A new way for Android users to get around the Web should debut this year.  Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Mobile at Mozilla, has indicated that Firefox Mobile for Android will land sometime in 2010.

The nonexistence of this product might have troubled some fans of Mozilla and Google.  It’s no secret that the two companies have been growing apart as Chrome came out and Mozilla’s director of community development endorsed Bing over Google.  Also, the search deal between them is set to expire in 2011.

Sullivan, who’s worked at Mozilla for about two and a half years, told Gareth Beavers that the main obstacle to developing Firefox Mobile for Android was the rift between C and C++ code and Java, however.

Indeed, he sounded quite upbeat about Android and about what Mozilla has in the works.  "It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us," Sullivan said.  "It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake."

So we can expect to see Firefox Mobile for Android "late this year."

Here are a couple odd facts for you: compared to people everywhere else, folks in North America dislike Chrome.  And individuals who live in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada are unusually big fans of Internet Explorer.  That’s what new Quantcast data implies, anyway.

Quantcast, which measures and profiles audiences all over the world for advertisers, recently released some statistics concerning browsers’ market shares.  The stats addressed usage in seven different geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America.

It turns out that Chrome is least successful in North America.  Firefox has also failed to catch on here the way it has everywhere else, and somehow, North America remains Internet Explorer’s best stronghold.

Now for the flip side of things.  According to Quantcast, Chrome actually does best in South America.  Also, Europe is where Firefox has won the largest market share, and where Internet Explorer has cornered the smallest.

Confused?  Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote, "At the very least it means that we North Americans should remember where we stand in terms of online sophistication by our mainstream population, relative to some other places in the world."

Mozilla has launched the first mobile version of the Firefox web browser. This is now available for the Nokia N900 device, supported on Nokia’s Maemo 5 platform.

Features of Firefox for mobile include:

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
• Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
• Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
• Available in more than 30 languages and counting

Mozilla notes that the mobile version of Firefox is the first mobile web browser that supports add-ons. This is one of the biggest features that has contributed to the still-growing popularity of Firefox for the desktop. Right now there are over 40 add-ons available for Firefox for Mobile.

"Add-ons like AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides become especially handy when you’re out and about on your mobile device," says Mozilla’s Erica Jostedt. "You can both discover and install add-ons directly from your Nokia N900."

"Just as Firefox does for the desktop, Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications," she adds. "Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser."

Mozilla emphasizes that this is just the beginning for Firefox for mobile. They tell users that there will be "lots more" to come this year.
 

Related Articles:

> Firefox 3.5 Currently Most Popular Browser in the World

> 8 Firefox Add-Ons to Boost Productivity

> Firefox Nears 1 Billion Downloads

Two years ago, Google’s Chrome browser didn’t exist.  Now, it might be the best browser available.  New test results claim that it beats all competitors by a significant amount, at least in terms of speed.

Lifehacker’s Kevin Purdy recently put Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (which is considered stable), Google Chrome 4.0.302.3 (which is a developer version), Opera 10.01, Opera 10.5 (which is a pre-alpha version), and Safari 4.0.4 through their paces.  Experiments related to load times, JavaScript, DOM/CSS, and memory use were performed.

Chrome came out on top in a couple of categories, and according to Purdy’s scoring system ("we took the numeric score placement of each browser in each category and ranked them from 7, as best in category, to 1, as worst.  We totaled those numbers up, and present them here as a total out of 35") won the comparison, with the developer version placing first and the stable version securing second.

Then Opera 10.5, Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4.0.4, and Opera 10.01 followed, in that order.

Purdy’s article has been viewed about 92,000 times, and it’s a good bet that his findings have driven a lot of people to try Chrome for themselves.  Assuming those individuals don’t find the browser wanting in some area other than speed, Chrome may get quite a bump thanks to this experiment.

Related Articles:

> Internet Explorer Losing Its Luster In Europe?

> Google Launches New Chrome Version

> Chrome Cruises By Safari

Rick Spencer of Canonical, which distributes the Ubuntu version of Linux, revealed that Canonical has formed a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which will see Yahoo become the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka "Lucid Lynx") of the operating system.

