Maxthon has carved out a name for itself as a reliable alternative web browser built with the cloud in mind. The company has more than 120 million monthly users for its browser, which isn’t as crash-prone as those made by its rivals.

Now the Beijing-based company hopes to transform the web experience further by releasing a WebKit core for Android browsers so they can become better foundations for web-based games. The new release of the browser, which has achieved a billion downloads, will make it work even better with web-based games, the company says.

Karl Mattson, the general manager of Maxthon International, told GamesBeat that the Maxthon cloud browser has carved out a niche among gamers because it allows them to sign into as many as five separate accounts simultaneously. That allows them to play different games at the same time. It is also more reliable since memory-management technology was built into the browser from the ground up. If you’ve ever had a browser crash on you during a game or a multi-window session, you’ll come to appreciate memory management. This is basic plumbing for the internet. And it’s something that is holding up the progress of the game industry, along with the difficulty of making games that can run across various platforms.

“We’ve grown by word of mouth in the gaming community,” Mattson said. “We’re the best browser you’ve never heard of. Now we’re offering the world’s best support for HTML5,” the lingua franca of the web. In a test running HTML5 canvas using the CanvasMark benchmark, Maxthon scored the highest of the major web browsers in running HTML5 pages.

That improved support for HTML5 will make it easier to run both 2D and 3D games in web browsers, enabling games to be written once for the web and run on a variety of platforms. Maxthon is available as an app in Apple’s iTunes App Store and the Google Play store for Android devices.

“Gamers are the canaries in the coal mine in leading support for fast browser performance,” Mattson said.

Mattson said that the browser has become the favorite of pro gamers who play web-based games in professional tournaments. It also offers a split-screen feature on the desktop. Maxthon says it can render web pages on Windows, Android, and iOS faster than any other web browser.

Maxthon is growing in a variety of regions, but its market share in browsers is still below that of rivals like Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. The company is now expanding in the U.S. market. Another rival is OnLive, which offers a cloud-based browser that loads pages really fast. But Maxthon doesn’t put quite as much of the computing task in the web-connected data centers, or cloud, itself.

“Our goal is to make the actual software faster,” Mattson said.

Jeff Chen, a student in Singapore, started the browser in 2003 when he created a browser out of frustration. He was tired of the poor performance of the big browsers and found an abandoned browser projected dubbed MyIE. He decided to craft his own browser, dubbed MyIE2. He formed the company Maxthon in 2004 and kept adding features. In 2005, Chen renamed the company Maxthon, and the browser became the first one with tabs. Then it added sandboxed tabs in 2007 for added security. In 2008, Maxthon offered cloud-based services for syncing bookmarks and history.

With memory management, Maxthon allows you to pick up where you left off, no matter what you were working on, with any of your Internet-enabled devices.

“We started with a high-performance web-browsing experience,” Mattson said. “We made a strong commitment in the last year and a half to HTML5 support. We’ve got support in the gaming community because of this. We’re making HTML5 games work really well. As a company, we believe that the browser should change the computing experience.”

That meant that users could log into their browser and access their own favorite web pages and history of browsing from any location. In 2010, Maxthon came out on Android, and it has reached more than 500 million downloads to date on that platform. In 2011, the browser came out on Android tablets. Maxthon is also getting chip makers such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices to support its software in their hardware. The company received one round of funding from Charles River Capital and WI Harper. Today, the browser is used in more than 150 countries.

Maxthon provides HTML5 support in Android, allowing for high-quality video support and Web GL enhancements. Other new features include the ability to run 2D games at 60 frames per second on devices that can support such graphics. It can also run WebGL 3D graphics.

Maxthon has more than 220 employees and is profitable. Now that’s a company that should be on the radar of all of the major game companies and platform owners.

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Which essentially means that everyone is using WebKit except for Microsoft and Firefox. And that the fat lady is not singing for the end of Opera’s improbable browser journey.

