Code Retard

Google is preparing some important changes to Chrome’s browsing behavior as predictive powers and better download scanning protocol land in the latest beta update.

Released today, Google Chrome 17 beta for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame.

Of the multiple improvements and fixes noted in Google’s Chrome 17 beta changelog, these two have the potential to affect users the most. The change in security behavior expands Chrome’s safe browsing technology to scan not only Web sites visited, but downloads as well. It will analyze installation files downloaded with the browser, starting with Windows-based EXE and MSI. Google hasn’t clarified if the scan will also include other Windows-based file types or installers from
Mac and Linux operating systems. The feature is important for being able to block the threat of ransomware “fake antivirus” programs, among other things.

While the feature is certainly appreciated for future threats, this is a bit like closing the barn door long after the horse has bolted for the open plains. Fake antivirus has been plaguing Windows users for years, and last year made some notable attacks against Macs.

Chrome’s pending psychic powers sounds similar to the technology that’s currently present in the Kindle Fire’s Silk browser. As you type in a query into Chrome 17 beta’s location bar, which Google calls the “omnibox,” it will begin to load some pages in the background. “If the URL auto-completes to a site you’re very likely to visit, Chrome will begin to prerender the page,” wrote Dominic Hamon, a software engineer at Google in the blog post announcing the browser update. The pre-rendering makes the full site show up much faster, instantly in some cases, according to Google.

The Silk browser, now available beyond the Fire–but not with permission.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

The browser Silk may be native to the Kindle Fire, but one
Android developer has discovered a way to transplant it to any rooted Android device, an XDA forum post from the end of December revealed.

If you’re an Amazon.com addict but don’t have a Fire, Silk could become your go-to browser.
Silk is unique because of its “cloud acceleration” ability, which renders Web sites extremely quickly using a combination of the SPDY protocol developed by Google and computing power provided by its own cloud-based servers. Silk is also known for the ability to learn from browsing habits and predict which sites will be visited next, in some cases. Note that you can protect your browsing habits–but also slow down the browser–by disabling the predictive browsing.

Once you’ve rooted your Android, the process for installing Silk is quite simple. The XDA developer, TyHi, created an archive to download, which you then manually copy over to your Android and install.

Amazon might be working on an official port of Silk to other devices and operating systems. As early as September 2011, almost two months before the Fire’s release, Amazon was found to have registered domain names that indicated a broader roadmap for the browser. It also had included language in its terms and conditions that indicated multi-system support was in the works.

Amazon has yet to respond to questions regarding third-party ports of Silk.

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(Credit:
Dropbox)

Dropbox is an incredibly useful service for sharing files between computers, smartphones,
tablets, and with other users.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add the Dropbox folder to the Send To menu in
Windows 7, so you can send files to your Dropbox folder just by right-clicking on the file.

Step 1: Open the Run dialog box by hitting Windows Logo+R, then type: %APPDATA%MicrosoftWindowsSendTo

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

Step 2: When the SendTo folder opens, right-click on the Dropbox icon in the left pane, under “Favorites,” and drag it over to the SendTo folder in the right pane.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

Step 3: After you let go of the icon in the SendTo folder, select “Create shortcuts here.”

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

Step 4: Confirm that the Dropbox shortcut is in the SendTo folder.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

Step 5: The next time you need to send a file to your Dropbox folder, just right-click on the file and send it away.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Ed Rhee)

That’s it. This also works great when you have more than one file to copy in the same folder, but not the entire folder. Just hold down the Ctrl key and select your files with your mouse, then right-click on any highlighted file and send it to Dropbox.

If you haven’t whipped your Web site into shape for easy viewing on small-screen devices, you’d better get cracking.

Mobile browsing reached its highest levels so far, 7.7 percent of total browser usage, in December.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

That’s because the use of mobile devices reached an all-time high in December, accounting for 7.7 percent of browser usage according to Net Applications’ measurements of daily visits to its network of 40,000 Web sites. That may still be a small fraction of total Web traffic, but it’s a large and growing population in absolute numbers.

