SISAREA

digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/apple/Apple_releases_Safari_5_0_1_Extensions_Gallery_now_open’; Safari 5’s extension support just got a whole lot more useful this morning, as Apple’s just released Safari 5.0.1, which enables the feature for end users, and opened its official Extension Gallery. Extensions can be installed from anywhere, but you might think of the Gallery as the App Store for browser add-ons — and it seems decently stocked at launch, with notable entries from Amazon, eBay, Bing, MLB.com, the New York Times, and Twitter. We’d expect that number to grow over time, as extensions are apparently quite simply built in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. PR after the break.

Update: We’re also told Safari 5.0.1 fixes that nasty AutoFill vulnerability, so that’s good news. [Thanks, Robert]

Continue reading Apple releases Safari 5.0.1, Extensions Gallery now open

Apple releases Safari 5.0.1, Extensions Gallery now open originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been almost a year since RIM picked up Torch Mobile and locked its newly acquired division in a closet, telling those coders to not come out until BlackBerry had a world-class browser. Early tests from Salomondrin, the self-described “007 of the Phone World,” indicates that those tired engineers can now finally go home and get some sleep. The new WebKit-based browser, a part of BlackBerry OS 6.0, managed a score of 208 on the Acid HTML5 tests, measuring browser compliance and performance. Meanwhile the iPhone 4 scored 185 and HTC’s Incredible pulled down 151. Mind you, benchmark performance doesn’t always equate to real-world browser responsiveness, but regardless this is good news for CrackBerry addicts. The only question now is: when will they get their fix?

Update: The browsers were run through a suite of tests, and the above scores were actually from The HTML5 Test!

BlackBerry 6’s WebKit-based browser bests the competition in a good ‘ol standards showdown originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/gadgets/Froyo_s_browser_with_Flash_is_almost_as_fast_as_iOS_Safari’; A little while back Google boldly claimed that Froyo would have the world’s fastest mobile browser, but the lack of final software back then meant we’d had to tie up our itchy hands until now. And boy, it sure looks like it was worth the wait — Ars Technica’s JavaScript benchmarks show that not only is Froyo’s browser almost three times faster than its Éclair counterpart, but it also beats iOS 4’s Safari by at least two-fold. That said, numbers alone don’t always reflect real-life performance — especially with Froyo supporting iPhone’s much-missed Flash — so we went ahead and conducted our own browser speed test. Read on for our videos and results after the jump.

Update: for those who were concerned about the battery affecting the Nexus One’s performance, we did use Android System Info to verify that the CPU was still clocked at 1GHz. We were also able to reproduce the same results with a full battery. Either way, it’s still a win for Android.

Continue reading Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video)

Android 2.2 (Froyo) versus iOS 4: the browser showdown (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/software/Firefox_4_Beta_1_now_available_for_download’;
Whoa, Nelly! Is that a Firefox 4 download button we’re looking at? Why yes… yes it is! We can’t think of a much better way to wrap up one’s workday than by finding out that Mozilla’s own Firefox browser has finally made the official leap to 4.0, with Beta 1 going live for the adoring public today. It’s ready to be sucked down and installed for those with Windows, Linux and OS X-based machines, and the changelog itself is far too lengthy for this space (though it’s linked below for your perusal). You’ll obviously notice an overhauled look hitting you front and center, with a new add-on manager, support for the new WebM format, improved privacy settings and crash protection headlining the “big chart o’ features.” Give ‘er a download and toss your thoughts on the new build down in comments below, cool?

P.S. – Be warned that this may very well not work with your stable of add-ons right away, so we’d keep that stable 3.x.x build installed as a backup!

Firefox 4 Beta 1 now available for download originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/tech_news/Opera_10_6_hits_Windows_Mac_and_Linux’; Four short months after Opera 10.5, the Scandinavian potato boilers are back for more — the latest version of their lightweight web browser features not only claims to be the fastest, but the first final browser with WebM video support. While we actually noticed a variety of web videos felt choppy with the Windows version, there’s no denying it’s a speedy little hummingbird; Engadget felt snappier on Opera than Chrome or Firefox by far. Don’t take our word for it, though — try it out for yourself at the source link.

Opera 10.6 hits Windows, Mac and Linux with faster Javascript, WebM video support originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Jul 2010 12:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two months after an impressive beta, Mozilla’s finalized its first full mobile browser for Maemo — beating iPhone, Android and most assuredly Windows Mobile versions to the punch. Though it doesn’t seem to have gained any new features in the interim, what it does bring to the table is sweet indeed: portrait browsing, auto-updating add-ons and the ability to magically convert webpages to PDF right on your phone. If you have a Nokia N900 or N810, do your device a favor and download it right now; if not, you’ll find a handy guide to your burning jealousy at our more coverage link.