In fact, far from it.

Those 300 million users count people on traditional PCs, smartphones, TVs, and tablets. They probably also count me, as I open up Opera once a week or so to manage a corporate Twitter account. Stat Counter’s global browser stats say that people using Opera drive about two percent of internet usage, and, according to Opera, its users are growing faster than ever.

“On the final stretch up to 300 million users, we have experienced the fastest acceleration in user growth we have ever seen,” Opera CEO Lars Boilesen said in a statement. “Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market.”

Opera just recently shipped Ice, a new mobile browser that loses buttons, menus, and tabs, and relies entirely on touch gestures. Ice uses WebKit, which was unique for Opera browsers at the time, but not for long.

Over the course of the next year, most of Opera’s browsers will transition to the new engine, Opera’s chief technical officer, Håkon Wium Lie, said.

“It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout.”

Once that transition is complete, a majority of people will be using WebKit-based browsers — about 55 percent, according to W3 numbers. And presumably, that Opera will now be able to focus more on what makes its particular user experience different, rather than on building the foundations of its technology.

Which, as unlikely UNIX vendor Apple would be happy to tell you, is often a very smart way to go.

photo credit: cole007 via photopin cc

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Microsoft’s Internet Explorer can track your mouse movements anywhere on the screen, even when minimized. And Microsoft, which was informed of the massive potential security hole over two months ago, has no plans to fix it. Which means that as you explore the web, the web can explore you right back.

And this vulnerability is already being exploited by two advertising companies.

Spider.io, the ad analytics company that can tell if your site visitors are real or dream of electric sheep, found the vulnerability months ago — and notified Microsoft on October 1. The security vulnerability allows any display ad on any site to access your mouse movements — you do not have to install anything, agree to anything, or even be visiting some of the seedier alleyways of the web:

“An attacker can get access to your mouse movements simply by buying a display ad slot on any webpage you visit,” Spider.io’s Nick Johnson posted on Seclists.org, a security-related bug-tracking site. “This is not restricted to lowbrow porn and file-sharing sites. Through today’s ad exchanges, any site from YouTube to the New York Times is a possible attack vector.”

Source: Spider.io

IE security vulnerability demonstration

The vulnerability in IE versions 6-10 allows hackers to see what your mouse is doing on-screen … which could include typing personal information such as credit card numbers and passwords into virtual on-screen keyboards, a particularly timely security hole in the era of Windows 8 and its emphasis on touch and on-screen interactions.

“Indeed, the vulnerability is already being exploited by at least two display ad analytics companies across billions of webpage impressions each month,” Johnson added to the bug report. “As long as the page with the exploitative advertiser’s ad stays open—even if you push the page to a background tab or, indeed, even if you minimize Internet Explorer—your mouse cursor can be tracked across your entire display.”

If you’re using IE on a PC and want to test this, Spider.io created a live demonstration which you can use to observer the vulnerability in action. The company also created a game, “Steal from IE Users,” in which Spider.io is challenging more technically-oriented users to decipher mouse tracks to uncover 12 credit card numbers, telephone numbers, passwords, and email addresses.

One thing that is not yet clear is whether the vulnerability affects just the PC version of Internet Explorer or tablet versions — as in Surface — which would be even more likely to use virtual keyboards. I have talked to Spider.io, and will update this post as the company releases any more information.

VentureBeat has contacted Microsoft for a statement or comment and will update this story as the companyresponds.

photo credit: moiles via photopin cc

Windows 8 upgraders may find that Microsoft has gone to some lengths to make Bing and Internet Explorer the default, obvious, and standard web search and browsing apps. (Shocking, I know.) Now, to the tune of “Oh, baby, give me one more chance,” Google is helping you make it “a little more familiar.”

In other words, a little more Google.

In two minutes, Google guides you through downloading and installing its new Google search app for Windows 8 — which includes voice search — and its Chrome browser. Then, the video says, “Your Google is back.”

