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  • IonMonkey: Mozilla’s new JavaScript JIT compiler

    IonMonkey is the name of Mozilla’s new JavaScript JIT compiler, which aims to enable many new optimizations in the SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. InfoQ had a small Q&A with Lead Developer David Anderson, about this new development that could bring significant improvements in products that use the SpiderMonkey engine like Firefox, Thunderbird, Adobe Acrobat, MongoDB and more.

  • Google Page Speed Goes Online and Mobile

    Google has made Page Speed available online, enhancing it for analyzing web pages targeted at smartphones.

  • Firefox: Mozilla Wants a New Development Process, Firefox 4 and the Roadmap

    The Mozilla team wants to switch Firefox development to a schedule-driven process to speed up releases. Firefox 4 has been recently released with many improvements, while the roadmap outlines plans for versions 5, 6, and 7.

  • Microsoft’s HTML5 Compliance Test Results Are Disputed by Google, Mozilla, and Opera [UPDATED]

    Microsoft has posted the results for 192 tests grouped in 8 categories for HTML5, SVG 1.1, CSS3, and DOM Level 2&3 showing that IE9 Preview passes all of them with flying colors while Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari have mixed results varying from 0% to 100% depending on the category. The conclusion, that IE9 is the most compliant with W3C standards, is contested by Google, Mozilla, Opera.

  • Microsoft Tips the Scale in Favor of HTML 5 and H.264

    Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, has announced that IE9 will use only the H.264 standard to play HTML 5 video. Microsoft seems to have become very committed to HTML 5, while Flash loses even more ground. The announcement came the same day Steve Jobs detailed why Apple does not accept Flash on iPhone and iPad.

  • Chrome 4 Now Supports the HTML 5 Web SQL Database API

    Google has announced support for the HTML 5 Web SQL Database API, and others are likely to follow soon or have already started on support for this API. In the meantime, the completion of the specification is blocked because all the implementers involved have chosen to use SQLite as underlying database, and multiple independent implementations are required for standardization.

  • Google Will Stop Supporting Older Browsers

    Google has announced they will stop supporting older and less secure browsers like IE6, Firefox 2.x, Chrome 3 or Safari 2 starting with Google Docs and Google Sites editor from March 1st, 2010.

  • 5 Security Enhancements in Chrome

    Google has added five security enhancements to Chrome in order to make browsing more secure: cross-documents message posting, Strict Transport Security, Origin and X-Frame-Options header fields, and Reflective XSS Filter. Some of these features have already been or are to be implemented by other browsers.

  • The HTML 5 sandbox Attribute Improves iFrame Security

    The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) is working jointly with W3C on developing the HTML 5 standard, which has been at "Last Call" at WHATWG for the last 3 months. During this time one feature which has changed more significantly is the sandbox attribute of the iframe element. sandbox can be used to isolate untrusted web page content from performing certain operations.

  • YouTube announces HTML5 demo, but not for FireFox 3.6

    YouTube announces an HTML5 video beta, which allows playback without resorting to using a Flash plugin. Videos are only available in the H.264 format, which leads to greater performance on some hardware devices, but leaves out the new FireFox 3.6 which only supports the Ogg video format.

  • IE and Firefox Will Be Using DirectX for Rendering

    Both IE and Mozilla teams are currently working on using DirectX/GPU for page rendering while Google is considering it.

  • A .NET Security Vulnerability Has Affected Firefox

    A security vulnerability that has hit Internet Explorer through .NET has also hit Firefox. The culprit for Firefox, a .NET add-on, has been put on Mozilla’s blocked list.

  • Firefox 3.5 Is a Worthy Update

    A year ago, Mozilla entered the Guinness Book with a little over 8 M Firefox 3 downloads in 24 hours. Today, still in the first day, Firefox 3.5 has an average of about 50 downloads /sec and a total of 3.6 million downloads at July 01 10:30 AM GMT. 3.5 is a worthy update considering the large number of improvements over 3.0 like native video. No need for Flash/Silverlight anymore.

  • Google Has Open Sourced Page Speed

    Google has just open sourced Page Speed, a tool used internally by Google to optimize their web sites, especially the speed web pages are loaded with.

  • Location-Aware Browsing to become Mainstream?

    With the W3C working on a specification that defines an API for providing scripted access to geographical location information, Mozilla recently announced built-in Geolocation support for Firefox 3.5. This is aligned with an earlier announcement from Opera that also adds support for Geolocation in their browser. Will this make geographically aware applications ubiquitous?

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