Firefox 1.1 hits Maemo in final form, featuring Add-ons, Save to PDF and more originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jul 2010 14:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Emboldened by the (great) success enjoyed by Opera’s Mini in making it onto Apple’s hallowed iPhone platform, Mozilla has today submitted its own browser implement to the App Store censors. We already knew Firefox Home — a weird sort of incomplete browser that syncs your desktop bookmarks, history, and tabs with the iPhone — was in the works, but now we’re finding the team behind it is so confident of its approval that it’s already promising a guide on how to set it up once it’s approved. We suspect the fact it’ll allow you to shift browsing sessions over to Safari will be looked upon favorably, but there’s no escaping the fact that Firefox Home will still browse the web for you should you wish it. This is going to be a highly entertaining approval process indeed. Your move, Cupertino.

Continue reading Mozilla submits Firefox Home to Apple App Store, considers approval a formality (video)

Mozilla submits Firefox Home to Apple App Store, considers approval a formality (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 02:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s new web video standard seems to be gathering a bit of momentum, as today Firefox is following in the ultrafast steps of Chrome by offering built-in support for WebM video. Bugs are still being worked out, but the fundamentals are there, and we’ll hopefully see all kinks ironed out in time for the release of Firefox 4 Beta, which is expected to land later this month. This is now the third big browser to announce compatibility, with Microsoft already promising it for IE 9, provided users download the necessary VP8 codec first. The HTML5-obsessed Apple hasn’t yet decided which way it’s going with the standard while Opera is presumably busy figuring out how to parody the whole thing in video form.

Mozilla bundles WebM support into nightly Firefox builds originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re getting a ton of tips about Netflix being broken in Safari 5, and while we’re pretty sure Reed Hastings and crew will have things patched up in the morning, we thought we’d share the quick fix with you now, since it’s so simple. The problem isn’t actually Safari 5, it’s the browser agent string — Netflix doesn’t recognize it as a supported browser, so all you have to do is turn on the developer menu and change Safari’s user agent back to 4.1. Ready? It’s just a couple steps:

1. Open Preferences > Advanced and click “Show Develop menu in menu bar”.
2. In the Develop menu, select User Agent and hit “Safari 4.1″.
3. Watch some Netflix!

Of course, you’ll have to switch it back to use any Safari 5-optimized sites that check for the latest version of Apple’s browser, but that’s not too hard — and like we said, we’re guessing the Netflix crew will have this sorted in no time, so you shouldn’t need to worry about this in the future.

Update: Told you they’d get it fixed soon enough — reader Colin tells us things are working fine with Safari 5 as of this morning.

How to re-enable Netflix in Safari 5 (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has just outed a press release for Safari 5, which curiously didn’t get a mention during the company’s WWDC10 keynote, but should be ready to download any minute now. Safari Reader is making its debut, as we’d heard it might, alongside a claimed 30 percent performance improvement over Safari 4 and — mirroring the iPhone 4 — Bing as one of the preloaded search engine options. Google and Yahoo are still around, don’t freak out. Apple is also adding in Extensions (think Firefox’s Add-Ons) to the browser, allowing devs to use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to pretty up the browsing experience. The Reader feature intrigues us most, as it auto-detects articles within webpages and pulls them out for an unencumbered text-only view. The idea sounds great, but we’ll naturally need to see how well it works in practice. Apple’s been doing a bit of benchmarking too and boasts that Safari 5 runs JavaScript a whole three percent faster than Chrome 5.0 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6. Internet Explorer is presumably still working on finishing that test.

P.S. We’re hearing the current release might be for devs only, hence the lack of a public download.

Update: Okay, now it’s available for public consumption.

Update 2: We’ve been playing with Safari 5 for a few moments and here’s what we’ve noticed:

• Reader is pretty gorgeous — think Instapaper on the fly. It’s hard to tell when it’ll kick in and show the Reader button in the toolbar, though — it works on Engadget posts, but not in Wikipedia articles.
• Yes, Netflix is broken. It seems like it’s doing a browser detect and failing with the new build number, so we’d guess it’ll be fixed soon.
• It’s much faster at everything from launch to rendering times. We haven’t clocked it yet, but it’s noticeably snappier on our quad-core i7 iMac.
• We’re dying to try out some Extensions and see how they work, but we haven’t seen any yet. Same with the new HTML5 features — hit us up if you see anything!
• Bing Search integration is… Bing search integration. What else is there to say?

Continue reading Apple releases Safari 5 with Safari Reader, Extensions and Bing search (updated)

Apple releases Safari 5 with Safari Reader, Extensions and Bing search (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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