Tablet browsing in many ways is similar to desktop browsing; screen resolution on the dominant
iPad and iPad 2 aren’t that far off a laptop. But touch interfaces are different from mouse interfaces, especially when it comes to tapping buttons with precision. And smaller tablets are awkwardly in between the iPad and mobile-phone screens. It’s for these reasons that there’s a lot of work in retooling CSS and other Web technologies to make Web sites adjust to different screen sizes, but for now it’s a tough challenge for Web programmers.

Among mobile browsers, Apple’s Safari remained the top dog with 53.3 percent of usage, a drop from 55.0 percent in November. Opera rose to 21.7 percent and Google’s
Android browser dipped to 15.9 percent in December, making their reversed positions in October look more like an anomaly than the new order.

Apple’s Safari leads mobile browser usage.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

In the desktop browser market, months-long trends continued unabated. The top dog, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, fell from 52.6 percent to 51.9 percent. Mozilla’s Firefox also fell, 22.1 percent to 21.8 percent, while Google’s Chrome rose from 18.2 percent to 19.1 percent.

StatCounter, which measures page views rather than unique users, shows similar trends, but more advanced. In its measurements, Chrome surpassed Firefox a month ago, and IE has dropped to near 38 percent.

For desktop browsers, IE and Firefox dropped while Chrome rose in December.

(Credit:
Net Applications)

Ranked by specific versions of browsers, IE6 is the fifth-most used, according to Net Applications, with a various versions combined to account for 7.7 percent of usage in December. That’s a problem for Web developers who want to add features the old browser just can’t handle.

According to Microsoft’s IE6 Countdown site, which tries to encourage people to drop the decade-old browser, China remains an IE6 stronghold. There, more than a quarter of usage comes from IE6. In the United States, it’s less than 1 percent.

Firefox for Android’s new clothes

Big changes are arriving in the developer’s build of
Firefox for
Android in a bid to make it more appealing, while the significantly more popular desktop version is getting several noteworthy but smaller changes, the company announced at the end of 2011.

Available for download now, the first versions of Firefox 11 Aurora for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android came out just after the stable build of the browser updated to version 9. The Android update is again the more notable release, as the new native Android interface reaches a wider audience. For the first time, the browser also supports playing Adobe Flash content, which competitors like Dolphin HD and Opera have offered for a while.

The new Firefox for Android Start page has cleaned up its act.

(Credit:
Mozilla)

This is more than a new look, though, as many of the browser’s features have been stripped out. This includes Firefox Sync, which allows seamless synchronization of personal data like bookmarks, passwords, and browsing history, and Mozilla’s popular add-ons. In a blog post announcing Firefox 11 Aurora for Android, Mozilla promises that Sync and add-ons will return “soon.”

Personally, I’ve found Sync to be the single most useful feature in the mobile browser. To be able to open a tab on the desktop, and have it nearly instantaneously pushed to my Android, makes jumping from desktop to phone or
tablet practically seamless. On the other hand, very rough testing indicates that Firefox 11 is a much faster browser. While site-loading tests indicate speed gains only around half a second to a full second, initial app start time tests show major speed gains over the current Firefox 9 of around 50 percent.

Meanwhile, Firefox 11 Aurora for desktops gets two useful changes. Windows 7 and Vista users will no longer see the User Account Control (UAC) for Firefox after the browser’s initial installation. This completes Firefox’s alignment with Chrome’s seamless updates, which haven’t required your interaction with the UAC. On first installation, the browser now adds Chrome to its list of browsers from which it can import your personal data.

Other changes in Firefox 11 Aurora are aimed at developers. More HTML5 code is supported, Google’s SPDY protocol for faster site loading can now be tested, Tilt support allows for 3D Web page visualization, and the HTML5 video controls have been redesigned. Check out the Firefox 11 Aurora changelog published by Mozilla.

Although Firefox Sync is expected to break on Android under the current interface, this mock-up indicates that Mozilla isn’t about to let it die.