Spencer shared the information via a public mailing list (hat tip to Ars Technica), where he said:

Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information.

I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

The move is an interesting one for both Canonical and Yahoo. Yahoo needs to do whatever it can to gain search market share, and Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux.

"Canonical is unusual among major commercial Linux distributors in the sense that it doesn’t sell an ‘enterprise’ or ‘pro’ version of its software," notes Ars Technica author Ryan Paul. "In an effort to make this approach sustainable, Canonical is experimenting with a number of different business models, including commercial support for end users, subscription-based Web services, and integration support for hardware makers. In the announcement about the search engine change, Spencer says that Canonical’s partnership with Yahoo will help to fund the ongoing development of the distribution."

Terms of the deal between Canoncial and Yahoo were not made available. Meanwhile, the search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is still pending. The effects of that on Yahoo’s market share remain to be seen.
 

Related Articles:

> Yahoo’s Q4 Financial Results Draw Smiles

> Canada Gets Its New Yahoo Homepage

> Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Approval Gets Deadline In Europe

According to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE’s fall may not be reversed in the very near future.

"Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the largest decline in visit shares for websites in Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece and Czech Republic," the firm notes.

Additional findings from the AT Internet Institute include: 

- Google Chrome exceeded 4% of visit shares with a gain of 2 points in 6 months

- attained 29.4% of traffic to a website in a European country in December 2009

- gained almost 1 point and exceeded 5% of visit shares

- On average 2.3% of visits to a European website through Opera in December 2009 compared to 2.2% in June 2009.

"It is interesting to note that the growth of Safari coincided with the growth of Google Chrome," says the firm. "Based on the same engine Webkit, would Google Chrome indirectly encourage the use of Safari?"

Last week, Mozilla launched the latest version of Firefox, and Google has just released the latest version of Chrome for Windows, complete with extensions and Bookmark Sync.

Related Articles:

> Chrome Cruises By Safari

> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results

> Digg Launches New Extensions for Firefox and Chrome

Mozilla has launched the latest version of its popular Firefox web browser – version 3.6. They say this version is a whopping 20% faster than version 3.5. New features in Firefox 3.6  include:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart

• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins

• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way

• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field

• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time

• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

Here’s a video from Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox Development, who gives an overview of the new features.

For developers, Firefox 3.6 supports the latest HTML5 specification, including the file API for local file handling, font support (in addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, it supports the new Web Open Font Format), CSS gradients (linear and radical), and device orientation – it exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to web pages.

The browser is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in over 70 languages, which Mozilla claims is more platforms and languages than any other browser. It can be found here.
 

Related Articles:

> Firefox 3.5 Currently Most Popular Browser in the World

> 8 Firefox Add-Ons to Boost Productivity

> Firefox Nears 1 Billion Downloads

Digg has launched new extensions for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers.

"A month ago, we announced new capabilities that let developers create writable applications with the Digg API," says Dig’s Chris Howard. "We decided to put this to work ourselves and update our original Firefox Extension and also create a new Google Chrome extension at the same time. In both cases, you can now Digg stories as you browse the web, without having to come back to the Digg site each time."

The Chrome extension includes the Digg count for any URL. It’s displayed to the right of the browser’s address bar, and users can click it to see the title and comment count for that URL, as well as the button to Digg it. It also comes with ways to share any URL (like through Twitter, Facebook, and email).

There is a little more to the Firefox extension. It improves upon the existing FireFox extension. Digg has moved the Digg count and Digg button to the navigation bar, so the toolbar doesn’t have to be open for users to Digg stories. The toolbar itself is shorter and has added keyboard shortcut functionality to make it easier to hide and show it.

"This makes it really simple to check out the Digg story details for a URL and then close it when you’re done," says Howard.

Digg has also added controls in the toolbar settings, such as notification thresholds and a smaller notification box. These features were designed to make notifications less intrusive to the user.
 

Related Articles:

> Important Product Director Moving From Google To Digg

> More Stories Get a Shot at the Digg Home Page

> Digg to Get All Twitter This Year?

