Google announced SPDY in 2009 as a protocol for transporting content over the web. SPDY, Google explained, was designed for minimizing latency through features like multiplexed streams, request prioritization and HTTP header compression.

This week, Mozilla launched Firefox 10, but it is Firefox 11 that will be the first version of the popular browser to implement SPDY.

Google’s Matt Cutts is pleased.

“The most important goal of SPDY is to transport web content using fewer TCP connections,” explains Patrick McManus on the hacks.mozilla.org blog. “It does this by multiplexing large numbers of transactions onto one TLS connection. This has much better latency properties than native HTTP/1. When using SPDY a web request practically never has to wait in the browser due to connection limits being exhausted (e.g. the limit of 6 parallel HTTP/1 connections to the same host name). The request is simply multiplexed onto an existing connection.”

“Generally speaking, web pages on high latency connections with high numbers of embedded objects will see the biggest benefit from SPDY,” he says. “That’s great because its where the web should be going. High latency mobile is a bigger part of the Internet every day, and as the Internet spreads to parts of the world where it isn’t yet common you can count on the fact that the growth will be mobile driven. Designs with large numbers of objects are also proving to be a very popular paradigm. Facebook, G+, Twitter and any avatar driven forum are clear examples of this. Rather than relying on optimization hacks such as sprites and data urls that are hard to develop and harder to maintain we can let the transport protocol do its job better.”

Mozilla has been a contributor to SPDY. Google said last week that they’re all working hard at finalizing and implementing draft-3 of SPDY early this year. Google also provided the following video:

Best practices for SPDY can be found here.

It actually looks like Firefox may be soon getting more Chrome-like in other ways as well – particularly with the home page and new tab page.

The update, as we reported yesterday, brings new features to the browser, but nothing worth celebrating over.

The update features extension improvements with most extensions that work on Firefox 4 working on Firefox 10. It includes support for full-screen Web apps and anti-aliasing for WebGL applications.

Firefox 10 also debuts the new “Extended Support Release” for businesses. This allows the browser to only download necessary security updates so businesses no longer have to deal with a new browser update every six weeks. The ESR version will change every seven releases, so November will be the next update for those users.

For those unaware, Firefox changing versions so rapidly is due to Chrome being on the same release schedule. While Internet Explorer is still the most used browser on the Web, Chrome and Firefox are battling neck-and-neck for the number two spot. The sped up release schedule is helping Firefox remain competitive.

Firefox 10 will be released as a silent update to current users today. If you haven’t used Firefox yet, now is a good time to try it out. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux today.

PC Mag is reporting that the update will apply to the desktop formats as well as the mobile edition for Android. For those “people,” who never upgraded to Firefox 4, version 3.6 will be updated to version 3.6.9 which only adds security and stability fixes.

During a meeting today, Firefox announced a new hire for Mozilla’s marketing team. Pete Scanlon, who previously worked for Google’s campaigns for Chrome, is now working for Mozilla.

As with the past few full version updates to Firefox, there’s not much going on for consumers. The new capabilities are mostly for developers.

A big improvement from previous versions is how Firefox 10 handles extensions. Instead of rejecting extensions not specifically made for Firefox 10, it will assume extensions are compatible unless otherwise noted. Most extensions compatible with Firefox 4 will work fine on Firefox 10.

Interestingly, Mozilla reported that 75 percent of all extensions in use were not acquired from their own addon site. They have updated the browser to support those extensions as well.

The update will also allow users to hotfix update extensions themselves to address minor issues.

The Android version of Firefox 10 will get multitouch gesture support. Firefox Sync will also be updated to allow users to sync their phone or table with Firefox without having to be at their desktop computer.

The changes for developers are more robust featuring enhancements to code editors and anti-aliasing for WebGL content. CSS3D Transforms will bring 3D animation to 2D objects. They will also add in support for full-screen Web applications.

Firefox 10 will also be the first Extended Support Release version. The program was made for enterprise IT professionals who were concerned that the more-frequent Firefox updates were unsupportable in a business environment.

Firefox 12, which is a few more weeks out, will finally add a tab page that users of Chrome and Opera enjoy now.

Firefox Nightly builds are early, untested versions of Firefox where new Web technologies and user features evolve rapidly. As the first stop on the Firefox release model, Nightly is the initial testing ground; features are added and removed daily. Features that reach a high level of stability and confidence then move through iterative testing on our Firefox Aurora and Beta channels. Only when testing in those channels confirms their general excellence do we release those features to hundreds of millions of Firefox users. In this model, improvements to Firefox reach our users regularly, and faster than ever before.

Original Article: It looks like Firefox has been testing more-Chrome like features in its (Firefox Nightly testing builds).

ExtremeTech points to some testing of a new “new tab” page and home page, providing the following screen cap:

This will look familiar to Chrome users.

The new home page is similar but goes a bit further, with a chat section and a “recently shared” section.