(Credit:
Mozilla)

The new Aurora builds bump Firefox 10 to beta status. Changes in this version offer users an improved add-on experience, as all compatible add-ons except for binary add-ons will not be disabled by the browser. This sorts out the “maxversion” situation, which required developers to set a Firefox version number with which the add-on would stop being compatible. Mozilla expects that this will significantly decrease the number of problems related to add-ons. The Sync setup process has been improved, too.

For developers, Firefox 10 beta improves the developer experience in the browser with a bucket of changes. These include support of the full-screen API for better gaming in Firefox, Page Inspector and Style Inspector for testing new code, WebGL improvements for better 3D rendering, and Orion code editor support in the Scratchpad tool for on-the-fly coding. Mozilla released the Firefox 10 beta changelog here, with a scheduled graduation to stable release the last week in January.

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While software may not be the glitziest of categories on display at
CES, there’s still plenty to be excited about as we prep for the 2012 event. From artificial intelligence to home integration, apps are definitely on the rise. Also, expect the cloud and health care to emerge as topics yet again.

Forecast: Cloudy
Though this was on many prediction lists last year, we expect cloud computing to really hit its stride beginning with announcements at 2012′s Consumer Electronics Show. Now that Apple’s iCloud and other services have found creative (and successful) ways to store data in the cloud, expect to see more companies getting in on the action. As more data gets spread out to all your devices, the industry moves ever closer to the long-predicted marriage of television and Internet. Having every type of content on demand is even closer than you might think.

Voice and AI tech just getting started
By now just about everyone has heard about Siri, Apple’s AI on the
iPhone 4S that responds to voice commands. Even with the Internet memes and jokes about Siri’s responses to user questions, there’s no debate about whether the feature is useful. Expect many companies to introduce voice and AI tech starting with CES 2012, and expect even more voice interaction with electronics as artificial intelligence advances and more users get comfortable talking to their gadgets.

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET)

The connected home
CES 2012 is going to take the idea of a “connected home” to another level. Device and appliance manufacturers are conjuring up new, exciting capabilities for their hardware, and you can bet developers will be showing off the software to complement them. Expect to see hardware-software combinations like baby monitors and home security systems with apps, stereo systems controlled by
Android, and even cars that open, lock, and start with a single tap on your phone. While we’re not expecting technology like this to be adopted en masse just yet, 2012 is certainly the year for it to start gaining some momentum.

Fitness and health
With all the talk of rising health care costs in the news, it’s no surprise that people’s minds are increasingly focusing on health and fitness. At CES 2012, expect to see developers capitalizing on this trend with more applications than ever designed to track fitness goals, offer nutrition advice, and even monitor medical conditions. While resources like WebMD have been undoubtedly useful up to now, we see 2012 as the year when software will get a little more personal and perhaps a little more abrasive when it comes to whipping us into shape.

Pick up a new
Android phone recently? Or maybe a
tablet?

Either way, with a shiny new device in hand, you’re probably itching to download some apps, right? Well, allow CNET to give you a hand with that. With a fast-growing Android Market that can seem overwhelming and downright intimidating to some, chances are, you could use a bit of direction.

So without further ado, I’d like to introduce CNET’s list of Best apps for Android. It’s got some well-known classics and a few apps that we’ve plucked from obscurity.

While it would have been nice to highlight every single app we’ve come to love over the years, doing so obviously would’ve made for an enormous list. So, what we’ve done is handpick our favorite, high-quality, tried and tested apps for some of the most commonly searched categories like utilities, productivity, and shopping. It should be both a great reference for experienced Android users and a perfect starter kit for anyone just jumping onto the Android bandwagon.

Check out our list of Best apps for Android now, and feel free to tell us what you think in the comments below.

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The Omnibox has been beefed up in RockMelt beta 5 with deep hooks directly into Facebook.

(Credit:
RockMelt)

While the big browser conflagration between Chrome and, oh, just about everybody else tends to suck the oxygen from a room, the Chromium-based RockMelt continues to keep its users warm and toasty with new features focusing on where social intersects the Web.