A while back, Google launched an extensions gallery for its Chrome web browser. Ad-blocking add-ons are among the most popular for Mozilla’s Firefox, so it stands to reason that they will be for Chrome as well. With Google’s primary source of revenue being its ads, a lot of talk has surfaced about Google letting people block its own ads with its own product.

Is Google was smart to allow ad-blocking extensions for Chrome? Discuss here.

A recent article from the New York Times has elevated the discussion, calling the allowance of ad blockers a "test" for Google.

Google wants people to use Chrome. For that to happen, it has to give people what they want. One point of view would be that the people who are most likely to block ads would just as use another browser that allowed them to do so if Chrome didn’t.

Google doesn’t think that ad blockers will have much of an impact on advertising anyway. In December, Google Engineering Director Linus Upson participated in a panel discussion about the subject. He, Charles McCathieNevile of Opera, and Mike Shaver of Mozilla discuss it in the following clip:

Upson says it’s "unlikely ad blockers are going to get to the level where they imperil the advertising market, because if advertising is so annoying that a large segment of the population wants to block it, then advertising should get less annoying." He thinks the market will sort it out. The others appear to take similar stances.

The real question is how many people are really going to make the effort to block ads? As Wladimir Palant, who runs Adblock Plus on Firefox, told the NYT, ad blockers are still used by a "tiny proportion of the Internet population, and these aren’t the kind of people susceptible to ads anyway."

Based on what Upton had to say in the panel discussion, Google is pretty confident that it can deliver ads people actually want, and that people (for the most part) will not want to block them if they see that relevance.

What could hurt Google more is if Microsoft or Firefox implemented their own ad blocking capabilities by default. This would lead to average users browsing an ad-less web, because just as most people don’t go out of their way to download ad-blocking add-ons, they are unlikely to go out of their way to allow ads in such a scenario. However, it is pretty unlikely that this will happen, particularly on Microsoft’s end. They of course have their own ads to worry about.

If ad-blocking from the browser actually did become a big problem for Google, one would have to wonder if the company woulnd’t find some kind of work-around. For example, what would stop them from serving ads directly in the Chrome Browser itself (in a toolbar area for example)? One could envision sponsored link-style ads like those served via Gmail. With Google’s interest-based advertising, relevance would still be at the forefront. But it probably won’t come to that anytime soon (at least not as a solution to the perceived issue).

Wondering how many people actually use Chrome anyway? Ad-blocking from the browser does after all only matter if people are using that browser. Well, the latest numbers from Net Applications have Chrome’s market share surpassing that of Apple’s Safari browser. It’s worth noting that Google just released Chrome for Mac last month as well.

As Doug Caverly  mentioned, "Chrome’s only been around for about 16 months, after all, and Safari’s had something like six years to make friends."

Google’s Chrome OS is set to make things interesting later this year, as well. Chrome use is growing and will continue to do. Ad campaigns from Google may ease that growth along.

Google made a bold move when it opened up its extensions gallery, allowing for ad-blocking extensions. Could this turn out to be a huge mistake on the company’s part or is Google’s confidence completely justified? Only time will tell for certain, but Google has long stood behind the promise of trying to deliver the best user experience. If users want to block ads, Google is going to let them. Share your thoughts here.

Related Articles:

> Chrome Cruises By Safari

> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results

> Google Pushes Chrome With Newspaper Ads

Mozilla’s next salvos in the browser wars won’t come quite as soon as the company previously promised.  Firefox 3.6, which was supposed to ship this month, now isn’t scheduled to be finished until sometime during the first quarter of 2010, and the release of Firefox 4.0 has been pushed back, as well.

Given how heated the browser rivalry has become in recent months, the delays represent an interesting choice (and/or failure) on Mozilla’s part.  After all, Chrome’s continuing to make gains, and Internet Explorer may be about to sacrifice some ground in Europe.  This doesn’t look like an ideal time to take things slow.

Still, some interesting things are on the menu in terms of the next versions of Firefox.  Stephen Shankland pointed out this morning, "The big new feature in version 3.6 is incorporation of the Personas plug-in that lets people easily customize the browser’s appearance, though behind the scenes there’s also been work to speed up the browser’s launch time, improve security, and make some other changes."

