webkit

Yesterday's introduction of Chrome version 2.0.172.28 was touted by Google as being up to 30 percent faster for handling JavaScript. After using the update to the stable release extensively for the past day and running it through two JavaScript tests on two computers, it's conclusively faster than the previous stable version of Chrome.

The two computers I used were a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 desktop with a Pentium 4 processor running at 3.00 GHz and 2 GB of RAM, and a Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3 laptop with a Core Duo T9400 … Read more

Google has shifted the JavaScript engine that powers its Chrome Web browser into a higher gear.

The company announced Thursday that an update to Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine, combined with a new version of the Webkit browser engine, should improve the loading speed of JavaScript-heavy Web pages by up to 30 percent. The updates will be automatically downloaded to existing copies of Chrome.

JavaScript engines are one of the new fronts in the browser wars, with various vendors touting the performance of their browsers this year in hopes of unseating the competition. Chrome did very well on CNET JavaScript tests … Read more

Google is tight-lipped about the Linux version of its Chrome browser, but the company's programmers have proved a bit more forthcoming with a brief announcement that they have a crude version of Chrome working on Linux.

"Dude, Gmail works in the test shell on Linux!" said programmer Dan Kegel in a note to the Chromium developers mailing list on Tuesday. It's pretty crude, though: the "enter" key doesn't work, for example.

Chromium is the name of the open-source project behind Chrome. But what's a "test shell"?

Aaron Boodman, who works … Read more

During a trip Down Under, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has had a lot to say. This week in Sydney, Australia, he stated that he isn't interested in wooing Yahoo anymore, he doesn't understand how Google plans to profit from Android, and he has confidence in President-elect Barack Obama's leadership.

And while the expressive executive on Friday also said Microsoft "may look into" using WebKit, the open-source browser-rendering technology used by Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari browsers, he mostly rejected that idea, according to a Computerworld report. Instead, he said the two prominent Microsoft … Read more

Just about every browser out there now is trying to grab the crown for fastest performance for running JavaScript, the programming language that powers many increasingly sophisticated Web-based applications. The latest development is from the programmers behind Apple's Safari.

Mozilla bragged earlier this month about TraceMonkey, a new JavaScript engine due to ship in Firefox 3.1 near the end of 2008. Next came Google's Chrome, a leading feature of which is the performance of its V8 JavaScript engine. Now the WebKit programmers, whose open-source code is used in Apple's Safari browser and the Konqueror browser of … Read more

On Tuesday, Apple released iPod Touch version 2.1 to address several security issues. Among them are the DNS vulnerabilities first reported by Dan Kaminsky of IOActive in July. Other issues include vulnerabilities in Webkit, CoreGraphics, and the Application Sandbox.

Earlier on Tuesday, Apple released updates to its QuickTime media player.

Apple notes that this update is only available through iTunes as part of the iPod Touch updating process and will not appear in your computer's Software Update application, nor can it be found on the Apple Downloads site.

Application Sandbox This patch affects users of iPod Touch v2.… Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Google's new Chrome browser is for PCs today, but company co-founder Sergey Brin expects the technology will make its way to Android, the company's mobile phone operating system and software suite.

Chrome and Android were developed largely separately, Brin said in an interview at the Chrome launch event Tuesday. "We have not wanted to bind one's hands to the other's," Brin said. But you can expect that to change now that both projects are public and nearing their first final releases.

"Probably a subsequent version of Android is going … Read more

Google has released the beta version of a new browser, Chrome. In its comic-book pre-announcement, Google stated correctly that watching videos, chatting, and even playing Web-based games didn't exist when browsers were first invented. For the user, Google wants the browser to disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools, and such. Google has rethought the Internet browser--some of its basic underpinnings are quite novel--but users will recognize some features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

At the moment, only the Windows … Read more

Firefox fans looking for a major update to the open-source Web browser probably will get a final version of it next month.

"We're looking for final ship sometime in June," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering, in an interview Wednesday. Mozilla, which was spun out of AOL more than 10 years ago, oversees the Firefox programming project.

One of the Firefox's strengths is the broad collection of hundreds of add-ons, but that also means things move more slowly when programmers must update their projects to be compatible with Firefox 3. And that's … Read more