Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox web browser, just snapped up Pocket in its first ever acquisition.
Pocket will remain an independent subsidiary and promises to continue delivering the service fans know and love. However, the Mozilla takeover will allow it to add “fuel to the rocketship” and build an even greater product.
Even though nobody asked for it, Facebook made it so videos play automatically, with the sound turned on, as you scroll by them in your News Feed. Luckily, a simple Chrome extension prevents that from happening — and it doesn’t just work on Facebook.
Mozilla is to begin automatically blocking unnecessary Flash content within its Firefox browser to provide users with a better web browsing experience. The move should boost browser performance and reduce the impact Firefox has on notebook battery life.
A mysterious Gmail bug is putting a skull and crossbones emoji inside users’ inboxes. Hovering over the icon displays creepy messages like “Component Spy,” “Chat Spy,” and “Data Spy” — but it’s actually totally harmless, and Google is already working to fix it.
As promised, Mozilla has finally brought Firefox to iOS devices around the world, after first appearing on Android more than three years ago.
The browser sports a private browsing mode, along with Google Chrome-style predictive searches and, of course, support for existing Firefox users — meaning that it’s easy to import your existing Firefox bookmarks, saved tabs, passwords, and web history over from your other devices.
It’s been a long ride, but Mozilla confirmed that Firefox is in fact almost ready for its official launch on iPhone and iPad. The company announced a limited release of the browser in the New Zealand App Store.
It’s appreciable that Firefox is finally hopping on board with iOS, but at this point it seems Mozilla is far too late to the game to give Firefox a meaningful opportunity for reemergence.
We’ve seen before that changing from Chrome to Safari can make a big difference on your Mac’s battery life.
But if you haven’t switched from Chrome or Firefox to Safari yet, this fact might change your mind: If you’re a MacBook user, you’re losing an average of one hour of total battery life by using anything but Safari.
The developers of the free, open-source Camino browser for Mac OS X have announced that it will no longer be developed after a decade-long run. They are now encouraging existing users to adopt a “more modern browser,” such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
Mozilla has released Firefox 20 for Mac users, and this major update brings several new features and improvements to the web browser. Two of the biggest features are “per-window” private browsing and a redesigned download manager.
You can now open a private browsing tab instead of having to open an entirely new window and close the current session. The new, Safari-like download manager is a little arrow that sits in the browser’s toolbar next to search. You can click it to see and interact with all current downloads.
Browsers on iOS run with a major disadvantage to Mobile Safari. Not only are they obliged to use Apple’s built-in WebKit rendering engine, but they have to use a slower version of Apple’s speedy Nitro JavaScript engine. The result? If you use any third-party browser on your iPhone or iPad, it will run slower than Safari… at least without a jailbreak.
It’s unfair, but various companies have still made excellent browsers for iOS, including Google Chrome and Opera. Mozilla, though, will not follow these company’s lead, having said at this weekend’s SXSW conference in Austin that Firefox won’t be coming to iOS any time soon.
Firefox 19 is now available to download to your Mac, introducing the long-awaited PDF viewer that will allow you to open PDF files within the browser — rather than downloading them to open them in Preview. The release hasn’t yet hit Mozilla’s website, but you can get your hands on it by visiting the company’s servers.
The popular Dolphin Browser for Android and iOS has been updated today to introduce a number of handy new features. In addition to one-tap sharing to Facebook and Twitter, users can enjoy Evernote clipping, and the ability to sync bookmarks and tabs between Dolphin and their desktop browser.
It’s taken about 6 months, but Mozilla has managed to officially Retina-ize its Firefox browser on the Mac. A beta release of Firefox brought Retina support back in November 2012, but today’s public release of version 18 brings it to the masses.
I have quite a few email addresses, and almost all of them are Gmail based. I also use a ton of different devices to check my email, including my iPhone and iPad as well as a Macbook Air and a Mac mini. That’s not even mentioning the iMac I use from time to time at my office job. With all these devices, especially the Macs, it makes sense to me to use Gmail in the web browser, so I don’t have to keep setting up email client after email client, or make sure all my filters or rules are set up the way I want them on each of the Macs I use.