The version of Chrome has been tweaked for Windows 8, Google says, with “some customizations to optimize for touchscreens, including larger buttons and the cpability to keep Chrome open next to your other favorite apps.”

Cheekily, Google suggests that the search app go right under the Start menu, where it is most visible and obvious.

The Bing search app has been criticized for being attractive but annoying. Specifically, it opens search results in a new Internet Explorer window, which then renders the browser’s back button useless, as the search results are back in the Bing app.

Image credit: Google

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Who needs mobile Safari? Google announced today that its popular Chrome web browser is finally headed to the iPhone and iPad.

The company made the announcement at its I/O developers conference today, amidst several Chrome-related announcements. The Chrome apps should be available in the iTunes App Store later today.

A Google representative demonstrated both the Chrome iOS apps on stage, showing how easy it is to juggle between tabs and use incognito mode for private browsing. Not surprisingly, the apps resemble their Android counterparts: the iPhone Chrome app has a similar method for managing tabs, while the iPad app sports tabs at the top of the screen (like the Nexus 7 and Chrome on desktops).

The Chrome iOS release is somewhat ironic, since Chrome is only available to the lucky few Android users running Android 4.0 or above.

When asked for comment about what’s powering the Chrome iOS apps, a Google representative offered the following statement:

Chrome for iOS provides the same fast, secure and stable web browsing experience you’ve come to enjoy when using Chrome on your desktop or Android device, while also adapting to platform specific technical specifications.  Rendering and the javascript engine are provided by iOS through UIWebView, so Chrome for iOS does not use Chrome v8 JS engine.

Apple has strict rules preventing third-party browsing engines on iOS, so the Chrome app is doing the same thing as Firefox by using Apple’s browsing engine.

Still, the Chrome iOS apps will be useful for features like private browsing and synchronization with your Google account. I’ve been a big fan of Chrome on Android, so it’s nice to have a somewhat similar experience on iOS finally.

Images via Google I/O live stream

RockMelt’s web browser is closely integrated with Facebook and other social networking sites. Instead of having to constantly return to their favorite websites and social networks, RockMelt users can view their friends’ Facebook and Twitter updates, get notified about new content on their favorite websites, and start Facebook Chats with their friends from the actual browser program.

The browser has three main components. On the left side of the page, there’s a sidebar with a list of your top Facebook friends (as chosen by you), showing their updates on Facebook and Twitter and their availability for Facebook Chat. You can also use that sidebar to post content to Facebook or Twitter. On the right side, there’s another sidebar listing your favorite websites and alerting you whenever they’re updated (determined mostly by their RSS feeds).

And on the top, there’s a box with an improved search experience. RockMelt opens a column of results instead of several tabs for individual searches. When you scroll down the column, the relevant web page will open in the background. All of the pages are pre-rendered, so you should be able to scroll seamlessly, without waiting for each one to load.

RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, the open source project behind Google’s Chrome browser. The browser has more than 1 million users, according to the company. It launched a private beta in November last year.

On average, RockMelt users spend more than six hours per day in the browser and share content every two to three days. The average user has three chats per day on RockMelt. The browser has a particularly young user base — with more than half of the browser’s users under the age of 24, according to the company.

RockMelt raised $9.9 million before closing its second round of funding from Andreessen-Horowitz and others. Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures are joining RockMelt’s board of directors as part of the funding agreement. Super-angel Ron Conway also participated in the funding round.

Browser market share is closely watched for several reasons: It’s seen as a sign of health for the Internet strategies of major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, as well as smaller operations like Mozilla and Opera Software. It also serves as a guide to developers on which browsers are worth catering to in building Web apps, since all of them have their quirks.

In the same time period, Microsoft’s IE browser was in a steady decline. IE had a 62.69 percent share in December 2009, but wrapped up 2010 with a 57.08 percent share, declining by over 5.5 percent.