Version 4.0, which is supposed to arrive in late 2010 or early 2011 (look for a beta this summer), should introduce "significant user interface changes," too.

It’ll be interesting to see what Google and Microsoft can accomplish with Chrome and IE by then.

Related Articles:

> Mozilla Exec: Mobile Version Of Firefox Almost Here

> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results

> Microsoft Throws IE Rivals A Bone In Europe

The mobile version of Firefox – also known as Fennec – is almost ready to launch.  Indeed, a Mozilla exec was recently quoted as saying that a release could be "days away," so it’s possible that the new mobile browser will appear in time for some tech-inclined individuals to play with it on New Year’s Eve or even Christmas.

Word of this short-term goal comes via the BBC from Jay Sullivan, who’s Mozilla’s vice president of mobile.  Apparently Fennec’s going through a last phase of testing, and, barring any "showstoppers," will be available quite soon.

The catch relates to compatibility, meaning this rollout won’t put Fennec in everyone’s hands.  Owners of Nokia’s N900 phones will be the first to get their hands on the mobile version of Firefox.  Then, as the BBC reported, "The organisation is also developing versions for Microsoft’s Windows mobile and Google’s Android operating system."

Something for the iPhone might follow, but not in the near future.

Still, given how long Fennec’s been in development (well over a year), any release will still count as a major step forward.  And this (probable) launch is especially interesting given that Firefox 3.5 recently topped all other desktop browser versions on a global basis.

Related Articles:

> Chrome Ad Campaign Nets Positive Results

> Firefox 3.5 Currently Most Popular Browser In The World

> Opera Turbo Sees 60% User Growth In One Month

According to data from StatCounter, Mozilla’s web browser Firefox 3.5 is now the world’s most popular browser. It has just surpassed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7, which has beend steadily declining.

For December 20, StatCounter has IE 7 at 21.2% market share, and Firefox 3.5 at 21.93%. Microsoft’s IE 8 is closing in though. Its share has been steadily increasing, presumably making up for most of the lost IE 7 share, and has approached 20.33%.

The top browsers are as follows:

1. Firefox 3.5
2. IE 7
3. IE 8
4. IE 6
5. Firefox 3.0
6. Other
7. Safari 4.0
8. Firefox 2.0
9. Opera 9.6

Last month Mozilla celebrated the fifth birthday of the Firefox browser. They said that in the first four days of launch, over a million people downloaded Firefox 1.0. Firefox is available in over 70 languages and offers over 7,000 add-ons.

Firefox 3.5 also had over a million downloads in its first day of launch, and Mozilla surpassed a billion downloads in late July. Firefox has come a long way in five years and has really given Microsoft a run for its money in the web browser space.
 

Related Articles:

> Mozilla Celebrates The Fifth Birthday Of Firefox

> 8 Firefox Add-Ons to Boost Productivity

> Firefox Nears 1 Billion Downloads

Mozilla’s director of community development is not at all happy with Google.  Following an eyebrow-raising comment from CEO Eric Schmidt on the subject of privacy, Asa Dotzler has, in fact, pretty much suggested that everyone use Bing instead.

Here’s what set Dotzler (along with a whole lot of other people) off: on the subject of whether or not folks can trust Google, Schmidt told Maria Bartiromo, "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

Schmidt also said, "We are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."

That represents a fairly significant departure from the spirit of past statements (and new tools) out of Mountain View.  It may (or may not) indicate that Google’s becoming more likely to turn over users’ search histories upon request.

So Dotzler wrote, "That was Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, telling you exactly what he thinks about your privacy.  There is no ambiguity, no ‘out of context’ here. . . .  And here’s how you can easily switch Firefox’s search from Google to Bing.  (Yes, Bing does have a better privacy policy than Google.)"

Firefox controls a 24.72 percent share of the browser market, by the way, according to Net Applications.

Related Articles:

> Google Seeking Not To Cross The Creepy Line

> Mozilla Celebrates The Fifth Birthday Of Firefox

> Internet Explorer Losing Market Share In Europe

Update 3: Mozilla has now released Weave Sync Version 1.0 Beta 2.

