Firefox gets distributed social networking and identity management. The good people who work on the revolutionary, open-sourced, and occasionally maligned browser have been hard at work on making cross-site navigation and portable IDs a solvable problem. A discrete button to the left of the URL that can tell users whether or not they are logged in to a particular site and allow them to log in without further navigation? Accuse us of punning, but definitely sign us up. Google Chrome: Start taking notes. Sponsor Our friends at Mozilla posted this teaser back in the spring, when they touted a way to eliminate clicks and keystrokes between navigating to and being recognized by a given website. Our own Marshall Kirkpatrick enthused, "Earlier this week, we argued that browsers and social networks were fast converging, and that with more users and some feature advantages, Firefox could be the best real competition for Facebook... This is just one more chapter in a much larger story - but look how easy this makes OpenID to use!" But now, Mozilla's UX chief Aza Raskin has posted more updates to his personal blog that indicate new hotness is coming soon. The new feature will harness the power of Mozilla's Weave to make your online identity something that's stored in your back pocket more than it's stored in your cookies or a third party's server. Decrying redirects and iframes , Raskin tells of a brave new world where an in-browser button that defies navigational difficulties allows for something closer to true identity portability than we've seen yet: Identity will be one of the defining themes in the next five years of the Web. Nearly every site has a concept of a user account, registration, and identity. Searching for "sign in" on Google yields over 1.8 billion hits. And yet, the browser does nothing to make this experience better save for some basic auto form filling. The browser leaves websites to re-implement identity management, and forces users to learn a new scheme for every site... Your identity is too important to be owned by any one company. Finally! They said it! And now, we give you screenshots: So, what's the verdict, readers? Does this surpass Chrome's identity-porting capabilities? Does this create massive privacy issues for users who don't want their personal traffic tracked? Discuss

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Firefox's Plan to Kick the Login's Butt

Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 9 at its Professional Developers Conference earlier this month. One of the unique features of IE9 that Microsoft announced at that time was hardware acceleration for its browser. Thanks to technologies like Direct2D and Direct Write that are available for Windows7, Windows developers can use a computer's graphics card to render websites faster. While Microsoft is still working on this project behind closed doors, however, you can already download a Direct2D-enabled pre-release version of Firefox 3.7 today. Sponsor Beyond JavaScript: Fast Browsers Thanks to Direct2D Ever since the release of Google's Chrome, browser developers have emphasized JavaScript performance. There is still a lot of work left to be done in this area, but developers have also started to investigate other parts of the browser that could benefit from new technologies. According to Firefox developer Bas Schouten , the current implementation of Direct2D in this pre-release version will work best with graphics cards that support DirectX10 and WDDM1.0 drivers. On systems that fulfill these specs, though, users are likely to see significantly better performance on graphics-heavy sites. Sites that mostly render static text or depend on Adobe Flash to display their graphics won't benefit greatly from Direct2D. One benefit of Direct2D that users will notice on most sites, however, is improved font rendering. For the time being, this is just an experiment and it isn't clear if Mozilla will integrate this technology into Firefox 3.7. What is clear, is that Mozilla seems to be ahead of Microsoft and by doing its development out in the open and through open source, Mozilla will be able to rely on its vast developer community to test and enhance these features. What About Google and Apple? Some would argue that the release of Google Chrome started this new race towards faster browsers, and as CNet's Stephen Shankland pointed out earlier today, the Chrome development team is quite aware of Mozilla's efforts and investigating the use of hardware acceleration in Chrome as well. As Shankland also notes, these Direct2D efforts shouldn't be confused with other projects like WebGL or Google's Native Client. Direct2D-enabled browsers will be able to render current pages faster, while these other technologies will require developers to redesign their sites. Currently, a lot of these experiments are mostly focused on Windows. With OpenCL in Snow Leopard , Apple already offers a programming interface for using graphics cards for general-purpose computing. Apple is probably also looking at OpenCL to speed up Safari, though we aren't aware of any projects from Mozilla or Google that are making use of OpenCL at this point. Get it Now If you feel like experimenting with a new browser, you can download an early pre-release of an alpha version of Firefox 3.7 here. While we have tested this browser for a while and didn't see any crashes, it is worth remembering that this version isn't meant to be run in a production environment and that most of your extensions will likely not work. Discuss

