Yahoo builds a browser, and people actually like it
Yahoo has made a lot of big mistakes over the years, and today it finds itself in the fight of its life to stay relevant on the modern web.
The big questions: what can Yahoo do to recapture some of its past glory, if anything at all?
One possible answer is so obvious that nobody thought of it earlier: build a browser.
Firefox follows Chrome, plans to remove favicon from address bar
It's certainly hard to label it an 'important' part of a website, and in many cases, it's not even noticed, but for some, there's a special place in the heart for the favicon.
Proving this point, there is no shortage of websites that offer up favicons for download, or which allow users to turn their own graphics into favicons. And if you're a web designer, chances are a client has asked you to create one from scratch.
Mozilla turns its attention to the tablet
On mobile devices, the battle between native and web apps is still going strong. Native is clearly winning if you look at the numbers, but that doesn't mean that many aren't betting big on the web.
Not surprisingly, the battle between native apps and the web has extended to the tablet market, even though tablets are far more capable web browsing devices than their mobile phone counterparts.
Mozilla's WebAPI: one mobile API to rule them all
Will the future of mobile apps be controlled by native apps, or web apps? Or will both share the spotlight?
Today, there's little doubt that native apps are winning the hearts and minds of consumers and developers alike. And for good reason: if you want a great experience that takes full advantage of the capabilities of today's most advanced mobile phones, you need a native app.
Google, Mozilla jump on the Do Not Track bandwagon
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission doesn't think advertisers are doing enough to respect the privacy of consumers online, so it recently proposed the creation of a Do Not Track system for the web that would give consumers the ability to opt out of ad tracking.
There's just one big challenge: making that happen technically.
Does the world need a social web browser?
Move over Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. If a new browser startup backed by Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen's VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has its way, consumers will soon be surfing the internet in a far more social way.
RockMelt, which is launching in beta, is "challenging the conventional assumption that a browser is all about navigating pages."
Will snazzy web fonts soon be a reality?
It's somewhat amazing to think that despite the technological advancement seen on the web over the past decade, web designers are still pretty much relegated to using a relatively small group of web safe fonts when designing websites.
While it's easy to forget about the role fonts play in creating a compelling aesthetic, any decent print designer, for instance, knows just how important they can be.
Web browser fingerprints — a new tracking method no one uses
Consumers and privacy advocates are forever concerned about the ways they can be tracked online. But it looks like one effective method has not gotten much attention to date: the browser. According to a new study from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 84% of browsers have an "instantaneously unique fingerprint." What's more? Efforts to disguise a browser might actually make consumers more easily identifiable.
Now if only companies were using this information for nefarious purposes, we'd have a real privacy issue on our hands.
12 reasons Chrome OS will fail
Yesterday, Google held a press conference at its Mountain View headquarters to provide the world with an update on its new operating system, Chrome OS.
A lot of new details were forthcoming, which have have been well-covered by others. The questions on everyone's mind: is Chrome OS the real deal? Where does it fit in? How will it impact the OS market. My answers: it isn't, nowhere, it won't. Here are 12 reasons why Chrome OS is going to fail.
Microsoft to European Commission: we'll let consumers pick a browser
To appease the European Commission in its pending antitrust case over the tying of Internet Explorer and Windows, Microsoft initially planned to release a version of Windows 7 in Europe that would be browser-free. That would ensure that consumers had the ability to choose a browser freely.
But a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft reversed course and proposed an alternative solution: a "ballot screen" that would enable consumers in the EU to select their browser of choice.
