of State)

New ComScore figures show that Facebook now has a traffic advantage over social network Orkut in India, one of the Google-owned site's long-lasting strongholds and a major target for Facebook.

Use of social networks in India grew 43 percent from July 2009 to July 2010, the numbers show. More than 33 million people in India (15 and older) are now using social-networking sites. That's 84 percent of all Internet users in that country. Traffic firm ComScore found that with 20.9 million users in India, Facebook now has a slight edge over Orkut, which has 19.9 million users. Facebook grew 179 percent in India in the past year; Orkut grew 16 percent.

Something that should be taken into account is the fact that ComScore's numbers chart only home and work Internet use, which excludes mobile access and public computers at Internet cafes or libraries. As Facebook continues to make inroads into international markets--where more computing activity takes place on mobile devices or at communal connections--statistics about its growth will be less reliable if they're restricted as such.

Orkut, founded in 2004 as a side project by a Google engineer, never made much of an impact in the U.S. But it gained big followings in India and in Brazil, where it remains so popular that Facebook has had difficulty making inroads there.

Last month, right after Facebook reached 500 million members worldwide, ComScore analysts pointed out its biggest potential areas for growth. In the Asia-Pacific region overall, ComScore said, Facebook only has 17 percent market penetration.

On a related note, the same set of ComScore numbers found that while Twitter remains significantly smaller than Facebook in India (3.3 million users), it's growing faster. From July 2009 to July 2010, Twitter usage in India grew 239 percent.

Looking for a food cart in Portland, Ore.? There's probably one right in front of you. But maybe there's one up the street that's better. Now you can find out such things with a new mapping layer from Microsoft for its Bing Maps service.

Having grown up in Portland, I can tell you that most locals know where the best carts are, along with the food item to get at those places. But one thing the locals won't always be able to tell you is the location of the traveling food carts--the ones that are not firmly planted in one of the city's food cart/parking lot blocks and do not frequent particular locations on particular days.

To that end, Bing has linked up each cart's Twitter feed (if it has one), so that you can keep an eye on things like special opening and closing times, or more importantly--if they're all out of a particular dish, as can sometimes be the case. Bing has also integrated Foursquare check-ins, so you get an idea of how many people are actively there.

Carts are mapped out in a rather standard Bing interface, meaning you can expand a map marker to see its hours of operation, menu, and some photos. What's different is that each one gets a spork as its icon. Sporks that are red are picks from Portland Monthly Magazine and get links to the magazine's food cart reviews site and finder tool. Users can also filter carts by rating, to anything that's four stars and up, or three stars and up, though these are based on editorial and not user reviews.

Bing's food cart finder looks like any other Bing map, except that each cart gets its own spork.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

What makes the tool genuinely useful are some of the same things that make any modern day mapping tool useful: you can get a very good idea of what a particular cart and its food look like, as well as where it is without leaving the page. Zooming in close enough to the map reveals a satellite view, then drilling down to a cart's info page pulls up a few photos. In that way, it's a lot like digging in to get information on any local business.

Of course this is not the first food cart finder for Portland. There are several pre-existing tools including a Google Maps layer from FoodCartsPortland.com, a user-generated Google Maps collaboration, The Pdxstump food cart finder, and all businesses tagged as "food stands" in Yelp (which will work in any city and give you user reviews).

Along with the Food Cart Finder, Microsoft has also opened up a live performance space in Portland called "The Bing Lounge," which will host a variety of entertainment and speaking events in the future.

Less than a month after his previous company, Slide, sold to Google, Silicon Valley mainstay Keith Rabois has landed in a new gig as general manager of Square, the e-commerce company spearheaded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Rabois made the announcement in the form of an interview with the Los Angeles Times. At Slide, he'd served as vice president of business development while also making a name for himself as a notable angel investor, and serves on the boards of companies like Yelp (which was nearly a Google buy itself late last year before the negotiations famously fell through). But he got his start back in the dot-com boom as an early employee of PayPal, and then jumped to LinkedIn before ultimately winding up at Slide.

Square, which uses a tiny piece of hardware to transform any smartphone into a credit card reader that can process transactions, needs this kind of expertise.

After a smashing amount of initial buzz in Valley start-up circles owing to Dorsey's marquee involvement and a Series A funding round that valued it at $40 million right out of the gates, Square's reception in the media has taken a turn for the lukewarm. Mainstream critics are concerned about the level of risk and potential for fraud, and early versions of the product have been plagued by both hardware and software glitches.

Perhaps the biggest concern is the competition--a profile of Dorsey in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle talks about rivals on behalf of giant companies like Intel and VeriFone. As one of the Valley's "PayPal Mafia," Rabois is well-schooled in how to break down taboos in e-commerce and personal finance from the perspective of a start-up rather than from a big corporation, and that's what Square is in need of at the moment.

A licensing system meant to ensure Android applications were properly downloaded has been hacked, and Google is looking into the issue.

Google introduced a new licensing system for the Android Market in late July in response to concerns that it was too easy to obtain Android applications without paying for them or without proper authorization. However, that system itself can be bypassed relatively easily by someone with a little bit of coding knowledge, according to an investigation done by Android Police.

Tim Bray, Google's Android developer evangelist, defended the licensing server in a blog post Tuesday as he acknowledged that "100% piracy protection is never possible in any system that runs third-party code." The new server is a step up from the old copy-protection system used in the Android Market, Bray said, and "when correctly implemented and customized for your app, is designed to dramatically increase the cost and difficulty of pirating."

Developers can prevent their apps from being pirated by "obfuscating" the sample authentication code that is part of the server, making it harder for those bent on stealing applications to find the parts of the code they need to bypass the authentication process, Bray said. He said Google would provide additional details on how to do this, but some information is available here.

It's situations like these that underscore some of the fundamental philosophical differences between Google's approach to mobile application distribution and Apple's, and the different problems those approaches can create for the companies.

Apple, of course, must approve every iOS application before it can be listed in the only place iOS users can download iOS applications: the App Store. That makes distribution much easier and greatly reduces pirating, but makes developers incumbent on Apple for every single little incremental update they may want to add to their app and creates a ton of work for Apple.

Google, on the other hand, allows partners and developers to have more of a hand in application distribution but that obviously requires it to put less of a lockdown on its code, which can make life easier for those bent on pirating apps. Bray said Google will improve the licensing server and that the best way to combat software piracy is to make it simple and easy to obtain mobile apps.