web browser

Baidu, Chinese search engine giant, has started offering its new beta web browser that features a collection of 30,000" apps" that can quickly connect users to online games, videos and other tools.

Monday a beta version of Baidu Browser was launched. The browser is marketed as "simple and reliable", sporting secure navigation protected against malware infiltration. The browser is equipped with a "treasure house" feature, which functions like an app store.

A new study reveals that some online advertising networks continue tracking Web Users even though the latter use opt-out requests and the networks promised to take into account these requests.

Stanford University's Center for Internet Society reports that 8 members of the Network Advertising Initiative, a cooperative of online marketing and analytics companies, promise to stop tracking people who use the NAI's service to opt out of targeted advertising, but continue to leave tracking cookies on those people's computers.

A new app dubbed QuickGoogle allows users of the jailbroken iPhones and iPads to invoke Google search at any time from any place of the OS.

Now users won’t have to go back to the home page, open the browser, select the search bar. Using any Activator option - pressing either slide in the status line, or the Home button, or shaking the iPhone – they can call the special query box.

Pressing the Google button a user activates Safari browser with the search results.

Internet Explorer was found to have a flaw that allows hackers to steal cookies to access their accounts on some websites. The bug was found by a security researcher Rosario Valotta who said it could let hackers steal credentials to access FaceBook, Twitter and other websites.

"Any website. Any cookie. Limit is just your imagination," said Valotta, an independent Internet security researcher based in Italy.

Mozilla refused the request of US regulators to ban a Firefox add-on that allows users to access sites which have domain names confiscated earlier this year.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security that in February took the unprecedented step of seizing domain names accused of streaming live pay-per-view sporting events, requested the open source company to ban MafiaaFire add-on.

An Internet Explorer 10 preview was released by Microsoft, little time after the debut of IE9. The IE10 Platform Preview was posted by the Redmond company on Tuesday this week. Microsoft called it "the first step in delivering the next wave of progress in native HTML5 support". An IE10 is widely expected to come as early as September being Windows 8’s default browser.

According to the stats by a Mozilla site that tracks Firefox 4 downloads, in 24 hours after the new browser official launch Firefox 4 was downloaded for about 6 million times.

In comparison, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 2.35 million downloads within its first day of availability.

According to a research conducted by a security group Firefox and Chrome browsers cannot detect new phishing attacks that targeted recently customers of Bank of America and PayPal. The phishing scam manages to bypass fraud protections built in to the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome by attaching an HTML file to the spam email.

The first release candidate of Firefox web browser version 4 has been issued by the Mozilla Foundation which puts an end to a beta development that saw 12 betas.

The release candidate is seen by the development team as a finished browser according to Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development.

The quality assurance team will still take feedback from users over the next few weeks, but if no major bugs are found, Mozilla expects to issue the full production release of the browser by the end of the month, he said.

Microsoft announced this week that the final version of Internet Explorer 9 comes March 14. This is not another platform preview or release candidate, it is a complete pack. Users will be able to download the app starting 9 p.m. Pacific.

Since launching the IE9 beta in September, Microsoft has added even more features based on user feedback, including ActiveX filtering and tracking protection.

Another beta of Firefox 4 is coming again before Mozilla will at last launch its Release Candidate.

"There are currently fewer than 20 'hard' blocking issues which have been identified as requiring beta coverage [1] and only 7 without patches," noted the open source outfit's Mike Beltzner late on Friday.

"At this point in time I do not believe we will require an additional beta, and am recommending that we continue to push hard to close these blockers out over the next few days."

Microsoft this week launched a release candidate of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) which is now complete. The final build is expected to come in a short time.

IE9 RC sports better and faster performance while requiring less memory. It also supports additional Web standards and the opt-in Tracking Protection that Microsoft has touted as its answer to calls for a Do Not Track feature in all browsers.

In a move to compete with Google which makes updated browsers every six to eight weeks Mozilla announced that it is planning to release four new versions of Firefox this year shortening thus the browser’s cycle. Up to present days Mozilla has released updated versions every 12 to 18 months.

The draft of Mozilla’s Firefox roadmap for 2011 shows that one of the non-profit entity’s priorities is to "ship our new technology to users in smaller bundles, more frequently."

Mozilla removes standard browser interface to give the priority to web content with its new experimental add-on for Firefox 4. The add-on dubbed as Home Dash "moves the usual browser functionality into a dashboard that sits on top of the page and goes away after you have found what you were looking for," Mozilla developer Edward Lee wrote in a recent blog post.

A new privacy feature under development by Mozilla that is aimed at enabling users to opt out of online tracking has a significant flaw that makes it more than useless. As the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recognized that tracking is a privacy concern for Web-surfing citizens and has proposed implementation of some sort of do-not-track framework similar to the do-not-call lists that are supposed to keep annoying telemarketers from calling you, many web browser makers included a privacy feature.