A recent study by the University of California, San Diego, showed four new ways to expose Internet users' browsing histories. They also showed the ways in which these histories could and can be used to target internet users with various attacks. Most of these attacks take aim psychologically, targeting the trust users have in details to which they believe only their closest friends and family have access.
Google Chrome Labs, the experimental playground for the Google Chrome team, has revealed a new project called "Web-A-Sketch," an Etch-A-Sketch clone designed for web browsers. The tool works exactly as you'd imagine -- there are two knobs that draw vertical and horizontal lines on the screen, as well as a button for "shaking" the virtual toy and even a colored line option.
Google has quietly launched a new web app called Google Canvas, a tool for drawing directly within a browser. The web app has an interface that resembles Adobe's mobile drawing apps, including simple tools on the left side of the screen, a blank canvas, and an undo button. The app is free to use and can be launched using Google's own Chrome browser.
As people become more and more dependent on the Web, web browsers have also increasingly become almost sacred spaces. Anything, even the smallest annoyance, could send users down a rabbit hole of frustration and despair. That’s especially true when websites, intentionally or otherwise, change how standard actions behave. As part of its crackdown on misbehaving websites and web pages, Google Chrome will soon be making sure that its Back button will really take you back to the last page you’ve been to, not the half dozen ads you never even saw.
With the Internet being people’s primary gateway to today’s services, web browsers have often been the target of hackers and security researchers trying to discover potential vulnerabilities. One such vulnerability has been discovered by Tencent’s Blade security team and nicknamed “Magellan”. While it affects a large chunk of browsers that use the open source Chromium engine, including Google Chrome itself, this time it isn’t the web browser that’s at fault. Instead, it’s the SQLite database that’s used not just by Chromium but by hundreds if not thousands of apps as well.
Last week we confirmed that Microsoft would indeed be re-launching their Microsoft Edge web browser with Chromium innards - today we've got news on Chrome extensions. "It is our intention to support existing Chrome extensions," said Microsoft's Kyle Alden. It's not clear yet whether Microsoft will support a Windows 10 version of a Google Chrome sort of app store. It is confirmed that the extensions that'll work and already do work on the chrome web browser should work for Microsoft Edge with Chromium.
This morning Microsoft confirmed that the rumors were, indeed, true, that they'd be working with the Chromium open source project for Microsoft Edge. "Today we’re announcing that we intend to adopt the Chromium open source project in the development of Microsoft Edge on the desktop to create better web compatibility for our customers and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers," said Microsoft Corporate VP Joe Belfiore.
Google Chrome has long displaced Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as the most used web browser, be it on desktop or mobile. But just like Explorer, its size and popularity also make it the perfect unwitting accomplice in ruining users’ experience on the Web. That’s why Google is putting its foot down on stubborn website owners and extension developers and its stricter policies will are now in full effect with the arrival of Chrome 71 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
It seems that Microsoft can never rid itself its web browser curse. Although it became the most used browser in the world, Internet Explorer ended up also becoming its most unpopular. Redmond tried to separate itself from the legacy with Microsoft Edge. After no small amount of aggressive marketing and even intrusive tactics, it seems that Microsoft is ready to throw in the towel and build a new default browser for Windows 10, one built around the same rendering engine used by rival Google Chrome.
There's a new web app for Chrome called Squoosh this week, made by Google to prove the next generation of web apps are viable. That might seem pretty boring to everyone that's already got their traditional apps already downloaded - but the future is coming. With this app, Developer Advocate Jake Archibald and Drawsplainer Mariko Kosaka show how Javascript in a web browser can make the impossible task of up-scaling a photo quite possible indeed.
Ads have almost become a dirty word on the Internet. What should have been, and actually is for some, a legitimate source of revenue, bad behaviors by not a small number of players have tainted that market. Both users and browser makers play a game of cat and mouse against misbehaving and even downright malicious ads and we're in for yet another round. Google has just issued a warning, that starting next month, it will be more aggressively removing all ads on a few sites that still refuse to clean up their act.
If you're on a mobile device and you head over to Google dot com, starting today you'll see something new. Where before now you'd have seen a search bar and a couple other tiny buttons, now you'll see a feed. This is known as Google's Discover feed. This is similar to the system we've seen evolving on Android home screens for a few years - but the idea that it's here, on the web... that's something new.