Earlier in November, Firefox surpassed 25 percent usage share of Web browsers, according to Net Applications.
(Credit: Net Applications)Mozilla released a third beta of Firefox 3.6 on Wednesday, adding stability and performance features, and said it hopes to lock down the code soon for its first release candidate.
The new beta, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, includes a component directory lockdown that makes it harder for other software to meddle with the open-source browser's state by preventing that software from sidling into the same folder as the browser's own components. The result should be fewer crashes, said Mozilla's Johnathan Nightingale in a blog post, and Firefox still is open to third-party extensions via its official add-on mechanism.
The change should improve security, too, added another Mozilla programmer, Vladimir Vukecevic, who wrote in his own blog post that Mozilla is considering bringing the change to Firefox 3.5, too.
"Creating binary components to interface with the operating system or with other applications is fairly straightforward, though ultimately dangerous. Binary components have full access to the application and OS, and so can impact stability, security, and performance," Vukecevic said.
Also in the latest beta of 3.6 is a feature that lets the browser run some Web-based JavaScript programs asynchronously, which is to say without being so picky about the order the scripts run. This can improve the speed that Web pages load, Mozilla said.
The biggest Firefox 3.6 feature most folks will notice is Personas, the reskinning add-on that's now being built in. More than 10 million Personas have been downloaded so far, Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez of the Personas team said Wednesday.
Mozilla is working to release a final version of Firefox 3.6 before the end of the year, and one sign the project is wrapping up is that the developers are locking down the features and changes that can be added into the release candidate 1. Code freeze for RC1 is scheduled for Wednesday but might be at risk, a Mozilla planning site said this week.
Firefox is steadily gaining in use. Last week, Web traffic monitoring firm Net Applications announced Firefox cleared 25 percent share of those using browsers worldwide--not dethroning Internet Explorer by any means but still winning over new users. Mozilla estimates there are more than 300 million Firefox users total, and this week said there are more than 300,000 testers using the Firefox 3.6 beta
Google's Chrome, meanwhile, is appealing to some of the same browser enthusiasts who were Firefox's first users. One of its big selling points is speed, and Google is working on other ways to make the Web faster, too. Chrome gives it a vehicle to test such ideas out in the real world, a strategy that Apple, Opera, and Firefox have employed to advance the Web state of the art.
One Mozilla programmer, Alexander Limi, revealed a speedup technology called Resource Package for Mozilla, too, on Tuesday. His proposal calls for bundling many Web page elements up into a single compressed file that can be retrieved in a single Web-page request action. Browsers are limited in the number of such actions they can take in parallel, so consolidating the interactions can make pages load faster. The approach is backwards compatible with existing browsers that don't support the feature, he added.
"If the feedback is good we're likely to try and get this implemented for Firefox 3.7," said Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard in a blog post Tuesday.
Google's Chrome is still the fourth-place browser in terms of usage, but it gained more than others in October when it comes to stealing usage away from the dominant Internet Explorer.
According to Net Applications' browser usage share statistics, Chrome gained from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent from September 2009 to October. The company bases its statistics on visits to a global network of 40,000 Web sites, dusted with some statistical processing.
Next was Mozilla's Firefox, which rose from 23.8 percent to 24.1 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent. Opera was essentially flat at 2.2 percent.
The big loser was IE, which dropped from 65.7 percent to 64.6 percent, according to the statistics.
... Read more
Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser has gained 30 million users over the past eight weeks, as it continues to gain on Internet Explorer.
Chief Executive John Lilly revealed the increase in user adoption in a Twitter post on Monday, and Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, confirmed it to ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
"We've seen a significant increase in the number of users for Firefox," Nitot said. "Firefox checks for new versions every 24 hours, when it's running, and when it checks, it pings the Mozilla server. We count the number of pings."
Read more of "Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks" at ZDNet UK.
Spot the Facebook sharing button on Cracked.com
(Credit: Facebook/Cracked)Web publishers and blog owners have a new toy to play with: Facebook announced Monday that it has launched new "share" buttons with counters, much in the manner of Digg's iconic buttons and the third-party TweetMeme app for Twitter sharing.