In an update, Extreme Tech notes that the new tab page was removed from the Nightly builds, and that it will likely appear in Firefox 13.

Firefox’s home page has really not changed much over the years, so a more Chrome-like experience would really symbolize the evolution of the browser.

Chrome reportedly overtook Firefox in users last month.

Google has really pushed the boundaries in the browser space, despite being the newer kid on the block. Don’t forget that Mozilla basically owes Google for Firefox’s continued existence. Google considers them a partner, not a competitor.

“The Web has evolved well past its origins as a way to publish and consume static information — the modern Web includes socializing, sharing, playing, creating, collaborating and other real world activities that it was never really designed to support,” Mozilla says. “As a result, the modern Web is less useful and usable than it could be, and it is hard to make use of its full potential.”

The project is even questioning the need for URLs. I’m sure those paying top dollar for generic TLDs will be thrilled with that concept.

This brings to mind some concept testing Google has done involving eliminating the address bar from Chrome.

“We’re playing with some huge concepts, monumental problems and occasionally crazy ideas,” says Mozilla’s Pancake Director (awesome title, by the way) Stuart Parmenter. “We’ll be looking at what tools and systems we can create to put more of the Web at users’ fingertips. We hope to devise new metaphors and new systems that give users greater power and control within the modern Web.”

“We want to address questions that go to the core of how users experience the Web,” continues Parmenter. “Some examples of the questions we are asking include: How can we make it easier for people to find what they’re really looking for on the Web? Do URLs still need to be something users care about? Can we make it easier for people to discover new and interesting things on the Web? What impact does social play in discovery on the Web?”

The project begins as a mobile app. “The prototype app we are building is really only the surface of Pancake,” says Parmenter. “We’re also pushing the envelope — using the latest and greatest Web technologies — to build an amazing, portable experience for users. The back-end of Pancake will live in the cloud, where we’re creating an extensive Web service that will allow you to carry your data and experience across many devices. Our initial focus is on iOS and Android tablets and phones, but our long-term goal is to help people live their online lives on their own terms, across all devices and platforms.”

The first prototype will be released (open source of course) within the next few months.

A Pancake wiki can be found here. Documentation, roadmaps, designs, experiments and other content will be posted in the coming weeks.

For any of you caught unawares and can’t follow through with your plan to ditch Internet Explorer today for a new browser, you had a warning:

Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker elaborates on the decision to blackout the site on her blog:

SOPA makes all of us potential criminals if we don’t become the enforcement arm of a new government regulatory and policing structure. SOPA does not target websites serving up unauthorized content. SOPA does not target people accessing those websites. SOPA targets all the rest of us. These costs are significant, wide-ranging and long lasting. To understand more clearly what SOPA does and the range of consequences, it’s helpful to use an analogy from the physical world where we all have many years of experience.

Microsoft’s website welcomed 93.8 million unique visitors from the U.S. in September 2011, more than any other computer and consumer electronics brand online during the month. Visitors spent an average of 42 minutes perusing the site. In comparison, Apple saw 68.7 million unique visitors but their they were more likely to spend more time on their site as the average visitor remained on their website for 62 minutes per visitor. “Adobe, Mozilla, and CNET rounded out the top five brands, with 24 to 28 million visitors going to their sites and spending 2 to 6 minutes each on average. CNET was the only news website among the top 5 in this category overall.”

Amazon had the third-highest amount of unique visitor traffic with 72 million unique visitors, each spending an average of 29 minutes on the site. Amazon was leaps and bounds the most visited mass merchandiser website, easily dwarfing the traffic for and time spent on rival sites like Walmart, Target, and Overstock.com. Consumer traffic at Walmart “followed as the second-ranked site, where 34.5 million visitors spent an average of 13 minutes per person on the site. Target, Shopathome.com, and Overstock.com rounded out the top five most visited mass merchandiser websites.”

One stand-out factoid about Amazon: 1 in 3 people in the United States visited the site in September 2011.

Demographically speaking, women were more likely to both categories of websites. 3 out of 4 Internet savvy women visited consumer electronics sites during September 2011, compared to 7 out of 10 men. “Women were also 7 percent more likely to visit mass merchandiser sites. Young people aged 18-34 were slightly more likely than the general population (4 percent more likely) to visit consumer electronics sites.” Additionally, those in the middle income bracket were also more likely to visit computer and consumer electronics websites (guess that makes sense that they’d visit it more than low income consumers, and those 1%ers probably just hire people to do their comparative shopping for them).

Nielsen suggests that interested readers take a look at their State of the Media: Consumer Usage Report for additional insights about these consumer habits.

Thanks to a NetMarketshare, we have an idea of the ride each browser took during 2011 in relation to usage. Immediately, you will notice Microsoft’s browser hovering around the 60 percent mark, but its total is steadily decreasing. In fact, the only browser to experience a noticeable gain, again, according to NetMarketShare’s research, was Google Chrome. Most surprisingly, at least to this writer, is the lack of a jump for Safari, Apple’s native browser.

