Web

Today, Google launched Blink, its fork of the WebKit browser engine, and members of Google's Chrome team clearly are excited about their liberation.

With the fork, Google will concentrate its core browser development efforts on Blink, which will gradually diverge from the WebKit project on which it's based. You can read more about the context and history leading to Blink in CNET's coverage, or read the official Blink blog post and Blink FAQ for the party line.

But to get a feel for the emotion involved, check the commentary from the Chrome team members themselves. They're … Read more

Mozilla Firefox has undergone an enormous rebirth over the past two years. Since Firefox 4 debuted in March 2011, the browser has been hell-bent on improvements. These have come, in large part, on the rapid-release cycle, which sees a new version of Firefox every six weeks. Many people like them, but a vocal minority has pooh-poohed the increase in version numbers. That's hardly a legitimate complaint in a world where mobile apps also update silently and effectively, but the transition for Firefox hasn't been an easy one.

Firefox is on version 20 at the time of this review. … Read more

A years-long marriage of convenience that linked Google and Apple browser technologies is ending in divorce.

In a move that Google says will technologically liberate both Chrome and Safari, the company has begun its own offshoot of the WebKit browser engine project called Blink. Initially it uses the same software code base that all WebKit-based browsers share, but over time it will diverge into a totally separate project, Google announced today.

The move marks the end of years of direct WebKit programming cooperation between the two rivals. WebKit is an open-source project, meaning that anyone can use and modify the … Read more

A slew of news stories published today questioned whether Google search was lowering the ranking of iTunes apps in query results, but the Web giant says it was actually just having technical issues.

"We've been having some issues fetching pages from the iTunes Web servers, and as a result some people may have had problems finding iTunes apps in search easily," a Google spokesperson told CNET. "We're working with the team there to ensure search users can find what they're looking for."

It seems the issue was first noticed by Appsfire co-founder Ouriel … Read more

Another tantalizing tidbit has emerged from last month's leaked IE11 build: the possibility that the next version of Internet Explorer could support Google's SPDY technology for faster browser-server communications.

It's not working yet, but SPDY "is being implemented," said Rafael Rivera of the Within Windows blog. Paul Thurrot of WinSuperSite also said SPDY is coming.

The SPDY support is at the operating system level, meaning that other software besides just IE11 could take advantage of it, Rivera said.

Microsoft declined to comment on the matter.

Google has rounded up several allies to standardize SPDY technology, … Read more

Chrome 27, making its way through the development pipeline, is helping to advance the fortunes of a new audio compression technology called Opus.

Opus is what's called a codec -- a technology to encode and decode streams of information, in this case audio. Technically, it's actually two codecs in one, an approach that lets it span a range of uses from Internet telephony on slow networks to streaming high-quality music on fast networks.

One of its chief virtues is low latency: there's not a long wait for audio to be encoded or decoded, something that's not … Read more

Whether it's attaching your name to social-based ads that your friends will see, or  resurrecting old messages onto your Timeline, Facebook has become quite the source of over-sharing and headache.

Unfortunately, by simply clicking "Like" on a Facebook that you want to read updates from, your Timeline can become more cluttered than ever. You might see more sponsored posts related to your Likes, and you'll be announcing each Like to all of your friends. Wouldn't it be nice to follow pages without announcing them to everyone or flooding your updates?

A … Read more

Developers these days are obsessed with mobile apps, but a startup called Chorus.im hopes the Web will be its entree into a new instant-messaging market.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is using various Web standards to try to build an IM service that works in people's browsers. The new generation of Web technologies for Web apps is often called HTML5. Although the company offers mobile apps for iOS and Android, too, the Web approach can be convenient since people can launch it just by pointing a browser at a Web site.

And indeed, that's how it … Read more

Each social-media profile lets you use images to convey your personal (or professional) brand. Unfortunately, not every Web site allows you to use the same size photos. In the end, you'll have some social-media profiles with images that look stretched or squished. Instead of fussing with images to make them look proper, try using the Social Media Image Maker.

The great thing about this site is that it's easy to use, and can make your social media profiles look much more professional (or at least like you know what you're doing to friends and family). You won'… Read more