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Firefox has released a new beta of their web browser called Firefox "Lorentz," a test build of Firefox 3.6.3 that's designed to minimized crashes. Previously, when a plugin caused a crash in Firefox, the whole browser went down in flames too. But in Lorentz, this will no longer be the case. The page running the errant plugin will offer you the ability to submit a crash report while the rest of the browser remains up-and-running like usual. The improved stability is due to Lorentz's process isolation, a feature which runs plugins as processes separate from the web browser itself. Does this sound familiar? It should, if you're a Google Chrome user. Sponsor Google Chrome , the speedy little web browser from the Internet search giant, introduced the idea of isolated processes when the browser launched back in fall 2008 . As explained by a Googler on the company's official blog, Chrome put "each tab in an isolated sandbox," so it could "prevent one tab from crashing another." The same philosophy is now seen in Firefox's latest. The Lorentz build, which initially focuses on just Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight, isolates plugins in separate instances, too. The end result? A browser that doesn't completely tank quite so often. If you do end up with a page that goes rogue, however, the screen turns grey and you're notified of the plugin crash by way of a text message and a sad-faced lego-like logo. ( See picture ). This image also seems to be cribbed from Chrome's playbook as it closely resembles the sad tab image that accompanies Google Chrome's "Aw Snap!" message that appears when something goes wrong with a web page. (Then again, a sad computer icon isn't anything new, as Mac users will certainly tell you .) But in this case, it's another reminder of how Firefox, once thought to be leading the way in browser innovations, now seems to be following in Google's footsteps. That said, Firefox enthusiasts are sure to welcome this change. And if you want to get all hacker-ish, you can even configure Firefox to isolate more plugins, too, as the Mozilla Links blog explains (via LifeHacker ): To have the Adobe Reader plugin running on its own process, create a boolean preference in about:config, name it dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppdf32.dll, set it to true, and restart. For Java, the preference must be named dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npjp2.dll. You just need to know the name of the library (which you get from about:plugins), and create the preference accordingly. To try Lorentz for yourself, you can grab the latest build here . Discuss
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Firefox Lorentz: Now Firefox Crashes More Like Chrome
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Ever since Steve Jobs first announced iBooks for the iPad, pundits have been wondering about the future of the Kindle and similar e-book readers in the face of this new competition. Now that we actually have access to an iPad , we had a chance to take a closer look at both the iBooks and Amazon's Kindle for iPad apps. We are still waiting for the B&N iPad app, but both iBooks and iPad for Kindle already highlight the iPad's potential as an e-book reader. Sponsor iBooks It doesn't come as a surprise that Apple managed to develop the prettier e-reader app. Switching from the iBooks store - which looks a lot like the App Store - to your bookshelf is done through a nifty animation. Newly downloaded books and samples smoothly slide into the bookshelf and thanks to a faux 3d look and a page-flip animation, the app itself mimics the look and feel of a book. When you click on a book in your shelf, it flips open and zoom to the page you left off. Flipping the iPad to landscape mode switches iBooks from displaying on page per screen to a more book-like two-page view. Given how wide the iPad's screen its, this makes it a lot easier to read as the individual lines are much shorter. With regards to customization, iBooks allows its users to change the size of the font, but also the font itself (Baskerville, Cochin, Palatino, Times New Roman and Verdana). You can also set the screen brightness right from within any book, which is great for reading at night. As far as we can see, however, you can't switch to white text on a black background. Another neat feature is the search function that feels a lot like Spotlight on OSX. This search feature is extremely fast - though sadly it only works for the book that you are currently reading. You can't search through all of your library, though you can initiate a Google and Wikipedia search from within any book (these open up Safari, however). The iBooks app can also read DRM-free ePub texts. You simply download the e-book to your computer, drag it into iTunes and after your next sync, it will appear in iBooks. iBooks Store The iBooks store mostly features books between $9.99 and $14.99 (with a few outliers). There are currently about 30,000 free books in the store (courtesy of Project Gutenberg) and about 60,000 books from most major publishers - though there are still some holdouts . Every book in the store allows you to download a free sample (sometimes more than 50 pages long). Kindle for iPad Amazon, of course, offers a far larger store than Apple. With close to 450,000 paid and free books. It's worth noting that the Kindle store also launched with slightly more books (about 88,000). Compared to iBooks, Kindle for iPad feels a bit more pedestrian, as it doesn't feature fancy animations. Pages just slide left and right and instead of two-page view when you flip the iPad to landscape mode, you just get a single page with a very wide layout. The Kindle app also doesn't allow users to customize the font of a book, though it does offer the standard screen brightness and font size settings. Unlike the iBooks app, which only has a bookmark feature, the Kindle app allows users to annotate books and highlight passages in these texts. For students, this is a must-have feature and it's surprising that Apple didn't include this in its app. As with its other mobile apps, Amazon forces its readers to download apps from the Kindle online store. The only way to access this is through the browser. Here, Apple's ability to integrate the store into the e-reader application is a big plus. Verdict: iBooks is the Better App; Kindle is the Better Platform In terms of functionality, the choice between the two apps depends on your needs. If you need to highlight and if you want to take notes, then the Kindle app is the only way to go. If you just want to read, the iBooks apps is just fine. Prices in both the iBooks and Kindle store are likely to be very similar - especially now that Amazon is slowly giving up on its idea of selling all e-books at $9.99. The real advantage of the Kindle app is that you can read and sync books with more devices. You can start reading a book on the iPad at home or on the plane, for example, and then continue reading on your iPhone while you are waiting in line at the post office. Chances are that Apple will launch an iBooks app for the iPhone sooner or later, but until then, investing in Kindle books seems like a smarter decision as you don't lock yourself completely into Apple's smaller ecosystem. More About the iPad Launch Click here for our full archive of posts about the iPad launch . Discuss