Mozilla Firefox also took a bit of a hit, as its market share was 22.81 percent in December 2010, down nearly 2 percent from a year before. The open-source browser still hasn’t hit a 25 percent market share.

The other browser underdog that finished the year with a higher market share than it started with was Apple’s Safari, which had a 5.89 percent share in December 2010, compared with a 4.46 percent share in December 2009. Safari, originally designed only for Apple’s Mac computers, is now available for Windows, and Apple pushes users who download its iTunes store software to download Safari, too.

Opera, the browser made by the similarly named Norwegian software company, was flat at approximately 2.2 percent.

Once mighty, now all but forgotten and abandoned by its current owner AOL, Netscape has long since been relegated to having curiosity value only: Yes, it is still out there with a 0.78 percent market share.

Of all the different browser versions, IE 8 is dominates the scene with a 33.02 percent share. Microsoft’s upcoming IE 9, which is out as a public beta, has 0.49 percent.

Chrome is the youngest browser around, having been launched in 2008, and it has been making significant headway ever since, for example in the enterprise space. During 2009, the browser’s market share grew every month, with an insignificant lapse of 0.08% in July, before picking up speed again. And this won’t be the end of it: Chrome will surely continue its growth once the long-awaited and much-touted Chrome OS makes its official appearence.

[Photo credit: mayhem, homepage photo: Clive Darr]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is a little web browsing speed demon, especially compared to Apple’s iPad, according to a video test released by RIM yesterday.

When it comes to simple web page rendering, the PlayBook manages to load sites like UEFA.com and CBS.com before the iPad even renders a single element of the page. The video also demonstrates the PlayBook’s Flash compatibility, which appears to be surprisingly fast given how much Flash slows down normal computers. The iPad, of course, can’t render a Flash page at all.

Both devices score 100 out of 100 on the Acid 3 browser test, a popular way to determine how well a browser adheres to web standards, but the iPad demonstrates a small rendering error that puts it slightly behind the PlayBook.

Finally, the PlayBook also beats out the iPad when it comes to rendering Javascript and HTML5 Canvas elements, which are increasingly used for rich web content. Using the Pocket Full of Canvas test, the PlayBook’s browser managed to play the HTML5 demonstration smoothly, while the iPad seemed to be chugging along at a slow frame rate.

The browser tests seem fair, but since the video was produced by RIM and not an independent third-party, we can only trust its findings so much. I don’t have an iPad to confirm its page loading or HTML5 performance, so let us know if you see the same sluggishness on your iPad.

Via Business Insider

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Mobile browser developer SkyFire has seemingly done the impossible by getting its Flash video-capable web browser approved for Apple’s App Store.

The SkyFire 2.0 browser was submitted for Apple’s approval in early September, and at the time we argued that Apple would have very little reason not to accept the browser. Now we’ve learned that it will be available for download at 9 a.m. ET Thursday morning for $2.99 from the App Store, according to a report by CNN.

SkyFire’s big claim to fame is its ability to play video embedded on web sites with Adobe’s Flash technology. But since Flash still isn’t supported on the iPhone, the browser goes through some clever hoops to play Flash video: SkyFire’s cloud-computing technology allows the browser to translate Flash videos in real-time to Apple-approved HTML5 standard. The company says it adheres to all of Apple’s video and browser guidelines — including the use of a WebKit browser core and H.264 adaptive video streaming.

SkyFire 2.0 also makes its Flash video streaming very efficient. The browser compresses video data by about 75 percent on average — making it easier to stream videos without buffering, and saving precious battery life in the process.

The browser won’t play video from Hulu, CNN notes. It also won’t be able play other Flash elements like games, or let users view websites that rely on Flash for navigation.

You can view a demonstration of the app below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Microsoft certainly has a lot of catching up to do with Windows Phone 7 — its upcoming mobile platform. In particular, it’ll be interesting to see how its Internet Explorer 7 mobile browser will compare to Apple’s Mobile Safari and Android’s browser, both of which are based on the fast Webkit browser framework.

