http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html
Highlights:
* WebView is now based on Chromium * KSM and zRAM integrated into stock kernel * Public SMS framework * Printing framework * Storage access framework
Does that mean that there will no more be stock 'Browser' app? I refuse to use Chrome on Android because of brain-dead, non-disablable 'font-boosting' that makes (among many others) Hacker News absolutely unusable.
If that means that the same engine is the only one officially supported on 4.4 forwards, then that's really sad and unfortunate.
First, it removes my paragraph separation when I post. Second, when you go back to the topic list, it repositions the view at the top of the list again.
The third is that when viewing articles, it doesn't use the Chrome rendering engine, so JavaScript demos suffer greatly and I have to relaunch the article in Chrome to see most of the correctly. It sounds like that last point of contention, Google may have just fixed for me.
Personally, I like all the changes that I read about today.
I'd also like to point out that Chrome as the default webview is a natural fit with the direction Google is taking Android. For some time now on Nexus tablets, there has been no Android browser, only Chrome. Also, you can now save "web apps" as applications, not just as bookmarked links. I think it is only natural that by the time Android 5 is released, you might even be able to install Chrome packaged apps just as you do with regular APK applications.
Android and Chrome are merging, and ChromeCast, a lightweight Android kernel that only runs Chrome, is the proving ground.
I tried it, found it slower and less responsive than Chrome. But as this is a completely biased feeling, I'd love to know more.
* Firefox Sync. As I use Firefox on my desktop, it's nice to keep them synched.
* Addons. I know this might sound stupid on a phone, but having lastpass autofill your passwords on-the-go is awesome.
* Interface. I really like the Firefox Mobile UI, but I hate the Chrome (Tablet, I browse on a Nexus 7) Mobile UI. Chrome get really bad with 3 or 4 tabs, making it really hard to switch tabs, and really easy to close tabs by mistake.
* Smoothness. I find that Firefox is way better/faster than Chrome on my Nexus 7 (This might be because I run Nightly, but I've compared it to Chrome Beta too). Especially, try to open 2 or 3 pages with a video, Chrome just become unusable for 5/10 seconds for me.
* Memory usage. I have a 2012 Nexus 7, and it has "only" 1gb of ram. It seems that if I open more than 5 tabs, Chrome just love dropping old tabs them out of memory. I've yet to have Firefox drop a tab, even with 10 or more tabs open. (It does drop them if I leave it in background and open something memory-intensive, like a game, but that's expected).
To be fair to Android Chrome, it also does Sync if you login with your Google Account. It doesn't handle passwords very well though. I also like how Chrome handles clicks on links - so if the link is too small, or if you're hitting two links at the same time, then it shows you a magnified view of the area you've hit, a feature that's very useful on a mobile phone (not so much on a tablet).
But Firefox did improve by leaps and bounds and has unique features that no other mobile browser currently has, like Addons (AdBlock FTW).
I've got a (simple) screen lock password + full encryption, but I'm still a bit paranoid to keep LastPass signed in. Instead, I have to type my 20+ character passphrase each time I have to use LastPass on my phone, which is frustrating, but not as frustrating as losing all my accounts together with my phone.
Firefox for Android also runs on Android 2.2 (Froyo) and later. Chrome only supports Android 4.0 (ICS) and later.
And yes, I do realize that advertising pays for many of the services that I use. It's just that the advertising arms race always makes it more and more intrusive until it's unbearable; I just cannot put up with them. Those services that I value and which offer a subscription plan instead of ads I subscribe to (like LWN). Sadly there's not a lot of content that you can actually choose to pay for rather than receiving via ads, so I just use an ad blocker and move on.
I had problems using Firefox on a stock Android Nexus 4 (bugs with selecting text and freezing when scrolling) but it's been a flawless experience after switching to Cyanogen. I'm at a loss to explain the difference.
I'm too lazy for this shit. If there's no popular, working, desktop-class browser available for this platform, then, sincerely, fuck this shit, my next phone is iPhone, thank you very much.
Once that list gets shorter, it's slated for inclusion in Webkit, though. It's a useful feature if it works consistently. Prevents needless scrolling from side-to-side on tiny screens. (It's a lot less useful on my 21" Android Slate, however)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rnl8m9ioi9ric5v/2013-10-31%2020.04... - latest chrome beta (release looks absolutely identical) https://www.dropbox.com/s/867wrehnqsiu3oc/2013-10-31%2020.04... - CM10.1.3 stock browser
WebView is the UI class for displaying webpages as a native Android view. The Browser app contains much more than the WebView class itself.
https://devsite.googleplex.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/r...
I clicked on that link and got a page that says "moma: inside google. Single Sign On" and asks for a Google login, password, and OTP. It also appears to display a random image; I wonder if that random image is used as part of the authentication process, perhaps as an authenticator that this is a valid Google login page (perhaps something you can verify with your OTP device).
And there's no need to negotiate/buy access to secure elements, or get involved with TSMs etc -- as long as the issuer looks after its own security.
This is going to blow NFC wide open :)
Prototype works, but lets just say it needs a lot more work. Not sure whether to continue with, for anything like this to have any adoption by retailers the entire Bitcoin community needs to get behind one standard. That is the Bitcoin Payment Protocol[2] which is incompatible with my approach. The Bitcoin Payment Protocol will with the new Android 4.4 changes.
1. https://bitplastic.com/ 2. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0070
2013 definitely seems to be the year of memory compression.
This sounds remarkably similar to the M7. This functionality of Android 4.4 requires hardware support, which initially is only provided by the Nexus 5. It allows for continuous sensor measurements, only waking the application processor when it delivers a batch of them.