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E-Books on the iPad: iBooks vs. Kindle for iPad
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The cloud computing story for the iPad will fill out as more applications become available. The first few applications we've seen give a glimpse into how the cloud plays a role in the iPad's future, especially with collaborative services such as online meetings. Cisco is launching a WebEx client for the iPad . Cisco is one of the more experienced companies for developing cloud-based products through its hosted service. It's beefing up that strategy, too, as mobile plays a more significant role in the workplace, especially as video is concerned. Sponsor Cisco is building a number of data centers throughout world, with the latest rolling out today, said Grace Kim of Cisco. The network gives Cisco flexibility in developing its client software for multiple platforms. WebEx is available on most smart phones through the browser. The app is available on the iPhone and the iPad. It is available on the Blackberry. WebEx does not as of yet have an app for the Android, With the data centers in place, Cisco gets some flexibility in how it structures pricing for clients, which it can extend to new platforms. A catalyst for that strategy may be the iPad itself. The iPad's form factor allows customers to view meetings on a screen that is simply much bigger. That's where the iPad has value. That, too, comments on how cloud computing becomes more important. The iPad makes video more logical to use. It's not available yet on the WebEx app. Cisco developed the app in the 50 days since Apple announced the iPad. Like a lot of other apps. we notice that WebEx is lacking some features. Cisco, though, is fully focused on video as a focal part of its collaboration strategy. You can expect that we will see video as part of the iPad app in future versions. The iPad is the right device for meeting collaboration. Far more so, we would say, than the iPhone. Customers will take advantage of this, fueling the need for more data centers that are designed for tasks that require elasticity, a key tenant of the cloud computing movement. Will Cisco offer more elasticity in its pricing models? Online conferencing has its roots in the ancient history of cloud computing. That's a time that dates back more than 10 years ago, (chuckle), when we first saw the glimpses of a per use model. Kim said they are always exploring new pricing structures which you can see in new products such as its hybrid offering that allows a large enterprise to use an on-premise client for data critical sessions and the hosted service for meetings that require lesser levels of security.
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The Cloud's Important Role for WebEx on the iPad
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The latest in the wave of special iPad versions of your favorite apps? Gmail. Built on the year-old HTML5 Gmail web app for the iPhone , the Gmail for iPad sports a double column display and looks great with whole threads unfurled. "Tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate," the Gmail team said today . We look forward to using other Google Apps on the iPad, too. Sometimes little things like far more screen real estate and touchscreen interactivity aren't so little at all. Sponsor We expect to see some fundamental interface and user experience innovations come out of this new way to use apps. Even subtle changes like Gmail's looks exciting, though. The use of HTML5 by web apps, which supports local caching of data for fast access, will take the mobile web or native app debate to a whole new level on the iPad. See also: Lifehaker on how to change your browser user agent to iPad and get this interface on any other computer. Discuss
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Gmail Updated for the iPad
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Nurph , which just launched its public beta, combines a URL shortener and chat rooms. You simply create a shortened link by going to Nurph.com and share it with your friends. That link will then take your friends over to the URL you shortened, which now features a Nurph chat room that pops up on the bottom right side of your browser window. Nurph is the successor of Nurphy.com , which will shut down at the end of April. Sponsor Give it a Try and Chat with Us If you want to give Nurph a try, just click here and join your fellow ReadWriteWeb readers in a Nurph chat room attached to this post. Twitter Integration: Leaving A Digital Trail As Nurph's co-founder Neil Cauldwell noted when we talked to him and his fellow co-founder Paul Horsfall earlier this week, adding the Twitter feature was a request from some of Nurph's early beta testers. One interesting way to look at this feature is as a way of broadcasting your digital location. Whenever you enter a room - or "channel," as the Nurph team calls it - a message is pushed out to all of your Twitter friends who can then join you on this site. One nice feature of the service is that whenever somebody posts a link to the chat room, clicking on that link will simply open up a new Nurph channel and won't take you out of the Nurph experience. From within the chat room, you can also share your link on Twitter, Facebook and by email. Like all good URL shorteners, Nurph also offers a boookmarklet that will work with any browser. Links will also work on mobile browsers, though you will only see that chat room and not the site behind it. Still in Beta Given that the service just opened up its public beta, there are still some missing features - though they don't take away from the overall experience. Right now, for example, you can't see if any of your friends are currently typing in the chat room, which makes sticking to good chat etiquette hard. As of now, there are also no moderation features, though the team is thinking about this and you can report any vandalism here . As you have to sign in with Twitter, though, the Nurph team decided to keep spammers out by only allowing Twitter users with at least 25 followers to use the service. There is also no API for third-party developers to hook into and integrate the URL shortener into their apps yet. Publishers, who often like to see detailed statistics about how their shortened URLs were used will also have to miss this feature if they use Nurph (unless, of course, they decide to shorten the Nurph link with another URL shortener). Verdict Overall, though, this is a very interesting concept and it will be interesting to see if any larger publishers will adopt it for sharing their links and bringing their communities together. The team plans to regularly release new features during the public beta phase and it will be interesting to watch if and how users will adopt this service. Discuss
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Make Shortened URLs More Interactive With Nurph Chat Rooms
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