browsers

Yahoo has released a plug-in called Inquisitor that gives some new horsepower to the search box in Internet Explorer (download), Firefox (download), and Safari (download).

Inquisitor is designed to help people get to information faster, according to a Yahoo Search Blog posting Wednesday. It suggests search terms as people start typing, showing an updated list of possible Web sites below the search box. The results are individualized too: it spotlights Web pages a person has already visited and customizes search results according to previous searches.

In addition, on Internet Explorer, Inquisitor can help retrieve sites a person has bookmarked.

Inquisitor got its start on Apple's Safari, … Read more

There are a lot of Firefox users out there, and there are a lot of MacBook users as well, which means a lot of people use Firefox on a MacBook. And those users might be getting a special treat in future releases of the browser.

On his informative blog, Edward Lee, a Firefox developer, spills on steps he's taken to include gesture support for MacBooks in the next version of the browser.

For those unfamiliar with gesture support, Apple introduced the functionality to the MacBook line a couple of years ago. It allows you to interact with your computer … Read more

There's a new smartphone from LG called the Cookie. It has a little more juice than the Palm Centro. But Natali doesn't like juice in her cookies. But that doesn't mean she doesn't like this smart phone. We also cover the new mobile browsers and Apple's attack ads against Microsoft.

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Mozilla launches mobile browser http://virgintech.blogspot.com/2008/10/mozilla-for-mobile-fennec.html http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081020-hands-on-fennec-alpha-1-puts-firefox-on-your-handheld.html

Opera launches mobile version 9.5 for Symbian http://www.intomobile.com/2008/10/20/opera-mobile-95-beta-now-available-for-symbian-uiq3-too.html… Read more

Updated on 10/20/08 at 4:10 PM PT with a few more details.

There's been a lot of activity this week in the world of mobile browsers. On Friday, Mozilla introduced an alpha build for Fennec, the very-much-in-development mobile browser that will grow up to become Firefox for Mobile. Monday's news brings Opera Software's release of its most recent beta for the Opera Mobile browser. It's the second beta for Windows Mobile phones, and the first beta compatible with the Symbian UIQ platform. (At this point, the build only supports touchscreen models.)

We hear … Read more

Updated on 10/19/08 to clarify the role of the search bar.

How would you like to be among the first to get touchy-feely with the next mobile browser everyone's talking about? Mozilla's release of the Firefox for Mobile alpha code, codenamed Fennec, grants that wish to users of the Nokia N810 and N800 Internet tablet (installation details here).

For the rest of us, the anxiety-filled wait continues.

Even though most of us can't play with Firefox Mobile firsthand, here's what we can expect when the release does become more broadly available on other platforms: … Read more

Correction 12:00 p.m. PDT: This report has been updated to reflect Firefox performance with the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine enabled, in which case Firefox is fastest at the SunSpider test.

With new beta versions out for Firefox and Google Chrome, I thought I'd see how things have changed when it comes to testing the speed of JavaScript, the programming language that powers many cutting-edge Web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. The answer: both browsers made big strides, but Firefox still beats Chrome on one widely-used performance test.

When Chrome was released, I ran Google's JavaScript speed test … Read more

If you're in the market for a remix of Internet Explorer--perhaps you need it to work on an internal office network--an interesting alternative is SlimBrowser, whose name belies its feature set. SlimBrowser's tabbed interface allows you to look at multiple Web sites all at once. It looks and feels more or less like its more popular competitors, so the learning curve isn't as steep as you might think.

The basics are all present and accounted for: effective pop-up blocker, more than 100 skins that don't require restarting, and support for most of IE's toolbars and … Read more

Google released a developer-oriented update to its Chrome Web browser on Wednesday that fixes some crashes and video playback issues.

Chrome is still in beta testing, and for those who have an even higher tolerance for rough-around-the-edges software, Google also offers developer versions. Chrome 0.3.154.3 is the latter; see our earlier post on how to subscribe to the Chrome Dev channel.

"Release 154.0 (the most recent publicly released Chrome developer build) had a few browser crashes, including a crash on startup on tablet PCs running Windows Vista. We fixed the new crashes, and 154.3 … Read more

As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.

Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.

To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and … Read more