Update 2: Mozilla has now announced the release of Weave Sync Version 1.0 Beta 1.

Update: Mozilla has now released Weave Version 0.6.

Original Article: A couple years ago, Mozilla launched Weave, which is a Mozilla Labs project aimed at letting Firefox users sync their personal preferences with Firefox browsers on other computers or on their phones. Now, Mozilla has announced a new version of Weave Sync in Weave 0.5.

What Can You Do with It?

- Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers.

- Open any tab that is open in any of your other FF browsers

- Keep the same list of bookmarks throughout multiple FF browsers

- Easily sign in to all of your favorites sites using saved passwords

- It is all secure as Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers

The new version includes additional improvements including a major upgrade in performance when uploading and downloading. Sync waits until you’re not actively using the browser, and support for bookmark tags and smart folders has been improved.

Support has also been added for changing passwords, and there is better error handling and reporting. Weave Sync now supports Fennec on Windows Mobile and Firefox on x86 OpenSolaris now as well.

More information is available about Weave here, and it can be downloaded here. It requires Firefox 3.5 or higher.

If you use Firefox, you are no doubt aware that there are many add-ons that can enhance your browsing experience. Many of these can make your online life a whole lot easier and save you time. Following are some that I have found particularly useful. Which do you like? Tell us.

1. Fire Gestures

The Fire Gestures add-on allows you to perform different Firefox operations with a simple gesture of the mouse. For example, you can open a new tab by holding a right click and moving left and right from anywhere in the window.

You can perform a lot of functions with different gestures, which are completely customizable via the add-on’s options. You cans set up which gestures you want to perform each operation.

The add-on is similar to other mouse gestures add-ons, but this one is compatible with Firefox 3.5.

2. Add to Search Bar

The Add to Search Bar add-on is incredibly useful if you do a lot of searching in your day-to-day tasks. Instead of having only the few default search engines to choose from, you can right click on any search box on the web and add that to the list of search engines in your search bar.

3. Drag & DropZones

The Drag & DropZones add-on makes the previous add-on even more useful. With this, you can highlight any text on a page and simply drag it to bring up a series of windows – one for each search engine from your search bar. This is also fully customizable. It can be more convenient than going up to the search bar, finding the correct search engine from the pull-down menu, and then searching.

4. Workaround Bug 489729

Ever since I downloaded version 3.5 of FireFox, I have encountered an extremely annoying issue where something I was doing was somehow taking the tab I was in and sending it to a different window. The problem was, I could not figure out what I was doing to cause this.

Eventually, I was directed to this Workaround Bug add-on, which took care of the problem. It turned out to be that clicking a tab once and then moving your mouse in a downward motion caused a new window to open – something I apparently, inadvertently do a lot.

This add-on allows you to disable this function.

5. IE Tab

The IE tab function allows you to convert the page you’re on to Internet Explorer view. This can be helpful for checking pages to make sure they look ok in both browsers.

Also, when you happen to come across a page with some issues, you can switch over to IE with the click of a button, and see if it works better there.

6. Shareaholic

The Shareaholic button is convenient for those who like to share a lot of content. Basically, you can send any page to any social network of your choosing by right clicking and choosing the one you want to use from the menu. There is also a button that is added to the top of your browser. It is customizable so you can choose your preferred networks.

7. Smart Bookmarks Bar

The Smart Bookmarks Bar is one of my favorites. It eliminates the text from the bookmarks in your bookmarks bar, and leaves only the favicons. This means it frees up a whole lot of space, and you can fit a lot more bookmarks on that bar.

This way, all of your most-frequented sites can always be no more than a single click away. Just make sure you know your favicons.

8. TooManyTabs

Finally, the TooManyTabs add-on allows you to create multiple rows of tabs. If you frequently have a lot of tabs open, and would prefer to be able to see what they all are, this add-on will be of particular use to you. You can always send specific tabs to different rows, which can also be useful.

Wrapping Up

There are many add-ons available, and I’m sure I have barely scratched the surface of ones that can contribute to your productivity. What are your favorite add-ons? Share them here.