What doesn’t make sense to me is how my Mac opens up Mail app when I click a mail-to link on the web, in Twitter, or on Facebook. I want my Mac to open a web browser with the web version of Gmail in it every time I click one of those types of links. Here’s how to make that happen on the big three web browsers for Mac: Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
Mozilla released another public beta of its Firefox browser today. Version 18 beta 1 brings a number of new features and improvements, most notably Retina display support for Apple’s 2012 MacBooks. When this version of Firefox becomes official, the once-popular browser will join the ranks of Google Chrome, Opera and other third party browsers that have already received Retina support.
Echofon has announced that it will be “phasing out” its desktop applications for Mac, Windows, and Firefox this fall to focus on its mobile apps for iOS and other platforms. Desktop apps will continue to function normally in the “immediate future,” Echofon says, but it’s not planning any further updates for the popular Twitter client.
Dr Web, a Russian antivirus software specialist, has discovered a new piece of malware that targets computers running Mac OS X and Linux. Named “Wirenet.1,” once installed the software steals all of the passwords you enter into your web browser, mail client, and other apps, and has the ability to log your keystrokes.
In a strange turn of events, Mozilla, the team behind projects such as Firefox and Thunderbird, is putting a serious effort into what will be known as the Firefox Mobile OS, an HTML5-based operating system that will run on a variety of phones.
Once top dog next to Internet Explorer, Firefox has increasingly been losing its grasp on the desktop browsing experience, and consequently been spending more time paying attention to the possibilties of mobile. Firefox is already available for Android, and now it looks like it might come to iOS as well, but not as a mere port of the browser many of us have abandoned in favor of Chrome: it’s rebuilt for the ground up with iPad browsing in mind.
The Flashback malware which was found to be infecting over 650,000 Macs at its peak was earning its creators up to $10,000 a day, according to security specialists Symantec. The OSX.Flashback.K trojan, which is believed to be the largest Mac infection to date, is designed to steal page views and advertising revenue from Google.
Apple has said that its working on a tool to end the notorious Flashback botnet once and for all, but there’s still the remotest chance you could get infected. Keep in mind that only around 600,000 Macs have fallen prey to Flashback, and that number is a tiny fraction of the millions of Mac users around the world. Most of the machines that have been infected already are centralized in North America.
Your Mac is completely up to date and you’ve already checked to see if you’re infected by the Flashback trojan. If everything is squared away and you’re not infected already, here’s how to ensure there is zero chance you’ll get infected while you wait for Apple to save the day.
If you’re still rocking the red panda as your default browser, great news. Following the new rapid release cycle that saw Firefox leap from version 4 to version 7 in just six months, Firefox has made another evolutionary leap today with the official release of Firefox 8.
When Mozilla finally releases Firefox 4.0 for OS X, Mac users might notice that browsing has gotten quite a bit snappier for them, as it now looks as if hardware acceleration may, at long last, be coming to Firefox for the Mac.
It’s far from certain, though. The next beta of Firefox 4.0, b7, is the last before feature freeze kicks in on the latest version of the popular alternative browser… and Mozilla’s OS X software engineers have just decided to try to sneak it in.
How soon the bloom fades from the fruit. Apple’s controversial distribution method for delivering Safari 3.1 to Windows users is inciting flames of discontent among customers and critics alike, who now accuse the company of unfair practices. The problem stems from Apple’s iTunes Software Update client for Windows, which some claim dupes users into downloading the latest version of Safari by leaving the install option checked by default, whether the browser was previously installed or not, which users then mistake to be a necessary update rather than an option.
Not surprisingly, rivals are jumping on the Safari-gate bandwagon like hungry wolves feeding on a wounded fawn, with angry words flung like cannon balls. Mozilla Chief John Lilly has gone on the offensive, alleging that Apple’s software delivery method “borders on malware distribution practices. What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong.”
Harsh words. Next will come the accusation that Apple illegally ties its browser with the operating system. Sorry, Microsoft beat them to it.