RockMelt beta 5 for Windows
and Mac will be available around 8:30 a.m. PT Wednesday. Beta 4 is currently available for people who want to get a head start.

Facebook is already an integral part of the RockMelt experience, since an account is required to log in to the browser. RockMelt co-founder and CEO Eric Vishria explained in a visit to the CNET offices yesterday that social networking in general and Facebook specifically are indelibly tied to his browser. “RockMelt gets an average of seven hours of use per day, and 60 percent of our users are under 25 years old. There are also seven chat conversations in RockMelt per day, up from three at launch,” he said, explaining the appeal of the browser to its fans. When pressed, Vishria refused to reveal specifics, saying only that RockMelt has hundreds of thousands of users.

The new beta adds two social features. One makes changes to the Omnibox, which is Google’s name for the feature-rich location bar that lets you search your default search engine, history, and bookmarks simultaneously. The new RockMelt Omnibox lets you import pictures, initiate chats, and search your Facebook contacts. You can also navigate directly to Facebook’s new timeline from the Omnibox.

RockMelt beta 5′s New Tab page goes heavily social, in an attempt to make it more useful.

(Credit:
RockMelt)

RockMelt’s also developed an algorithm to show you in the Omnibox friends that you used to have more Facebook interactions with but haven’t connected to in a while. It’s not clear how good of an idea this is in a world where people can remain “Facebook friends” with a person long after the friendship itself has deteriorated, but maybe that’s why Mark Zuckerberg gave us blocking.

The fifth beta also takes some important steps toward powering up the new tab page. It revises the mildly dynamic “most recent” sites view to build in some people news from Facebook’s social graph. “What we’ve started to do is build actual content into the “most recently viewed” sites. I think there’s even more there that’s possible, where we make them more usable.” The social new tab page will make it easier to see and share what you’ve been reading with friends. Both articles read by friends, and their sources, will be available.

The third new feature expands the browser’s support for apps. Always ready with statistics to back his browser, Vishria said that the average RockMelt user has 12 apps installed and opens them 26 times a day, which is why beta 5 comes with better app support. You can expand the “app edge,” the sidebar where apps are hosted, and can scroll through installed apps so you’re not limited to what can be shown on your screen.

Like the Chrome Web Store, RockMelt has its own app delivery system. Called the RockMelt App Center, and “heavily curated,” said Vishria, it has a “newsy focus,” with an emphasis on Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, and other sites that meld social and news.

Vishria spoke confidently that massive changes are in the offing for both browsers and the Web. “Internet Explorer is under 50 percent of marketshare for the first time in over a decade.
Firefox market share has started to decline. The big winner has been Chrome, which has 25 percent, plus or minus. That’s about double what they had last year. Google has effectively bought the No. 2 browser position.”

The RockMelt App Center is a heavily-curated place to find RockMelt apps.

(Credit:
RockMelt)

While the specifics of those numbers is debatable, there’s no doubt that only three years after its introduction, Chrome has grown from an intriguing disruptor to an innovative leader, at least in terms of technology development if not pure market numbers.

“We’ll look back at 2011 as the end of the war between Google and Microsoft, with Google the winner,” he explained. “They used their brand and money to get marketshare.” The coming struggle, he said, will be between Google and Facebook, with the browser as a key battleground.

One trend that Vishria is bucking hard is the doomsaying of personal computers. “Mobile is a very siloed experience,” he said, noting that RockMelt does have an iPhone app. “It’s very important, mobile is a growth area, but while everyone is off exploring the new land, I think there’s huge value in the desktop/latop space.”

To that end, he hinted that RockMelt’s continued development into sharing might be bolstered in the future by exploring the isolated tower of search. “The biggest reason people open the browser on the phone is to search. Nothing’s replaced the general utility of search.”