Thanks to mobile site PocketNow, we have the closest look at Windows Phone 7′s web browser yet, in the form of a lengthy video comparison to its competitors (see below).

The site put an early Windows 7 device (the LG Panther) head-to-head with an iPhone 4 and Nexus One, and the results were surprising. The tester attempted to replicate simple web browsing tasks like searching on Google, dealing with tabs, and visiting complex sites. Microsoft’s IE 7 mobile browser managed to hold its own with fast web browsing speeds, a zippy interface, and arguably better tab management than the competition. Overall, it’s an impressive effort from Microsoft, and a clear sign that it’s taking Windows Phone 7 seriously (unlike its doomed Kin phones).

By the time finalized Windows Phone 7 hardware is released some time this fall, the browser will likely perform even better than we see here. That’s particularly important for Microsoft, since mobile web applications depend entirely on the speed of the browser, and other applications will depend on it for in-app web browsing.

The fee “is intended to create better safeguards against fraudulent extensions in the gallery and limit the activity of malicious developer accounts” Chrome product manager Gregor Hochmuth wrote. The change will also apply to the upcoming Chrome Web Store for apps. Developers with extensions and themes already within the galleries (before 11am PST today) can continue to update them for free, but new developers will have to pay to contribute to Google’s ecosystem.

The new domain-verification feature allows developers to tie their extensions, themes, and apps with domains they own or manage with its Webmaster Tools. It will allow developers to better tie their products to their websites and brands, and users will be able to tell how official certain entries are.

The new developer fee is less about making money and more about making sure that spammers and hackers can’t easily sign up for multiple developer accounts.

Hochmuth reported that there are more than 6,000 Chrome extensions in the gallery, and that more than 10 million are downloaded every month. In comparison, Firefox currently has 13,255 extensions at the time of this post. But Firefox has had more than six years to build up its extension collection — Chrome only officially received extensions at the beginning of this year. Of course, developers were working on Chrome extensions for months before, but it’s still impressive growth for Google’s browser.

Apple released Safari version 5.0.1 today, and while the version number may seem minor, it’s actually a fairly important update since it finally brings extensions to the web browser.

Apple previously showed off its extensions last month, and Safari 5 users were able to get some early extensions from other sites, but this marks the first full release for extensions on the web browser. Today also marks the unveiling of Apple’s Extensions Gallery, which is basically a prettier version of the extension repositories created by Google and Mozilla.

Mozilla’s Firefox was the first web browser to embrace the notion of extensions — small add-ons that can greatly increase the functionality of a browser — and earlier this year Google’s Chrome browser also received extension functionality. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has also had extensions for some time. At this point, it seems like any web browser that aims to be successful needs to have some sort of extension framework.

Among the Safari extensions available today are a Twitter client, a Delicious extension, and an Instapaper extension. More so than other browser extension frameworks, Safari’s extensions seem to integrate smoothly into Apple’s manicured user interface.

What’s most surprising about this release is that it’s taken Apple so long to get extensions into Safari. When Firefox was the only extension-equipped browser on the market, it was steadily building its user base over Internet Explorer, and dedicated users found it difficult to wean themselves off of the convenience of extensions — making it a chore for them to move to other browsers.

Chrome was well-liked for its speed and simplicity when it was first released, but it wasn’t until Google added extensions that it finally started making a dent in Firefox’s market share. As of this May, Chrome had 6.73 percent of the browser market — mainly consisting of the early-adopters that initially made Firefox so successful.

It remains to be seen how much the late addition of extensions will help Safari, but at the very least we can say it won’t hurt. It will give users another reason to keep using Safari instead of being tempted by another browser, and it also opens the door for Apple’s mobile Safari on the iPhone and iPad to eventually get extensions of their own.