web

The quest to free the browser from plug-ins that can impede performance took another step forward on Thursday when Mozilla activated by default Web Real-Time Communication in its latest Firefox beta.

WebRTC, as it's known, is the HTML5 standard for streaming files, video, and audio on the Web. Mozilla activated getUserMedia in Firefox in April, which WebRTC uses to access the Webcam and microphone. Now, PeerConnection and DataChannels have been turned on in the Firefox 22 Beta, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

PeerConnection lets the browser set up real-time video and audio calls, while DataChannels enables peer-to-peer data … Read more

For a long time, Apple did not allow third-party companies to publish Web browsers on the App Store. While Safari--the built-in browser for iOS devices--is a good browser, it lacks a lot of tools people want, like Flash support. One of the best tools to get it right is Fast Web Browser Free.

Fast Web Browser is exactly what it says, a quick and streamlined Web browser that provides a huge range of features you don't expect to see in any third-party app, let alone a Web browser. From automatic full-screen browsing to intuitive input of URLs, Web previews, … Read more

Our lives tend to be defined by the decisions we make. And the ones we don't.

Please place yourself, therefore, into the hands and mind of someone whose 14-year-old son has just been shot. He has been shot by a friend playing with a gun.

What might be your first decision?

I fancy that, for many, the choice might be to take the boy to the nearest hospital. However, this was not the decision allegedly taken by Deborah Tagle of Santa Fe, Texas.

As KHOU-TV reports, she allegedly felt the most appropriate course of action was to go to … Read more

The World Wide Web Consortium has decided to go ahead with a technology that will let companies like Netflix stream encrypted video using Web sites -- against the wishes of the Free Software Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and 25,600 petition signatories.

The Web standards group announced the move Thursday, to nobody's surprise. Entertainment-industry players had approached the group three years ago to discuss the technology, Microsoft has been helping develop it, and Google already has built the specification, called Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) into Chrome.

The standard doesn't actually handle encryption and digital rights management (DRM) to … Read more

Facebook's engineers like Google's WebP and want Mozilla to build support for the image format into the Firefox browser.

Google hopes to speed Web performance with the image format, which can do the job of both of today's major graphics formats, JPEG and PNG. Facebook began testing WebP support in April.

And now it looks like the powerful company has become Google's biggest ally in the effort to promote WebP. Mozilla is deciding whether to reverse its earlier opposition to WebP, and Facebook programmer Bryan Alger on Wednesday encouraged Firefox developers to do so in a … Read more

Like the rest of the Microsoft Office unit, the Office Web Apps team seems to be on a path to deliver more new updates more frequently.

This week, the Web Apps team (which also internally goes by WAC, or Web Applications Companion) blogged about some of the new features coming to Office Web Apps "over the next year and beyond." These include official support for Chrome on Android tablets and real-time co-authoring (instead of "same time" authoring), starting with PowerPoint Web App.

Microsoft executives also previously have said that Yammer integration will be coming to Office Web Apps, … Read more

For parents, the Internet is an unlocked Pandora's box of every possible threat to their children. What could be worse? How about the Internet wherever they go, out of your reach, on their smartphones? Fortunately, you have options. Blue Coat's Web Protection is a popular desktop parental control and Internet filter program. K9 Web Protection Browser extends its robust filtering and security capabilities to Android devices. It can block inappropriate and adult-themed content, gambling sites, spyware-infected Web sites, or any site you want to block. It relies on the same filtering technology used by Blue Coat's enterprise … Read more

Marissa Mayer has previously noted her disappointment in Yahoo's Web search partnership with Microsoft and now reportedly wants to get out of the deal altogether.

The Web giant's chief executive has been trying to find a way to escape the foundering arrangement but has so far been unsuccessful, a person familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal. Mayer has been looking to cancel the deal since leaving Google to take over Yahoo last summer, the Journal reported.

The two companies entered into a 10-year search partnership in 2010 in which Microsoft would power Yahoo search and … Read more

Android may be the smartphone champ, but Apple's iOS is tops in mobile Web traffic, at least according to a report out today from analyst Gene Munster.

For the second month in a row, iOS held the lead over its rival as a source of mobile traffic, meaning that more iOS devices were tracked on the Web sites examined in the report. For April, iOS captured 69 percent of all the traffic analyzed by Piper Jaffray, leaving Android in second place with 26.5 percent.

Those numbers showed an increase from March when iOS accounted for 66.4 percent … Read more