browsers

Mobile app developer BrowserMedia announced Thursday that it has launched an iPhone app for the Grammy Awards, airing Sunday. According to the company, it worked closely with The Recording Academy to develop the trivia game, which tests the user's knowledge about Grammy history. BrowserMedia is also developing a companion Facebook application that will provide ongoing trivia contests past the award show's airing Sunday.

Juicy Campus, a service that let college students manufacture gossip and spread it anonymously, announced on its corporate blog that it has decided to suspend operations. According to the company, it was enjoying strong user … Read more

As noted on the Google Operating System blog, an upcoming session at the Google I/O conference highlights an imminent improvement to Google's open-source Chrome browser: extensions.

Google has recently been making Firefox a bit more like its Chrome browser, with improvements to its toolbar for the Mozilla browser that give it a Chrome appearance, but by adding an easy way to develop extensions for Chrome, Google is going the opposite direction: making Chrome more like Firefox, which has arguably been successful largely because of its extensibility.

So when will Chrome follow Firefox's suit? Almost certainly by the … Read more

With Web applications imposing new demands on Web browsers, a previously behind-the-scenes programming technology called JavaScript is getting new visibility, and Opera is the latest case in point.

The Norwegian browser maker announced on Wednesday a new JavaScript engine project called Carakan.

Carakan runs JavaScript code about 2.5 times as fast as the Futhark engine in the alpha version of Opera 10, programmer Lars Erik Bolstad said in an Opera blog post.

Opera's main business is browsers for mobile phones, and its current JavaScript engine is optimized for minimum memory demands, but now performance is the priority, Bolstad … Read more

I'm a big fan of my browser's contextual menu. This menu, which can most easily be pulled up by right-clicking your mouse is commonplace for really useful extensions that are polite enough not to clutter your browsing experience with extra keyboard shortcuts or UI.

Firefox extension SimpleSearch is a really good example of this concept. Once installed it lets you search from a handful of sites like Wikipedia, IMDb, Google Maps, and dictionary search engine Definr. You just highlight the word or phrase you want to search and do a quick right-click to hop to the results.

The … Read more

Combine Web browsing with finding shopping deals and collecting coupons for bargains. This toolbar brings it all together.

The AAfter Toolbar installs quickly and easily. Its not the best design we've seen for a toolbar, and it takes up more viewing real estate than seems necessary, but its not as cluttered with buttons as many other toolbars. We like that it doesn't try to be all things to all surfers. Instead, it focuses on its search engine and shopping deals.

The toolbar performed well in all our tests, quickly returning search results and responding quickly when we clicked … Read more

This freeware browser has two components--the browser, and a menu bar that strongly resembles Apple's dock. The browser, while not perfect, performed well. We could have done without the menu bar.

As soon as Aw2 Explorer Flex was installed, our computer's performance slowed down considerably. The menu bar appeared at the top of our desktop window, and contained shortcuts to IE, Control Panel, and our Recycle Bin. The programs were slow to launch using the menu bar, and we couldn't empty our Recycle Bin using the bar. The browser itself was slow to load, but as soon … Read more

ZDNet Australia on Tuesday released updated browser speeds, as measured by the industry-standard SunSpider JavaScript test, and the results should give pause to proprietary-browser makers Microsoft and Opera Software:

Every open-source browser completely obliterated the proprietary browsers in terms of performance, and by a huge margin.

The test compared Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, Opera 10.00 Alpha, Firefox 3.1b1, Chrome 2.0.158.0, and the WebKit r40220 developer project included in Chrome and Apple's Safari.

Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (along with WebKit) left the proprietary competition in the dust:

Maybe there's … Read more

Brand Thunder, a company that lets people customize Firefox with brands, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Ohio TechAngels and other angel investors, the company said Tuesday.

The company revamps the open-source Web browser with various brands such as Nascar, hockey teams, country singer Julianne Hough, and various other partners.

To fund its business, Brand Thunder also changes the default search engine to Yahoo, which shares resulting advertising revenue with the company.

Brand Thunder also said it's signed a new partnership with Major League Soccer for a branded browser.

Update 9:45 a.m. PST: The company … Read more

As Microsoft counts down the final days to when it feels that Internet Explorer 8 is ready for public use, you can take a look at what's coming in this slideshow of IE 8's first Release Candidate.

Click on the image to your left to launch the gallery.