About a month ago, Firefox Creative Lead Aza Raskin revealed "Tab Candy", a Firefox feature designed to make managing tabs easier. It shows an overview of all tabs so they can be quickly located. It also includes other organizational features…

Grooveshark has reportedly now become available in Apple’s App store after a long struggle to get it there. This is an app that lets you search for songs, and stream them on demand . Unsurprisingly, it faces legal battles, but it has already settled s…

Bribes can represent an easy way of securing a person’s loyalty; throw enough cash at someone, and they’re almost sure to be appreciative.  Mozilla might have an advantage in the browser wars, however, as it appears that many Mozilla bug finders a…

Bribes can represent an easy way of securing a person’s loyalty; throw enough cash at someone, and they’re almost sure to be appreciative.  Mozilla might have an advantage in the browser wars, however, as it appears that many Mozilla bug finders a…

Chitika has provided some very interesting search market-related findings. According to the firm, Firefox is responsible for a significant amount of Google’s share. In fact, based on the sample looked at, there were more Firefox-based Google searches t…

Mozilla is working on a new Firefox feature called "Tab Candy", which might make you more productive, or at least less irritated by the number of tabs you have open.

"The power of the browser has grown substantially in the last ten yea…

Mozilla has launched Firefox Home for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is a free application that works with Firefox Sync.

"Firefox Home provides access to your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and open tabs on your iPhone," explains Mozil…

Recently Mozilla unleashed Firefox 4 Beta upon the world, and most of us couldn’t be happier. The latest edition, of the world’s second most popular browser, has been in discussion for well over a year now… but the wait is finally ov…

Mozilla has served its 2 billionth Firefox Add-on download. The download rate has been increasing each year, but Firefox also faces increasing competition in the open source browser market.

This week Google actually took efforts to make Chrome more ac…

Flock has announced a complete redesign of its browser, originally based on Mozilla Firefox. The new one is based on Google’s Chromium platform (the open-source project behind Google Chrome), and like Chrome, places a great deal of emphasis on speed.

Of course Flock also places a great deal on what it’s already known for – social media activity from the browser. "Social isn’t bleeding edge any longer-it’s a game-changing, mass market phenomenon," Flock CEO Shawn Hardin tells WebProNews.

"Over the last year Flock conducted an incredible amount of customer research from one-on-one interviews to focus groups to analyzing anonymous data from millions of users," Hardin tells us. "It is clear that all age groups are now participating in social, and users are trying to balance the enormous benefits of staying connected with their friends while also managing the overwhelming amounts information that’s coming to them everyday. While they love their social networks, they’re seeking better ways to organize and manage the people and content they care about. The new Flock is all about helping users do that and we determined that the Chromium platform was the best platform for us to use in the redesign of Flock."

Flock has been working with Google’s Chromium team over the last year on this redesign, which is the first major browser outside of Chrome to be released on the Chromium platform. It comes with both the ability to do social networking/media search and social network grouping within the browser. "It will also be faster than IE and Firefox," a representative for Flock tells us.

With the Groups feature, users can "Channel Surf" the Web, as the company puts it, by switching the view of the scrolling sidebar between the conversations and information they are most interested in at any given time. There is also a "What Your Friends Are Saying" feature that shows exactly that – from multiple social networks.

"Our interactions with people online have changed everything about the way we discover, shop, work and play," says Hardin. "The new Flock is designed to naturally complement the value we place in relationships and puts you at the center of your friends and their conversations while you browse the Web. Conventional browsers like Internet Explorer and Safari aren’t built to bring together the conversations and content that matter to each user. Flock is the only browser with the best of the social Web built-in."

Google is the default search option for the browser, which is also able to tap into thousands of Chrome extensions, as it is based on the same technology as Chrome.

Flock is already the number one desktop app on Facebook and is ranked in the top 100 most popular of all Facebook apps. It’s also ranked the sixth most popular browser operating in Europe, according to Net Applications.

The new Flock browser is immediately available for Windows, and can be downloaded at Flock.com. The Mac version will be out later this summer.

Social networking now ranks as the fastest-growing mobile content category, according to a new report from comScore.

"With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content — whether it is via application, browser or both — continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.

"Although application access is clearly on the rise, with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular method for Americans to access mobile media."

More than three-quarters (78%) of smartphone users accessed their browser in April, while 80 percent of smartphone users accessed applications. In comparison, just 19 percent of feature phone users accessed their browser, with 17 percent accessing applications.  While smartphone users are driving growth in browser (up 111 percent in the past year) and application (up 112 percent) access, feature phone users still make up nearly half of all users accessing mobile browsers and apps.

"Although growth in application usage on smartphones continues to grab the spotlight in the mobile market, the audience using their mobile browser remains larger and is growing just as quickly," added Donovan.

"Brands need to remember to take into consideration the user experience across both channels when building their mobile strategies."

In April, 69.6 million mobile users accessed an application on their phone, an increase of 28 percent from the previous year. Social networking had the strongest growth in app access, increasing 240 percent to 14.5 million users. Accessing news apps followed, growing 124 percent to 9.3 million users, while sports apps jumped 113 percent to nearly 7.7 million users. Bank account apps also more than doubled their audience, growing to nearly 5 million users.

Nearly 73 million mobile users accessed their browser in April, an increase of 31 percent from the previous year. Social networking ranked as the fastest-growing category accessed via browser, growing 90 percent from the previous year to reach almost 30 million users, followed by Bank Accounts (69 percent to 13.2 million users). Online Retail sites also experienced a significant increase in audience usage via browser, increasing 47 percent to 7.3 million users.

