Internet Archive

There are a number of browsers allowing you to switch between rendering engines, with Lunascape being one of them. We've covered this browser before quite extensively, and today, the Lunascape team released the first beta of Lunascape 6 ORION, the bext version of this triple-engine web browser.

"Money can't buy everything, especially when it comes to freely available open source software from the Apache Software Foundation. The ASF is now celebrating its 10th anniversary as a non-profit foundation that has grown from its initial project, the Apache HTTP Web Server, to more than 60 projects today. The Apache HTTP Web Server remains the most widely deployed Web server today, with more than 42 million active sites, according to the latest data from research firm Netcraft. At the ApacheCon conference today, pioneers of the ASF talked about their experiences at the trail-blazing open source foundation. They also outlined why the ASF remains relevant today, and why money doesn't buy many favors."

"Type designers and Web designers have reached a consensus on a format specification for embedding fonts on the Web. Mozilla is already including support for the font format in Firefox 3.6, and wide adoption could come sooner than many expected."

"HTML5 defines a standard way to embed video in a web page, using a video element. Support for the video element is still evolving, which is a polite way of saying it doesn't work yet. At least, it doesn't work everywhere. But don't despair! There are alternatives and fallbacks and options galore."

Mozilla Firefox has been outperforming Internet Explorer for a number of years, and its latest version is even faster than ever. However, there is a new, lean, free web browser on the block which runs web pages at lightning speed. It goes by the name of Google Chrome.Tweak the right settings and with some experimentation, Firefox can keep pace with Google Chrome. Unknown to many of its users, Firefox has a raft of options that can unleash the browser's true potential. With just a few minutes of your time, you can make your daily web browsing more enjoyable.Read more

Since the early days of the internet, it has fallen under control of ICANN, which in turn was bound by an agreement with the US Department of Commerce. As the internet grew bigger and more pervasive, intentional calls for severing the ties between ICANN and the US government grew stronger. Today, the US has ceded control over ICANN.

As you all undoubtedly know, the European Union and Microsoft are trying to work out some sort of a settlement regarding the Internet Explorer case. Microsoft made a very detailed proposal for a browser ballot screen earlier this year, and the EU was relatively satisfied. Now, various browser makers have told Reuters that they are not satisfied with Microsoft's proposal.

"With just over a week left before the expiration of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Department of Commerce, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA) urges the US government to closely re-examine ICANN's structure, governance, and oversight mechanisms before committing to any further long-term cooperation. Significant adjustments must be made to the JPA in order to remedy the egregious problems CADNA has found with ICANN." CADNA not only proposes that an audit be made of ICANN, but they also have released a "top-ten list" detailing the most prevalent problems they find in the non-profit organization.

The draft of the HTML5 specification has been under discussion for a while now, but despite the fact that it's not yet finished, all major browsers have implemented at least the most important aspects of it - except Microsoft. The company did provide substantive criticism of the specification in early August, but now the company has also endorsed the video and audio tags.

While browsing the ever-wider world web today, I came across a story about IBM's patent of a sort of "Facebook Remote Control." It was appalling. Do we seriously need more single-purpose devices that will enable us to sit around more wasting more time than we already do? Does anyone really need to seclude themselves from the world even more to publish their lives on yet another teen-infested network? Must we really always be connected to the net? Read on for my ramble concerning a dark side of technology.

Another instalment of Ask OSNews. A reader sent us in a question about browser security and privacy. "Could you please advise me and your readers on what you consider to be the safest web browser? I am considering the term 'safe' from both a privacy and security stand point."

Microsoft's Bing search engine is getting a little help from a very smart friend. Wolfram Alpha and Bing have reached a licensing deal that allows Bing to present some of the specialized scientific and computational content that Wolfram Alpha generates, according to a source familiar with the deal. Representatives from Microsoft and Wolfram Research declined to comment on the deal.

The browser wars have really been heating up again lately. Thanks to Mozila's Firefox, Internet Explorer is no longer the undisputed king, and browsers are popping up all over the place trying grab a piece of the pie. A new browser project called RockMelt is in development - and it's backed by Mosaic developer and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen.

"Linux: If a lack of third-party plug-in support (i.e. Flash) kept you from trying out Chrome on your Linux system, then avoid no longer. The 'early developer version' now supports many plug-ins, and they seem to work pretty well. You'll need to add --enable-plugins to your Chrome shortcut's command line operation to get the 'buggy' plug-in support, but it seems worth the hassle, as YouTube videos are playing relatively stable and smooth. Google's updated their alpha-level Chrome builds to include the newest start page tweaks as well, and it's generally a browser worth checking out, even if a few standard settings and convenience items are still missing."