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Hardware Acceleration: The Next Frontier in the Browser Wars

Feedly , the magazine style feed reader we first covered back in August of last year , is now available for the Google Chrome web browser. As with the Firefox implementation of the service, the Chrome version also uses a browser plugin to offer an alternative user interface to Google Reader. This early version of the Feedly for Chrome release offers most of the features found in the original Firefox version of the service, but requires the installation of a dev build of Chrome in order to work. Sponsor Feedly: A Better RSS Reader and More Feedly is much more than just another way to read feeds. Although it originally got its start as an alternative UI to Google Reader, today the service is part RSS reader, part social network aggregator, and part search utility. Since its launch in 2008, Feedly's developer Edwin Khodabakchian has constantly added new features including Twitter and FriendFeed integrations, a river of news view , search tools , Mozilla Ubiquity integration , a Feedly "mini" toolbar , and

Google has scheduled a press event for 10am PST this morning where the company plans to announce more details about its Linux-based Google Chrome OS . According to the information we received from Google, the company plans to launch Chrome OS next year. We don't expect Google to release an early build of Chrome OS today, but we would be more than happy to be wrong. We do, however, expect to hear more details about the OS and to see a demo of Chrome OS's functionality. Read on for our live updates from the event, which will start at 10am PST. Sponsor 9:55am: Ahead of the event, Google has already made the Chrome OS source code available . 10:00am : Still waiting for the event to begin. "Some of our attendees are unavoidably delayed in traffic." 10:05am: Event gets started. No beta, no devices today. But they will give a demo and focus on technical demo. 10:06am: Google Chrome has been open-sourced. 10:07am: Why did we do Chrome? We wanted to push the web forward. Over 40 million users. Focus on speed. Mostly on the JavaScript engine, but also on other parts of the browser. Updated Chrome over 20 times in the last year, but users don't notice this because it happens in the background. User experience should be seamless. Coming soon for Chrome: Chrome for Mac will be ready this year. Chrome for Linux is coming along "very well." Extensions are coming soon as well (with automatic updates). 10:10am: HTML5: we want web application to get more access to the hardware. Example: graphics; multiple threads; real-time communication 10:12am: 3 trends in the industry: netbooks, cloud (everything is a web application today), phones getting computing capabilities Phones are becoming more like laptops and laptops are becoming more like phones. Chrome OS 10:15am: Chrome OS will be focused on speed, simplicity, security. Every application on Chrome OS will be a web application. Simplicity: Chrome OS is just a browser - all your data is in the cloud. Users should be able to log into any Chrome OS machine and be up and running with their apps and data in seconds. Security: users don't install binaries on the OS. Keeps the system safe. Everything runs in the browser. 10:18am: Demo time. Booting up on laptop takes seconds. "Everybody knows how to use a browser and we want Chrome OS to feel that way. UI will still change until release. Application Tabs : just like tabs in Chrome, you will be able to set persistent tabs for apps (Gmail etc.). App menu on the top left to access apps as well (see first screenshot above). These apps will be little widgets that appear in a panel just like Google Chat in Gmail. 10:23am: As netbooks get better, we expect them to become entertainment devices. Shows chess game. Shows Google Books in full-screen mode. Chrome OS will feature multiple windows. You can drag and drop tabs from one window to another. Even the file browser is a Chrome tab. Shows what happens when you click on an excel file. Actually launches Windows Live Office apps to show them. "Every app you write for the web is a Google Chrome OS app." 10:29am: Every file opens up in the browser: PDF, Micorsoft Office, etc. Under the Hood 10:30am: Matthew Papakipos, Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS on stage now. "We want Chrome OS to feel more like a Television." Instant on - all flash memeory. How to make the boot-up faster? Right now, operating systems still spend a lot of time on unnecessary boot steps (looking for floppy drives etc.) 10:34am: Verified Boot: makes sure all the components are working and haven't been modified by malware. System automatically fixes itself and reimages the computer with the last working version - saves all system settings and cache data. Security : all apps are web apps. The OS does not trust any app. Other security steps: files system is licked down, every tab runs in a secure sandbox. There is only a small list of known programs (verified and signed). User data on a Chrome OS machine is ALWAYS encrytped. All the data is synced to the cloud (on the Google Drive?) - user partition on the machine is basically just a local cache. 