"Social networking is by far the fastest-growing mobile activity right now. With 20 percent of mobile users now accessing social networking sites via their phone, we expect to see both application and browser usage continuing to drive future consumption of social media,’ said Donovan.

Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have taken up a good deal of the web browser headlines in recent memory. Google showcased its much-publicized speed tests for Chrome (even parodied by Opera), then launched a stable version for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Mozilla recently shared an early product plan for Firefox 4, with (like Chrome) an emphasis on speed (then CEO John Lilly announced he was stepping down).

It is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which still rules the roost, however, in terms of browser market share on the desktop in the U.S. IE8 and IE7 have significant leads over all the competition, but IE6, while still having an edge over the rising Chrome, dropped to below 5% for the first time, according to StatCounter.

The analytics firm says usage of IE6 in the US and Europe has fell to that point – 4.7% (a year ago, it was at 11.5%).

"At these levels web developers now have valid justification not to support IE6 in the future," says StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen, with the firm adding that a number of sites including YouTube are already understood to have withdrawn support for IE6.

"IE6 has been a bit of a pain for many web developers and designers who have often had to recode their site to get it to work. There are also security implications in its continued usage," addsCullen.

In other parts of the world, IE6 is still a more significant part of the picture. Cullen says that if your target market is Asia, you’re "not out of the woods." According to the firm, it still has 20.8% usage there. In that part of the world, IE8 has only just overtaken it. It’s also still pretty big in Africa.

Mozilla is working on a new iPhone app for Firefox users, called Firefox Home. It’s based on Firefox Sync (formerly Weave Sync), and allows users to access their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks, and tabs from the most recent browser session on the desktop.

"Firefox Home for iPhone is part of a broader Mozilla effort to provide a more personal Web experience with more user control," says Mozilla says. "For devices or platforms where we’re unable to provide the "full" Firefox browser (either technically or due to policy), we aim to provide users with “on the go” instant access to their personal Firefox history, bookmarks and open tabs on their iPhones, giving them another reason to keep loving Firefox on their desktops."

Mozilla has offered this "sneak peek" at the app, which is still under development:

Firefox has been losing some ground in the web browser market share space, to Google Chrome, which just released a new stable version for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Creating a useful mobile experience across multiple platforms could go along way to help the Firefox cause. Firefox home would be a step in the right direction. A solid Android offering would also be helpful.

Mozilla says Firefox Home will be ready to submit to Apple’s App Store soon.

Google has launched new stable versions of its Chrome browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

"Since last December, we’ve been chipping away at bugs and building in new features to get the Mac and Linux versions caught up with the Windows version, and now we can finally announce that the Mac and Linux versions are ready for prime time," says Chrome product manager Brian Rakowski.

Google says the new releases are the fastest yet. For reference, check out Google’s recent speed tests for Chrome:

"We’ve improved by 213 percent and 305 percent in Javascript performance by the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks since our very first beta, back in Chrome’s Cretaceous period (September 2008)," says Rakowski.

New Chrome features (other than speed improvement) include the ability to sync browser preferences (bookmarks, themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and page zoom settings) across multiple computers, new HTML5 capabilities (Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop), and a new bookmark manager.

"For a taste of HTML5’s powerful features, try browsing through websites developed in HTML5 such as scribd.com, dragging and dropping attachments in Gmail, or by enabling the geolocation functionality in Google Maps," says Rakowski.

Google has also fixed numerous minor issues, such as non-exploitable crashes, hangs, and other annoyances, according to Anthony Laforge of the Chrome team.

The new stable release does not include Adobe Flash Player integration, but Google has been beta testing this and plans to enable it soon.

Later this year, Google will open the Chrome Web Store, which will feature a gallery of web apps that will actually work not only with Chrome, but other web browsers. However, Chrome users will be able to create convenient shortcuts for easily accessing the apps they download.

Mozilla CEO John Lilly dropped a bomb late yesterday in announcing that he would be stepping down from his position. The news came just after Mozilla revealed its early product plan for Firefox 4, in which it placed great emphasis on speed and HTML5 support – two of the big selling points for competing browser Google Chrome.

In fact, the news also comes as Chrome continues to steadily gain market share in the browser space. Lilly wrote a note about his pending resignation, however, that expresses his continued dedication to Mozilla and Firefox, even as he gives up the lead position. He wrote:

I’m in no rush, and the most important thing to me is to build the strongest Mozilla we can, with the best leadership possible. So my plan is to stay through that transition — we’re starting a CEO search now, and plan to do it in as transparent a way as possible — which means I’ll continue in my CEO role as normal for several more months, at least.

I’ll have more to say on the transition as we figure things out more clearly, but for now, business as usual. We’ve got Firefox 4 to ship, and Firefox on multiple mobile platforms. We’ve got our web services like Weave to stand up and make available to millions of users.

Firefox 4: fast, powerful and empowering View more presentations from Mike Beltzner.

Lilly’s heart is in funding startups, and this is the main reason he has chosen to step down from his post, according to his letter. He says he’s "always been a startup guy at heart" and that the Mozilla gig was originally supposed to be a "quick volunteer effort". He intends to join Greylock Partners as a Venture Partner, and will work on investing in startups from there.

Lilly plans to remain on Mozilla’s Board of Directors.