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From all of us at Download.com we hope everyone is enjoying their holiday break! As part of our year-end coverage, we’ve updated and added new software to our Best apps for Mac so you know exactly what to download if you just received a new
Mac desktop or laptop as a holiday gift. Everything from alternative Web browsers to music discovery apps are available with rated reviews so you can weigh your options before you download.

If you have an iOS device, you’re in luck–we’ve also updated our Best apps for iPhone and Best apps for iPad collections as well. Each of these collections has apps that cover all the categories–and yes–we’ve even included a few of our favorite games.

We recognize that not everyone has an iOS device. If you use an
Android phone, check out our Best apps for Android collection.

Have a safe and fun New Year everyone and we’ll see you in 2012!

Mozilla is laying claim to big performance improvements for Firefox 9, while Firefox for Android goes in for a shave and a haircut as it gets an entirely different look. Both desktop and
Android updates are being released today.

Firefox 9 (download for Windows | Mac |
Linux |
Android) continues the browser’s rapid-release development oscillation, where feature enhancements and performance improvements take the lead in alternating months.

The JavaScript improvement called Type Inference, which Mozilla spent more than a year developing, debuts on the PC version of Firefox. The short version is that sites that heavily rely on JavaScript–like Web apps or sites that render games, video, and 3D graphics–will render much, much faster.

What actually changed is this: A feature in Firefox’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine, Type Inference creates type information by both monitoring the types of values as the program runs and analyzing the program’s code. The type information then gets used during “just-in-time” compilation to generate more efficient code, and Mozilla says that major benchmarks like its own Kraken test and Google’s V8 show the browser running around 30 percent faster.

On Macs, OS X Lion users will finally see support for two-finger swipe gestures, which sounds more offensive than it is. This simply means that if you’ve got the latest
Mac OS, it’ll be easier for you to jump from site to site. The Mac interface has also been tweaked to match the slight visual changes that arrived in Lion, and multiple monitor support in the browser has been improved.

Firefox 9 Android debuts a new way to interact with tabs, and ports the browser’s signature bigger Back button to the mobile operating system. These screenshots are from the Aurora release of Firefox 9, so there might be slight changes in the stable version.

(Credit:
Mozilla)

Web developers get some attention in Firefox 9, too. The most important developer changes in Firefox 9 are that sites that run Ajax or download large data sets will load faster, and sites can now display content as it’s being downloaded thanks to new support to chunking XHR requests. While a technical term, the upshot of chunking XHR requests is that developers can build Web sites to receive large amounts of data faster, and thus making the site itself faster to load. JavaScript can also be used to detect a browser’s Do Not Track preference, the option that tells Web sites not to use cookies to track a person’s browsing behavior. A longer list of Web developer changes in Firefox 9 is available.

Firefox’s new Android tablet interface makes it to the stable version of the browser, and the interface changes are drastic. As I noted when the new look arrived in the Aurora channel in September, the Back button has moved to the location bar, which has been stretched to the right edge of the screen to put Refresh and Bookmark buttons closer at hand. Tabs have been moved to a hidden menu when in portrait mode, and appear much larger than they have before when they’re exposed. There have been some performance gains, too, as Mozilla says that people ought to see faster app load times.

This new look won’t be around long, though. Mozilla plans to rebuild its app using native Android code, and the mock-ups show even more changes to the interface. One change that does look like it’ll stick around is a new sidebar approach to the Awesome Bar, so that when you tap the location bar, tabs for Bookmarks, Open tabs, History, and Sync appear on the side while you scroll in the middle of the window.

There have also been two big improvements to HTML5 support in Firefox for Android. The browser now supports the Input Tag for cameras, which means that developers can build mobile sites and apps that will take pictures and scan bar codes without leaving Firefox. Mozilla created a demo of the Input Tag here.

The second change supports the HTML5 Form Validation API, for automatic form-field validation. Basically, it will be easier to get the browser to validate typed text.

While the future of Firefox for Android lies in abandoning the current interface for the predicted massive speed gains from native Android code, the PC version of Firefox looks to address ongoing add-on compatibility issues, and give the browser a more seamless automatic update experience.