BOLT Browser – a new mobile browser

What is BOLT?

BOLT is a fast mobile browser that offers an uncompromised browsing experience on even entry-level mobile phones. It is compatible with virtually any handset with Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) 2.0 support. In non-geekspeak, this means “it works on lots of phones, even basic ones.”

Rather than offering a simplified, mini version of the Internet, BOLT provides users with an efficient, feature-rich way to enjoy full PC-style Web pages and rich media applications on all levels of mobile devices.

Source: Bolt FAQ

UNCOMPROMISED MOBILE BROWSING

• Full PC-style browsing on all types of mobile phones
• Web content is never reformatted, repurposed or removed

LIGHTNING FAST

• Loads pages faster than competing mobile browsers
• Patented navigation and display technologies get you where you’re going faster

SUPER EFFICIENT

• 23:1 over the air data reduction speeds delivery of pages to your phone
• Consumes 1/3 of the battery power of other mobile browsers

You can download the Bolt Browser for free over at BoltBrowser.com. You need an email to start the download.

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How-To: Faster requests with Mozilla Firefox

If after upgrading your Mozilla Firefox installation websites suddenly load painfully slow we might have a solution. By default in newer Firefox installation IPv6 is enabled. At the time being IPv6 requests tend to be slower than IPv4 requests to the DNS system.

So disable IPv6 in Firefox as follows:

1. Type ‘about:config’ in the Firefox URL bar
2. Accept the warning
3. Type ‘ipv6′ in the Firefox URL bar
4. An entry named ‘network.dns.disableIPv6′ appears
5. Double click this entry to set the value to true.

Now Firefox will use the IPv4 protocol for name resolution.

User Agent Switcher as Mozilla Firefox Addon

If you do web development or cannot access a page because it asks for a certain user agent you might want to test how a site reacts to a user agent string other than which your default browser sends a little add-on called User Agent Switcher comes in handy.

If you are using Mozilla’s Firefox as a user agent most likely you are almost aware of its capability to add features through its add-ons. One of the available add-ons is the User Agent Switcher by Chris Pederick. With the add-on which is available for free (donations are welcome!) you can switch the identifier your browser sends on the fly. That way you can pretend you are surfing a site with a mobile user agent if you are still using your regular desktop browser.

Screenshots of Google Chrome on Mac OS X

Developer Mike Pinkerton is showing two screenshots of Google Chrome on Mac OS X which he is working on in his blog.

This week, everything came together and we can now load web pages in the renderer processes and display them in tabs. Here’s a screenshot of the very first time I ran Mac Chromium and loaded a webpage.

Avi just came through with the “sad tab” page when a tab crashes.

Firefox 3.0.6 available for Windows, Mac, Linux

A new minor release of Firefox has been published today. You can download Firefox 3.0.6 from Mozilla Europe.

Fixed in Firefox 3.0.6

• MFSA 2009-06 Directives to not cache pages ignored
• MFSA 2009-05 XMLHttpRequest allows reading HTTPOnly cookies
• MFSA 2009-04 Chrome privilege escalation via local .desktop files
• MFSA 2009-03 Local file stealing with SessionStore
• MFSA 2009-02 XSS using a chrome XBL method and window.eval
• MFSA 2009-01 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.6)

Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1

Announced by the end of December 08 for the first quarter 09 the first release candidate of the new Internet Explorer is now available.

The user experience managers over at Microsoft might have had a closer look at the competitors when fine-tuning the last beta version. They improved the Search box which now reminds me of search done on Mac OS X. The Smart Address bar and the Favorites bar is similar to what can be found in newer Firefox releases. The pron modus InPrivate is now split up into two main functionalities: InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Blocking. Among the other revised functions are Tab Groups, New Tab Page, Find on Page, Accelerators, SmartScreen Filter and Web Slices.

Find out more about the Internet Explorer 8 RC 1 in the article User Experience Changes since Beta 2 over at the IEBlog.

Release of Firefox 3.1 beta 3 postponed

The release of Firefox 3.1 is delayed because there are too many open bugs. The new release date is February 2nd.

The release of Firefox 3.1 is still planned for the end of the first quarter of 2009.

Chrome browser for Mac OS X and Linux

Google productmanager Brian Rakowski confirms rumors that Google is actively developing a Chrome port to Mac OS X and the Gnu/Linux OS. Google switched to a self-developed HTTP-library for Chrome 2.0 to be independent from Windows and one its system libraries which was used before.

Chrome 2.0 developer version available

Google’s browser Chrome is now available as an early preview for developers. The software is open-source so anyone can look at and modify the sources.

The update brings five new features / major updates: New version of WebKit. Form Autocomplete. Full-page zoom. Spell-checking improvements. Autoscroll. There are many more minor changes. See the release notes for details.

If you are already using the Chrome 1.0 you can update to Chrome 2.0 by updating your channels to one of the three available options: Stabel Channel, Beta Channel and Developer preview channel. See the Chromium Developer Documentation section Early Access Release Channels for details.

Camino 2.0 Beta 1 as first preview of Camino 2 available

Camino 2.0 Beta 1 is a preview release of what will become Camino 2. The following major features have been added to Camino 2.0 Beta 1 and will be in Camino 2 when it is released.

• Tab Dragging: Tabs can be rearranged by dragging and dropping.
• Tab Overview: There is now an optional toolbar icon for opening and closing Tab Overview.
• Blocking Flash Animations: A new exceptions list allows disabling “Block Flash animations” on a per-site basis.
• Gecko 1.9: Camino 2.0 Beta 1 includes changes that improve stability on Mac OS X 10.4.
• Downloading: On Mac OS X 10.5, the downloads folder in the Dock will bounce when a download finishes.

See preview.caminobrowser.org for details.