This week the folks behind the web browser Opera have pushed their Android-based mobile edition past Beta into its first full-fledged release. They’ve done so with little fanfare, too – so little that it’s scarcely made waves here in the spring of 2013 – right between Google’s developer conference Google I/O and the technology conference
Remember that web browser that was found hiding in the Nook’s search function? It’s time could be nigh. According to a leaked memo acquired by TechCrunch, Barnes & Nobel will be updating the Nook Simple Touch and Simple Touch with Glowlight with an email app, web browser and an updated store next month. The update will reportedly be sent over the air starting on June 1st and rolling out to all devices in the following weeks. The idea isn’t too far fetched — the Simple Touch is running a skinned version of Android. Nook owners not willing to wait for the official patch can always root the device of course, which comes with some peripheral advantages. Check out TechCrunch for a look the full memo.
Source: TechCrunch
Google’s Conversational Voice Search system has been living on both iOS and Android for either weeks or months – this week it’s coming to the Chrome web browser for all devices complete with a command familiar to Google Glass users: “Ok, Google.” This system will allow users to speak with natural language – conversational, that is – on any desktop computer with a microphone.
Google Search expands with several different elements this week, including Knowledge Graph working with statistics, anticipation of comparisons to other elements available in the system, and more. Knowledge Graph works with interesting events and locations in cities, is able to find photos from specific locations, and is able to tie these items together both in mobile mode and on a desktop through a Chrome web browser.
If a user has Google open and asks for information about a location, they’ll get that information along with related bits and pieces – photos, restaurants, etcetera. With Google’s newest update, the user is also able to say something as simple as “how far is it?” Google understands what you’ve been talking about and gives you a map.
This is all part of a system that follows three mainstays:
• Answer
• Converse
• Anticipate
As Google Search hears you, it understands and responds in kind, and also anticipates what you might want to know next. This system also works with Google Now on Android to give you information on your flights, your favorite sports teams, weather information, and the like. This system is bringing many Google Glass commands to Google Now as well.
A user will be able to make the following commands: “Ok Google, send an email to my friend George, I’ll be late today and we’ll have to meet up at 4 PM.” This message is understood by Google and a card appears which the user will then be able to tap to send – or – “OK send” will work as well.
This system will be available to Google Search beta experience users today and will be rolling out to users across the spectrum in users in the near future – stay tuned to our Google I/O tag portal all week long as the announcements and information continue to flow.
Google Voice search hits Chrome with Hotwording: “Ok, Google” is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
The folks at Google have this week at Google I/O let it be known that they’re bringing HTML5 Autocomplete functions to the Chrome mobile web browser for Android. This system will help bring back the massive amounts of users (over 90%, according to Google), that abandon in-browser product purchases on their smartphones and tablets.
Your information saved in Chrome in your desktop browser will be able to sync with your mobile web browser on Android. This means you’ll fill out a form, for example, with your name, address, payment information, all the good stuff, you’ll be able to save it (as you have been able for quite some time). The big deal here is that this information will be able to be accessed instantly from your mobile Chrome web browser at a tap.
The mobile web browser Chrome for Android allows you to sign-in with your Google account to sync with whichever iteration of Chrome you’ve already signed-in with. A change on one will be able to be brought up on another, history is the same, tabs can be accessed cross-device, and now forms will be able to be filled automatically.
This system will be rolling out for Android in the very near future – at the moment we’re waiting to see how close it is to iOS. Every other update to Chrome mentioned today has been instant and/or cross-device as well as cross-platform. Chrome is being pushed here at Google I/O 2013 as a single system more now than ever before.
Chrome brings Autocomplete form-filling to mobile web is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Here at Google I/O, the company is discussing their Chrome web browser, and they’ve announced that the browser has reached 750 million active users, which is up from 450 million users last year, which is quite the increase. However, the company showed off how they’re working to evolve the Chrome browser in order to enjoy desktop experiences on mobile devices.
