Gemini » Browser

Improved security: Chrome 6.0 released

Eve — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:36:06 +0000

Menlo Park (ip-192.com): Google announced that latest stable version 6.0 is of its Chrome browser is now available. The first stable Windows version of Chrome was first released on December 11, 2008. Several months earlier, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code, including its V8 JavaScript engine, as an open source project entitled Chromium.

"Since Chrome’s first beta launch for Windows, we’ve brought our Mac and Linux versions up to speed, and continued to make the browser faster, simpler, and safer across all three platforms," said product manager Brian Rakowski on the Google Chrome blog. "We’ve also introduced a boatload of features, including a more customizable New Tab page, browser themes, side-by-side view, password manager, better privacy controls, built-in Adobe Flash Player, Autofill, automatic translation, HTML5 capabilities and synchronization of various settings such as bookmarks, themes, extensions and browser preferences - just to name a few."

With a market share of 7.5 percent in August 2010, Chrome is now the third most used browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. Google says that about 70 million users choose Chrome over other browsers. The new version patches 14 security vulnerabilities, including six that have been rated "high priority."

"Behind the scenes, we continue to extend the security features that help you browse the web more safely," says Rakowski. "This includes Chrome’s Safe Browsing technology - which serves as a warning system if you’re about to visit a site suspected of phishing or hosting malware; Chrome’s auto-update mechanism - which helps ensure that the browser is always up-to-date with the latest security updates; and the browser’s ‘sandbox’ - an added layer of protection which prevents malicious code on an exploited website from infecting your computer."

Users can download the latest version for Windows XP, Vista, and 7 here. The site provides links to download Chrome for the Linux and Mac platforms.

Photo: www.ip-192.com

Web: Google Chrome moves to third place

Eve — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:53:06 +0000

Menlo Park (ip-192.com): Google's Chrome continues to shine and is now the third most popular browser in the U.S., according to StatCounter, a web analytics company. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is still leading. Combining all versions of IE, Microsoft has a market share of 52 percent, followed by Mozilla's Firefox (28.5 percent). Chrome passed Apple's Safari in the week ending June 27, and is the preferred browser for 8.97 percent of U.S. users.

"This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10 percent of the US market in under two years," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter, in a statement. "There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android v iPhone)."

On an international scale, Chrome commands a market share of 9.4 percent and passed Safari some time ago. Google’s web browser supports almost 50 languages, while Apple’s Safari is currently available in 16 languages. The latest analysis is based on 3.6 billion page views, according to StatCounter. The company says that it analyzed 874 million page views in the U.S.

Speed and (perhaps perceived) security seem to be the factors users take into account before deciding what browser they want to use. The latest version 5 of Google's Chrome claims improved JavaScript and application performance. To increase security, Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware), and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. Google notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.

Google's Chrome is flying high with business and personal users. Photo: Laeschke

Apple: Safari 5 adds reader, extensions

Eve — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:07:14 +0000

Cupertino (ip-192.com): Apple just released the latest version of its web browser, Safari 5. It has the ability to detect and reformat multipage articles into a single page for easy reading. Called Safari Reader, the new feature automatically removes advertising and other clutter from web pages and presents spread out articles in a scrollable, easy-to-read single page free of many distracting elements. User can email and print "cleaned" articles, and use onscreen controls to zoom-in and out.

Safari 5 includes DNS prefetching, a feature first introduced by Google's Chrome in September 2008. The technology scans all links contained in a webpage and resolves associated IP-addresses in the background. Hardware acceleration is available for Windows environments.

The new browser boasts a 30 percent increase in performance over Safari 4, Apple claims, and is available for Mac and Windows environments. Users can select Google, Bing, or Yahoo as the default search engine. Thanks to HTML5, Geolocation, full screen video playback, closed captions and several other features are now available.

"Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing. "Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine runs on over 500 million devices."

A new feature borrowed from Firefox is the extension system. Users have the ability to add features by installing extensions, small applications written in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript. To maintain the integrity of Safari 5, add-ons will be sandboxed and cryptographically signed by Apple.

The latest version of Apple’s Safari 5 web browser is available for download here.

Speed and HTML 5: Chrome 5.0 released

Eve — Wed, 26 May 2010 16:08:15 +0000

Menlo Park (ip-192.com): Google has released the next generation of its Chrome browser for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Chrome 5.0 is the fastest version of Google's browser yet, thanks to improved JavaScript performance. The V8 engine, updated from version 1.3 to 2.2, compiles JavaScript to native machine code before executing it.

With the new release, Chrome hits its fifth major milestone in only 20 months. The new release allows users to synchronize both bookmarks and browser preferences including homepages, themes, and startup settings, across multiple computers and devices. Each extension can be set to "incognito mode" through the extension manager.

"Our stable release also incorporates HTML5 features such as Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop," says Google on its Chrome blog. "For a taste of HTML5's powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps."

More than 4,000 extensions are available in Google's gallery, including extensions that allow users to access applications such as Google Calendar and Google Docs directly from the browser. Web developers can integrate Chrome's developer tools and create a customized environment in the browser.

While Adobe's Flash Player did not make it into the stable release 5.0, Google says that it will enable the feature with the full release of version 10.1 in the near future.

Google Chrome shines in latest survey

Eve — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:10:53 +0000

Menlo Park (ip-192.com): Google's Chrome search engine shines and now accounts for a 6.7 percent market share, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer dives for the first time in years under the 60 percent mark, according to April 2010 statistics from web analytics and market research firm Net Applications. Chrome is now in third place, up from a market share of just 1.7 percent a year ago. With 24.5 percent, Firefox is holding a solid second place. Apple's Safari comes in as number four with a market share of 4.7 percent, followed by Opera with 2.3 percent.

Security concerns may be the main reason for Microsoft's slow but steady decline. The company lost 0.7 percent market share in the four week period from March to April 2010, but 7.9 percent compared to April 2009. During 2002 and 2003, Internet Explorer basically controlled the market with a share of over 95 percent.

Microsoft hopes to turn things around with the upcoming Internet Explorer (IE) 9. IE 9 focuses on new standards such as HTML5 and CSS3 and a preview already scored 55 out of 100 possible points in the ACID3 browser test. By comparison, IE8 scored only 20 points.

The planned release of Google's new Chrome OS, which site on top of Chrome, could provide an additional boost to the browser. As Firefox, Chrome is also betting on extensions to help to customize the experience users have with the browser.