Firefox is not coming to iOS until Apple changes its ways, company exec says

By Oliver Haslam on Mar 10, 2013

Fans of Mozilla’s Firefox web browser may be hoping to use their browser of choice on iOS, but according to Mozilla, that may not be possible anytime soon.

Mozilla has lifted the lid on the reason that it has yet to port the popular Firefox to Apple’s mobile platform and, unsurprisingly, it’s all down to Apple’s tight control over how things are done on its devices according to Jay Sullivan, the company’s Vice President.

Currently, all third-party web browsers that run on the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch have to use Apple’s UIWebView component which is inherently slower than the Nitro used by the company’s own Safari browser. Mozilla says that it will only bring Firefox to iOS when that limitation is removed, and Apple seems in no rush to do that… Read More

 

Firefox 19 lands with built-in PDF viewer

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 19, 2013

The Firefox browser by Mozilla, the non-profit organization, was once hailed as the biggest threat to Internet Explorer’s dominance, but boy do times change fast.

In just a few short years following its release, Google’s Chrome has become the most popular browser out there. And while Firefox certainly doesn’t lack a punch, it does fall behind Google’s baby in several aspects.

I’ve always loved Chrome’s built-in Adobe Flash player (because it doesn’t pollute the entire system with Adobe’s buggy plug-in). Another Chrome feature I love: a nice PDF viewer, also built-in. Starting today, a new major release of Firefox for Mac, Windows and Linux is available for download and it comes with a built-in HTML5-based PDF viewer, just like Chrome… Read More

 

Opera buys Skyfire browser that brought Flash video to iOS

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 15, 2013

Back in March 2011, when Adobe’s proprietary Flash plug-in was still predominantly used for web video, a new paid-for iPhone browser, Skyfire, made headlines. It helped alleviate the situation by detecting Flash-encoded clips on web pages and then tapping a cloud computing platform to translate Flash video into an iPad-friendly format, on the fly.

Since then, Skyfire has seen over 20 million downloads across iOS and Android devices and developers claim it now converts over 200,000 web sites with Flash video into an iOS-friendly format. While most of web video is delivered via HTML5 these days, the Skyfire iOS app has seen several major updates that over time brought social features, even built-in extensions, to the table.

In a surprising move, Norway-based Opera Software, which makes the multi-platform Opera browser, Friday said it acquired the Skyfire team, hoping to broaden its solutions “beyond the browser”… Read More

 

Dolphin gets browser sync, easier sharing, Evernote integration

By Christian Zibreg on Jan 17, 2013

Dolphin, the popular third-party browser for iOS and Android, received a major update today. In addition to the obligatory stability and performance improvements, developers added a few new features you’ll be excited about. For starters, Dolphin now has browser sync that keeps your environment and settings flawlessly consistent across desktop and your mobile devices powered by iOS or Android.

You can also send tabs, images, phone numbers and directions from a mobile device to your computer, share to social networks and email articles. And if you live in Evernote, Dolphin now lets you grab any web content and save it directly to your Evernote (or Box) account, useful for saving a particular article or document for later, especially if you are not a huge fan of Instapaper or a similar read-later service… Read More