The company demoed a web app running on a Chromebook Pixel, which is an interactive app for the upcoming movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The app shows an overhead view of the world, which is pinchable, so you can zoom in and out to explore the various areas on the map. Google eventually showed off the same web app on a Nexus 10 running the Chrome mobile browser.
The web app shows an all-3D environment, but unfortunately, it ran a little poorly during the on-stage demo, with really low framerates and a lot of stutters. We’re not sure if the Chromebook Pixel can’t keep up or if the internet isn’t doing its job. The web app is based on webGL, and since it’s a web app, you can access it through mobile and have the same experience on both desktop and mobile devices.
It’s certainly an interesting concept, and it seems Google is adamant about decreasing the separation between the desktop experience and the mobile experience, making both as equal as possible. Browsing the web on a tablet isn’t the same as browsing the web on a desktop or laptop, but Google is looking to change that with Chrome, and they’re planning to come out with some relevant features for Chrome later this year.
Furthermore, Google announced some improvements to the Chrome mobile web browser that will bring it up to par with the desktop version, including a new Checkout button that makes shopping easier on mobile devices. It’s essentially a one-click process that saves you time from having to enter in multiple fields by typing on the small keyboard. It’s essentially Google’s first step to creating a simpler web browser. Stay tuned for more Google I/O news coming up!
Chrome OS experience comes to Android mobile browser is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Makers of the Opera web browser have sued a former employee claiming that he took the trade secrets that was given at Opera and used them at Mozilla, the company behind the popular Firefox web browser. The man being accused, Trond Werner Hansen, left Opera in 2006, but returned in 2009 and 2010 as a consultant.
Opera is claiming a large $3.4 million in damages in the lawsuit, and they point to a video with Hansen talking about some of the innovations behind a prototype web browser for the iPad, called Junior. Hansen talks about some the features used in the browser that Opera claims that they were, or are, working on.
Hansen refused to comment about his work history with Opera, but he said that he is working with lawyers to prove that he did nothing wrong. As for Opera’s side of the story, they believed that Hansen “acted contrary to his contractual and other legal obligations towards Opera, among other things, the duty of loyalty and his contractual and statutory confidentiality obligations.”
The court hearing is set to take place sometime in late August, and the dispute is currently pending, so there’s not a lot of details to go around just yet, but we’re sure that come August when the hearing takes place, we’ll find out which party gets the win, but in the meantime, it seems Hansen will receive a lot of grief over the summer.
[via The Next Web]
Opera sues former employee for giving trade secrets to Firefox devs is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Google issued a fairly minor, but still noteworthy update to its Chrome iOS app today. The update now includes full-screen browsing, as well as new printing options, allowing users to take advantage of Google’s CloudPrint protocol or Apple’s AirPrint feature. The update also comes with support to save a website to a PDF directly to Google Drive.
As for the full-screen browsing capability, there’s not much to it, although it does get rid of the address bar when you scroll down a webpage, allowing users to take advantage of the whole display when web surfing. So, instead of the address bar remaining static, it moves along with the scroll, meaning it’ll get out of your way when you scroll down a page, which probably didn’t take too much coding effort, but it’s a very convenient feature to have nonetheless.
As for printing webpages, you can do so either via Google’s CloudPrint or Apple’s AirPrint, which is also a convenient feature to have handy when web surfing, although printing usage has gone down for casual purposes, since the use of Evernote allows users to save a website for later. Plus the new PDF saving feature to Google Drive is a nifty way to save websites as well.
It’s not every day when you see the option to save a website as a PDF file. Normally, you can only save it as an HTML file, along with the assets that go with the website. Saving for PDF gives you a simplified version of that, and then you can easily print out a copy if need be from your computer or mobile device. Google Chrome is a free download and the update is available now in the iTunes App Store.