10:41am: Back to Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management. Going to market: Chrome OS - but also working with hardware manufacturers. Will only support flash drives - not traditional hard drives! Google will specify reference hardware (specific wifi cards etc.). Google wants netbooks with a full-size keyboard, larger resolution, better trackpad. Launch: wants devices to be out by next holiday season. Chrome OS Open Sourced Google wants to work with open source community. Will give all of its contributions back to the community. 10:45am: Showing marketing video. Q&A Question : What is the target group for a Chrome OS device? Will there be Chrome server solutions? Chrome as a server? Answer: First we want to get netbooks out - no servers - but this is a paradigm shift in computer. Other questions: time will tell. Question : Cost of Chrome OS netbooks?> Answer: We will see larger netbooks - no price point - no price target.Demo ran on Asus EEE PC. Question : How can manufacturers join the program? Answer: Documentation on website. Reaching out aggressively to hardware partners. For software developers: there will be a page that shows which devices are compatible already. Question : Will there be an app store? Will Google certify drivers from OEMs? What about applications to edit photos? Answer: App store: the web is our app store and we will work hard on making those discoverable. Drivers: working with hardware partners. Want devices to be build on reference devices and with open source drivers. Editing: some apps are not available on the web. Most people who will buy this machine will have another machine in their home. This is not meant to be a primary OS - just a "delightful experience to be on the Web." This is a companion device Question : What about video codecs? Answer: working on that. Trying to use hardware acceleration where possible. Everything that's available in Chrome will be available in Chrome OS - including the http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/ technology. Sidenote : a lot of what you will see in Chrome OS will also flow back into the Chrome browser. Question : Silverlight support? Answer: No comment. Question : Plugins? Other browsers? Answer: code is available, but we won't support other browsers to run on Chrome OS. Question : Do you expect to see this just running on netbooks or other devices as well? Answer: more info about devices will come next year. Google is currently focused on delivering compelling devices: netbook-like form factors. Question : How big is the OS? Answer: nothing specific. Question : Offline access? Google Gears support? Answer: you can play media - but device mainly meant to run online but will make use of HTML5 local storage. Question : can you run it in a virtual machine? Answer: yes. Question : are you working with partners? Can Android apps run on Chrome OS? Answer: we focus on making web apps better - mission of Chrome is to push web apps forward. About Android apps: no. Question : will there be third-party apps? Answer: no - on phones you need native apps, but not on laptops. Question : Native Client needs Intel - will you still support ARM? Answer: we will support X86 and ARM - working on Native Client for ARM. Question : What's the business model? Advertising in the browser? Answer: Right now, we are focused on getting the OS and devices out. Chrome OS is free and open source. As people use the web more, it benefits Google. No specific real-estate in Chrome OS will be devoted to ads. Question : What does Chrome do that I couldn't do in Firefox with plugins? Answer: most of what we do is available in other browser. But not the application tabs etc. We are offering a fundamentally different model of computing (fast, simple, secure). In Chrome OS, Google can offer things others can't: fast boot, security. Question : How do you get people to trust the cloud? How do you assure people that their data is secure? Answer: most of what you are doing is already in the cloud - so problem is not specific to Chrome OS. Google thinks the cloud is just as secure as local storage. Users have a choice - always in control. Question : data syncing - will this be open or data just controlled by Google? Answer: none Sergey Brin drops in and joins the Q&A. Question : Support for Java? Answer: nothing to announce right now - hopefully we can do something interesting with this in the future. Question : What about instant-on OSes on Dell etc.? Does Google want to do this? Answer: No - we want to just be able to start super fast. A lean and mean netbook. Question : Will a Chrome OS machine be able to run printers? Other devices? Answer: we will support storage devices. Printers: we are taking an innovative approach and share more about that next year. Question : Open Source. Answer: we want to upstream what we do and help the community. Want to collaborate with Question: Real-time notifications. Answer (Sergey Brin): We need better real-time notifications in the browser. Chrome will use the W3C Notifications API. Question (for Sergey): How does Chrome OS fit into Google's strategy. Answer: we want users to be able to use netbooks easily. Make it easy to manage software on these devices. The web is the right platform for this. Trying to fulfull this need. Discuss