Plus, there's more: Publishers installing Facebook share buttons can also get data back related to how many times that link has been shared, how many users have hit the thumbs-up "like" button or commented on shared versions of the story on Facebook, and how many people have clicked back to it through Facebook.
These Facebook "share" buttons had existed before, and the company said that more than 2 billion pieces of content are shared per week. But this is the first time that the counter and analytics have been available.
A post on the Facebook developer blog explains: "Anyone can add the Share button to their website with little to no technical experience, and style the button from a variety of options." Accessing the analytics however, requires a bit more coding know-how.
This could spell bad news for Digg, as Facebook's significantly bigger and more mainstream audience could make it a far more appealing choice for site owners that would prefer to display one prominent sharing button rather than two. As for Twitter, it doesn't actually own the app that powers the "retweet" buttons. A move like this from Facebook, however, could push it to think a bit harder about a partnership or acquisition--or hasten progress on that "retweet API" it has in the works.
Related speculation: When are we going to see a "most-shared" ranking from Facebook? That's when Digg's execs would really have to start sweating.
Yahoo-owned social photo site Flickr went dark Tuesday at around 8:50 a.m. PDT. The outage, which remains ongoing at time of this initial post, is keeping users from accessing all parts of the site, however photos that had been embedded on third-party sites are still able to be viewed.
An update on Flickr's official blog, timestamped at 9:51 a.m. PDT, says "all hands are on deck," and the problem will soon be resolved. That was followed shortly thereafter by a post at 10:05 a.m. PDT saying that that outage "shouldn't be too much longer!"
Flickr's last major outage, which took place back in February 2007, resulted in the company revealing some details about the immensity of the photo sharing site, which at that time was serving close to a billion photos a day.
More details as they come...
Updated 10:55 a.m. PDT: A Yahoo representative had no details on the nature of the outage, but it appears to be a problem with the Web servers rather than a data issue. Yahoo updated the Flickr blog to inform users that photos embedded into a Web site should still be appeared on those sites.
Updated 11:35 a.m. PDT: Flickr is back up and running.
Updated 12:01 p.m. PDT: Flickr released a statement on the outage.
"Flickr regularly makes routine updates to the site - and once in a blue moon we hit a snag in the road. Flickr is now back to normal and no data was lost during this morning's outage. Members who might have been uploading at the time should have received an error message, but should be able to share photos and videos now. We continued to serve photos to 3rd party sites throughout the service interruption. Thanks for bearing with us and feel free to let the team know if you continue to experience any issues."
Correction 11:35 a.m. PDT: This story initially misstated that embedded images could not be viewed during the outage.
Opera Unite was going to change the Web, according to the hype from the Norwegian browser maker. Despite only being available for a number of months in a beta separate from the main Opera build--and the Internet looking more or less like the same place in the aftermath--the release of Opera 10.10 beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux indicates that Unite is about to become a standard Opera feature.
File sharing from the first Opera Unite beta in June 2009.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Unite is basically a peer-to-peer system designed through the browser, but its API allows users to create feature-rich apps using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. By default, Unite comes with six apps: photo sharing, an instant messenger based around My Opera, file sharing, a Web server, a media player, and "the fridge," a communal place to share short notes with friends. When Unite was released during the pre-Opera 10 beta testing period over the past summer, it was generally stable and didn't significantly impact Opera's performance. A free My Opera account is required to use the Unite features.
Users interested in creating Opera Unite apps can check out Opera's tutorials. If you've used Unite, or built an app for it, tell us about it in the comments below.
Google Docs has long let users share documents between one another, but folders--a feature Google begrudgingly added to Docs back in mid-2007, have largely been left out of the picture.
That changed on Monday, as users are now able to share entire folders of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with other people.
The benefit here is that the permissions settings for a shared folder controls the individual file permissions of all the documents inside of it, meaning that you don't have to go through and change each document's viewing permissions one at a time. It's also an easy way to start working on a document, then share it with a select group of individuals without having to remember to invite them in the first place.
Users can now share entire folders with groups of other users.
(Credit: CNET)Google says this was one of the most requested features from its users, as voted on at its product ideas voting page. Google has also used this feedback for guidance in upgrading its Docs file uploader to accept multiple files at once.
Just as users are able to do in Gmail, the Docs uploader now lets users pick multiple files from their hard drive, then see how far along each upload is. The new process makes it much easier for new users to move entire folders into Google's cloud, which could be handy if--or, rather, when--Google decides to open up Docs to more file types.
Docs users can now upload multiple files at once, making it much easier to simply dump an entire folder from a hard drive into Google's cloud.
(Credit: CNET)
From August (top) to September (below), Internet Explorer lost a bit of usage share compared with rival browsers.
(Credit: Net Applications)All four of Internet Explorer's main rivals gained a larger share of users worldwide from August to September, new statistics show.
According to Net Applications, which tracks browser usage globally through a network of 40,000 Web sites and some statistical processing, IE slipped from 67 percent to 65.7 percent of users.
Firefox has steadily won over more users since version 1.0 arrived nearly five years ago, and it continued the trend with an increase from 23 percent to 23.8 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent, Google Chrome from 2.8 percent to 3.2 percent, and Opera from 2 to 2.2 percent. Although a few tenths of a percent may sound small, multiplied by the millions of browser users over the Internet, it can mean a large absolute number of people.
... Read moreAt one time or another, most of us have recommended an iPhone/iPod Touch app to friends or family members--usually by tweeting, e-mailing, or Facebooking about it.
Yappler Sync takes that concept to the next level, allowing you to build a custom list of the apps you like and then share that list via the social solution of your choice.
At the same time, Yappler Sync helps you discover more cool apps by perusing the lists built by others.
All you do is install the eponymous utility, which is available for Windows and Mac, then build your list and decide how to share it.
Unfortunately, I discovered a few irksome aspects of the service, starting with this: Yappler builds your list based on every app in your iTunes library, not just those currently in residence on your iPhone. Thus I ended up with some 270 apps to cull--and they weren't even listed alphabetically.
Meanwhile, it's not immediately clear how you're supposed to "discover" other users' lists (unless they're shared with you directly). The Yappler site catalogs all the apps in the App Store (84,000 and counting, in case you're wondering), with a handy advanced-search option that lets you specify criteria like price and rating.
But the only way to find other users and their lists is by perusing the reviews for any given app, then looking for clickable usernames. And once you do find another user's list, all you really get is a batch of icons. So JoeAppUser has Buzzingo on his iPhone--how does that really enlighten me?
Of course, Yappler Sync is more about the social aspect of app-sharing, hence the ties to Facebook, Twitter, and the like. And it's nice how it can automatically update your list when you install new apps. Plus, it's free, so I can complain only so much.
On the other hand, this isn't much different from posting, say, a list of books you've read. Without knowing more about each book and, more importantly, why you liked it, where's the value?
(Credit:
Screenshot by Lori Grunin/CNET, photos by Lori Grunin, Michael Ricca/CNET)
Photoshop.com may be Flash-y and Air-y with photo-editing capabilities, but it surprisingly still seems to lag sites like Flickr and Facebook when it comes to various sharing features. For instance, only this week has Adobe launched video-hosting and group album capabilities (available for free accounts as well as paid), long available from its competitors.
There are some done-it-better aspects, however. For example, Adobe allows for larger videos: a maximum of 2GB vs. Flickr's 150GB/90 seconds. Of course, the more large videos you upload the closer it will push you to the 2GB storage maximum of a free account. As it's taking forever (it's up to about an hour and still hasn't completed) to process my short 177MB video, however--everything gets transcoded to Flash video--I shudder to think how long a 2GB file would take.
There are still a few UI kinks to work out as well. If you e-mail an invite to someone at an e-mail address other than the one connected to their Adobe ID, there's no way to link the addresses or even allow the person to reply to you with the correct address.
People you invite as Collaborators to Group Albums aren't automatically added as your friends. And while it notifies you via e-mail of updates to the album there don't seem to be other notification options, like posting Twitter, Facebook, or even an RSS feed. (Concurrently with the rollout, Adobe updated Photoshop.com's terms of service. There doesn't seem to be anything objectionable in the new terms. Yay!)
You can see how Photoshop.com's editing capabilities stack up against the competition in 15 online photo editors compared.