Google Chrome for iOS updates with full-screen browsing, new printing options is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
WebKit makes the web go ’round, and yet it is soon to be joined by a new kid on the block: Blink, which was announced on Chromium’s blog earlier today. Says Chromium, the decision to create a new rendering engine “was not an easy” one, but ultimately good will come from it. Developers don’t need to worry, as the announcement reassures that little will change for them during the initial rounds of work.
As pointed out by Chromium software engineer Adam Barth, Chromium utilizes a multi-process architecture that differs from that of other WebKit browsers, with the multi-architecture support leading to a slurry of ever-increasing complexity that serves as a sort of ball-and-chain on the ankle of innovation. Blink, which will be open source, aims to solve this issue and provide, by proxy, a boost in innovation.
Aside from that, optimistic attitudes tout the upcoming rendering engine as a possible boost to the “open web ecosystem” as a whole, although it is acknowledged that introducing a new rendering system has the potential to significantly impact the Internet, and developers could eventually have more work on the coding end of things.
According to Barth, the initial work will concentrate on getting rid of digital clutter, including the removal of about 7,000 files and 7 build systems, which will total in excess of 4.5 million lines of code. This will result in vast internal architectural improvements, but won’t bring much change to web developers. Guidelines have already been posted regarding interoperability, standards, and other such related items.
[via Chromium]
Chromium announces new open source rendering engine project Blink is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Samsung and Mozilla announced today that they’re partnering up to build a “next generation” and an “advanced technology” web browser engine, which they’re calling Servo. Mozilla said in a blog post announcing the news that the two companies will build a new engine from the ground up, but “rethinking old assumptions along the way.”
Essentially, Mozilla and Samsung want to bring this new web browser engine to Android devices running ARM, and in order to make a secure, yet fully open experience, Servo is written in Rust, which is a new programming language developed by Mozilla. You can actually download the code on Github and play around with it, but Mozilla notes that it’s in its very early stages.
Details are pretty scarce at this point in the development process, and we’re not quite sure yet what exactly this next-generation web browser engine will be capable of, but we’re guessing it’ll be pretty revolutionary if Mozilla and Samsung put their heart into it. Rust has been in development for a couple years now, actually, and they expect have the first major revision done sometime this year.
However, the partnership seems to be a perfect fit for the two companies. Mozilla is providing the Rust programming language, as well as Servo, while Samsung’s experience with ARM will no doubt be of tremendous help for Mozilla in bringing the technology to Android devices in the future.
Samsung and Mozilla working on new web browser engine for Android is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Ever since officially releasing on Windows 7 back in February, Internet Explorer 10 has been slowly chipping away at previous versions of Microsoft’s web browser. Internet Explorer 10 gained 1.35 percentage points in March, thanks to the release of the browser on Windows 7 in late February. IE10 is now at 2.93% market share out of all web browsers, with IE collectively bringing in almost 56% of the market share.
As for Internet Explorer 9 and previous version like IE8 and IE7, all three took a slight hit, according to statistics from Net Applications. IE9 dropped 1.05 percentage points, falling to 20.62% and IE8 lost 0.15%, standing at 23.23% — it’s currently the world’s most popular browser, however. IE7 took a hit of 0.08% to 1.93%, and IE6 fell 0.12% to 6.21%. Yes, more people are using IE6 than IE10 and IE7 combined.
As for Internet Explorer’s competition, both Firefox and Chrome gained a bit of market share during the past quarter. Firefox grew to 20.21%, while Chrome is now at 16.45%. Chrome took some hits throughout the past several months, but it’s slowly starting to recover. It may not pass Firefox this year, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the question.
As for other browsers, Safari is sitting at 5.31%, while Opera owns 1.74% of the browser market share. It’s not expected for these two browsers to make much ground any time soon, as IE, Firefox, and Chrome are currently way out in front, with IE owning a tremendous lead over Firefox and Chrome, which probably won’t go away for the foreseeable future.
[via The Next Web]
Internet Explorer 10 gaining ground after releasing on Windows 7 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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