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Live Blog: The Google Chrome OS Press Event

Microsoft just announced that it started work on Internet Explorer 9 three weeks ago. Steven Sinofsky , the president of Microsoft's Windows and Windows Live division, showed an early build of IE9 during his PDC keynote today. In this presentation, Sinofsky announced that Microsoft will focus on support for new standards like HTML5 and CSS3, as well as developing a faster JavaScript rendering engine. Sinofsky candidly acknowledged that IE8 did not do well on the Acid3 test , though this early build of IE9 only scored a few points higher than IE8 (24 vs. 32). Sponsor According to Sinofsky, there is still a lot of internal discussion about how much of HTML5 to support in IE9. HTML5 is still in its draft stage . Sinofsky did not say when the company plans to release IE9. JavaScript Performance Today's presentation of IE9 was refreshing, as Sinofsky noted that IE8's JavaScript performance was clearly slower that that of its competitors. The current build of IE9, however, has already closed this gap significantly and the difference in performance compared to the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox were only minor. As Microsoft notes, given how fast modern JavaScript engines have become over the last year, improvements in the JavaScript engine don't influence real-world performance at this point and other browser sub-systems become the bottlenecks that impede improvements. Hardware Acceleration and Font Smoothing Microsoft also plans to make use of DirectX-based hardware accelerated graphics and text in IE9. In his demo, Sinofsky showed that Bing maps can render about 14 frames per second in IE8. With hardware acceleration in IE9 turned on, he got 60 frames per second. In addition, this technology will also increase font quality and readability in IE9. Videos Microsoft already published a number of videos with the engineers working on IE9 on Channel 9 (sorry, these are Silverlight only). Discuss

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Microsoft Announces IE9: Focus on Standards and Speed

It only took 3 years to go from HTML2 to HTML4, but the HTML4.01 specifications were published 10 years ago and even though today's web looks very different, we are still waiting for HTML5. The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group started preliminary work on what is now known as HTML5 in 2004 and the W3C HTML Working Group was adopted this draft as the basis for the HTML5 specs in 2007. Some modern browsers already offer partial support for HTML5, but there are still quite a few issues that need to be resolved before we will see the finalized version of the HTML5 specifications. One area where there is still a lot of discussion is support for video in HTML5. Sponsor What Codec? Philippe Le Hegaret, the interaction domain leader for the W3C, talked about this issue in an interview with WebMonkey's Michael Calore . According to Le Hegaret, video support is still one of the main issues surrounding the development of HTML5. Safari and Chrome are both based on the same open-source WebKit engine. Video support, however, is not part of WebKit yet, so every vendor implements it differently. Currently, browser developer disagree over how to implement this feature and what codec to use. Apple wants to use uses H.264 and Mozilla, Google and Opera support Ogg Theora. As of now, HTML5 still includes the tag, but doesn't specify which codec to use. Transition from Plugins Until these issues are sorted out, users will have to continue to rely on plugins. Of course, the only way to do away with video plugins would be to make sure that every online video provider also adopted this new standard. As Le Hegaret rightly points out in the interview with WebMonkey, people don't like to install plugins, but everybody installs the Flash plugin because "if you can't see YouTube, your life on the web is pretty miserable. You're missing a lot." Le Hegaret acknowledges that there has to be a transition period before users can switch from Flash to HTML5 video. For developers, the fact that the video is not running in a plugin that can't talk to the browser is a major advantage of having built-in video support in the browser. With video in HTML5, developers can connect the video to the rest of the page and have actions on the page or video influence other parts of the site. What About Microsoft? At today's PDC keynote, Microsoft noted that it has to improve support for HTML5 in its browser. While the company didn't say a lot about Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft