Consumers under 35 - that is, those in Generations X and Y, the latter also referred to as "millennials" - tend to prefer using mobile applications over Web browsers on smartphones, as compared with older mobile users, a new study shows. Data collected by market research and consulting firm Parks Associates, found that this young demographic is starting to ditch the Web browser in favor of apps, and are especially put off by mobile websites not designed for the small screen.
If you ever share a computer with a friend or family member, you've probably experienced the challenge of remembering who is logged in to accounts on Google or other services. Users of Google's excellent Chrome browser will be happy to hear that now in the works is a simple feature that will allow multiple browser windows to run different Google Profiles with a simple click of a button.
The feature is not yet available but was spotted in developer documentation and first reported on by the watchdog blog Google Operating System. While this might seem like a simple matter of convenience, it also represents the convergence of a number of other trends in online computing.
Skyfire, the mobile browser that brought Flash video to the iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices, is unveiling version 3.0 for Android today. This latest version of Skyfire, dubbed the "Facebook edition", offers a seriously slick social media integration that, quite honestly, we would like to see on our desktop.
The beta version of the Opera 11 browser just launched this morning with a notable new feature: tab stacking. Traditionally, tabs were opened side-by-side, says the company, now Opera users can stack tabs on top of each other instead.
The result isn't as messy as it may sound - in fact, it could become a must-have for tabaholics who typically keep a dozen or more tabs open at any time. But is it useful enough to get you to switch?
To help combat what is quickly become a muddled mess of share buttons, Mozilla has rolled out a new service called F1. The browser extension adds a button to the Firefox toolbar, so that sharing Web pages to Twitter, Facebook or email is much simpler.
Currently the add-on only supports those three services. Mozilla says it picked those because of their popularity, their API support and their use of OAUth. Other services, such as Yahoo's email, required a CAPTCHA authentication prior to sharing, something that defeated the purpose of a single-click share button.
Social web browser RockMelt launched this weekend to a huge press splash, 15 months after ReadWriteWeb first reported that it existed and was funded by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen. Reactions among early users have been mixed - and so is our review. I've been using it as my default browser all week.
I want RockMelt to work - I really like the idea. Right now it has too many performance issues, but if those can be resolved - it could be a good browser to use. I won't recommend that most readers use it yet, but I think I will continue to do so myself. Here's the best and worst, after 3 days of RockMelt.
Web apps that rely on features that only modern browsers can offer are becoming a standard feature on the Internet. Sadly, though, the fact that a lot of users don't regularly upgrade their browsers (or that their IT departments don't allow them to upgrade) complicates matters greatly for those developers who want to use the latest and greatest features of modern browser technologies like HTML5. The latest data from Pingdom and StatCounter, however, notes that a surprisingly large number of users (71%) already run the latest official versions of their browser.
The Google Chrome Web Store, an open marketplace for Web applications set to launch sometime this year within Google's Chrome Web browser, has been delayed. Originally believed to be launching this month, a new report finds that the store is not going to arrive until later this year - the week of December 6th, to be precise.
There has been a lot of talk about the perceived conflicts between Adobe Flash and HTML5 lately, but during it's annual developer conference MAX today, Adobe announced a new product for building interactive HTML5 content and highlighted some of the advantages of developing in HTML5. Adobe Edge, as the new tool is called, will allow developers to easily create interactive HTML5 experiences. Adobe also announced a new open JavaScript framework for animations that it will contribute back to the jQuery project, as well as a new collaboration with Google that will bring better layout and typographical fidelity to WebKit-based browsers.
Whenever you connect to an unsecured WiFi network, you're taking a chance, but now it's easier than ever for someone to gain access to all of your social network login information. A new Firefox extension called Firesheep makes it simple for anyone to see that you're connected to the network, grab your login information for any number of social networks, and take over your online identity.
Without this, hacking your account over an unsecured wireless network may not be rocket science, but it surely isn't the one-click magic made possible by Firesheep.