As consumers continue to embrace all things shiny devices starting with a lowercase “i,” they apparently don’t use Safari when they access the web with their iDevice. Even more surprising than Safari’s lack of an increase is the fact that it remains firmly under the 10 percent mark in relation to marketshare. Are iOwners simply avoiding Safari in favor of another browser? Whatever the case, Safari’s incredibly low usage numbers are somewhat eyebrow-raising.

Here’s NetMarketshare’s browser breakdown for 2011, presented in graph form:

Since the deal was announced, there has been a lot of discussion about Google essentially funding its competitor in the web browser market, as money from the deal is pretty much the only thing keeping Mozilla afloat.

It’s very possible that Microsoft would have taken the opportunity to boost Bing’s market share without the Google deal in place. Others have noted how much more Google is paying this time around than its previous search deal. It doesn’t seem unreasonable to assume that a big part of Google’s strategic thinking is about keeping that part of its search market share. There are still a ton of people using Firefox, despite Chrome’s growing popularity.

Peter Kasting, a software engineer and founding member of Google’s Chrome team, who also designed and built Chrome’s omnibox (the address bar that lets you conduct a search), takes issue with this whole “funding a competitor” mentality, insisting that rather, Google is funding a “partner”.

He posted a rant about this on Google+ (h/t: 9to5Google), where he said:

People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads. It’s very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible. That’s it. It’s completely irrelevant to this goal whether Chrome actually gains tons of users or whether instead the web advances because the other browser vendors step up their game and produce far better browsers. Either way the web gets better. Job done. The end.

But that was not the end. He continued:

So it’s very easy to see why Google would be willing to fund Mozilla: Like Google, Mozilla is clearly committed to the betterment of the web, and they’re spending their resources to make a great, open-source web browser. Chrome is not all things to all people; Firefox is an important product because it can be a different product with different design decisions and serve different users well. Mozilla’s commitment to advancing the web is why I was hired at Google explicitly to work on Firefox before we built Chrome: Google was interested enough in seeing Firefox succeed to commit engineering resources to it, and we only shifted to building Chrome when we thought we might be able to cause even greater increases in the rate at which the web advanced.

Nor was that the end of the post, but that pretty much covers the meat and potatoes.

Apparently a lot of people went on to criticize Kasting’s post and general mentality, basically implying that he’s living in a fantasy land, though browsing through the comments on the post, I see a fair amount of support for his points, or belief at least. Even tech columnist MG Siegler, who’s post in particular was the catalyst for Kasting’s rant, said, “We’re not saying opposing things at all, I totally buy all of this. But there are a few other sides which can’t be ignored.”

In a follow up post, Kasting went off on another rant about people’s perception of him being “hopelessly naive and idealistic.” In that one, he says:

Let me be clear: I’m not denying that Google makes money, or claiming that isn’t a factor in decisions. But the “realists” (as multiple people proudly declared themselves to be yesterday) are so busy patting themselves on the back for “seeing through” Google’s actions to expose what they think is the short-term, exploitative focus driving everything that they completely miss the possibility that people in for-profit corporations can actually care about humanity, the world, ethics, doing the right thing, or hell, even long-term strategic planning. You don’t have to be an idealist to see why, for a company that benefits when people use the web, making the web better is a good long-term move; or why a company that wants its users’ trust and loyalty would benefit from not secretly spying on everything they do.

What do you think? Is Google’s main motivation simply making the web better?

While it is an obvious tool of self-promotion, drawing attention to positive attributes is a practice that goes on everyday in the real world. Much like a peacock spreading its feathers, Mozilla’s “Firefox: 2011″ infographic reminds us there are other attractive choices out there when it comes to browsing the never-ending tubes of the web.

It should be noted that Mozilla created the graphic themselves, making it much more effective than a third party creation that may not capture the spirit of the company its profiling. The graphic in question:

- 200,000 hours of cuteness. I’m assuming this is referring to the amount of LOLCat (and similar activities) browsing while using Firefox.

- 3 red pandas adopted. It’s always nice when the product you’re most known for helps out, especially with endangered species. Read more about red pandas and Mozilla’s efforts here.

- Over 480 million installations of Firefox add-ons. People LOVE tweaking their “more advanced” browsers.

- More and more people using the “Do Not Track” feature. Perhaps personal privacy is NOT a lost art; at least for some.

- 50 percent less memory usage. To put it nicely, previous Firefox versions were absolute memory hogs. To address this issue is clearly a necessary and needed step. Kudos to Mozilla, although, it did take them a little while.

- Faster Releases. With that in mind, Firefox ninth version was released this week, and while Mozilla isn’t matching Chrome’s “UPDATE ALL THINGS” schedule, they are obviously more committed to making improved, working builds available to the public.

While Chrome may be making inroads, Mozilla is still a viable alternative to Internet Explorer, and I’m not even talking about them in reference to their performance.