Mozilla have released a pre-alpha build of it’s popular Firefox browser for Android devices. The browser, previously known under the Fennec codename, has been released to gather feedback from the Android community.

This news comes just a month after Mozilla announced it was putting Windows Mobile development on hold, and shows there is still life in the mobile version of Firefox outside of Windows Mobile and Nokia Maemo devices.

So far, the browser is only confirmed to be working on the Motorola Droid and Google Nexus One at this early stage of development.

Vladimir Vukićević has stated that this early build has poor memory management, and this build requires Android 2.0 or above, and likely an OpenGL ES 2.0 capable device. This is on top of a few other smaller issues.

Firefox for Android can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/fennec-android.

The “fastest browser on Earth” has just been updated, and for the first time, the 10.5x branch is now also available on Mac.

The update takes the browser to 10.52, and is mostly a stability fix for Windows, with many bug fixes. A full list of changes can be found in the changelog.

Opera 10.52 on Mac finally sees the arrival of the Carakan JavaScript engine, Vega graphics library, and Opera Presto 2.5 browser engine.

Early benchmark results also look promising, showing that Opera is on par with or better than Google Chrome 5 (beta) for Mac. Full benchmarks can be seen on the Choose Opera blog.

The Opera browser can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Opera has released an emulator of it’s Opera Mobile browser to developers.

The application emulates Opera Mobile 10, and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Opera Mobile emulator now gives developers a tool to test how their website will look in the mobile browser, which allows for quick and easier development of mobile web applications.

“Testing mobile browsers usually requires Web developers to buy one or more devices on which they then can investigate how their Web sites perform. The Opera Mobile emulator is designed to make the whole testing effort a bit easier: you install a small, native application on the platform of your choice, and load Web pages from the comfort of your desktop” wrote Opera’s Andreas Bovens.

The download is free, and available today from the Opera Developer Network.

Google has pushed out an update to its Chrome browser, taking its stable version to 4.1.249.1059.

The latest release closes seven security holes, 4 of which were rated as high,  with the other 3 rated as medium.

A full list of security holes that were fixed can be seen in the release notes.

The browser will automatically update itself for Windows Chrome users, or can be downloaded from the Chrome website.

Google has removed the http:// from new development builds of it’s Chrome browser.

The change was noticed when a user posted a bug report in the Chromium issue tracker, to which a Chrome developer replied and stated that this is a new feature, and not a bug.

Currently when you copy and paste a the URL from these development builds, the http:// will be missing, but this is expected to change in the new future.

https:// and ftp:// are still displayed for security reasons, but some argue this is inconsistent.

This feature will eventually make its way into the standard browser.

In its first 24 hours since approved by Apple, Opera Mini for iPhone has been downloaded over one million times.

The number was so great that Opera Mini was the most downloaded application across all region app stores.

“Today iPhone users have a choice, and, as the numbers show, they are eager to explore new and faster ways to surf the Web on the iPhone – especially during heavy Web traffic,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software.

Opera Mini can be downloaded for free for the iPhone and iPod Touch from Apple’s iTunes App Store.

Opera have announced that Opera Mini is heading to the iPhone and iPod Touch today, after Apple approved the app for the devices.

This comes 20 days after Opera submitted the browser to Apple for approval.

“Opera Mini […] enables fast mobile Web browsing by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the device, resulting in significantly improved page loading. Users of the app will notice an uptake in speed, especially on slower networks such as the 2G Edge network. Surfing the Web with the Opera Mini App on iPhone and iPod touch will also help users save money because of its data compression capabilities” said a press release from Opera.

“We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”

The browser can be downloaded for free now from the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch users.

Mozilla has released a multi-process beta version of its Firefox browser, code named Lorentz.

“Firefox “Lorentz” provides uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. If a plugin crashes or freezes, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. You will be able to reload the page to restart the plugin and try again” said the browser release notes.

The multi-process, or out-of-process plugins support first started appearing in early versions of Firefox 4 back in March, but Mozilla has now almost finished the task of porting the code back to the Firefox 3.6 branch.

Out of the box, it only supports Adobe’s Flash, Apple’s Quicktime and Microsoft’s Silverlight plugins, but support for other plugins can be added via the about:config menu.

The multi-process plugin feature is only available for Windows and Linux users, with support for Mac OS X coming in the near future.

A download is available from the Firefox Lorentz website.

Opera have released a press release stating that they now have over 100 million users.

This figure includes 50 million users on Windows, Mac and Linux, plus another 50 million users browsing the web with Opera Mini on their mobile devices.

100 million users comes after a staggering 30% jump in desktop users from the same time last year, mostly attributed to the release of Opera 10.x browsers.

“Our focus on speed, security, innovation and usability continues to yield results. We always listen to the needs and wants of our users, and they reward us by choosing Opera,” said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software.

Congratulations to Opera on the achievement, and new users can download Opera for their computer or mobile device from the Opera website.

The WebKit team have announced WebKit2 is on it’s way, the popular rendering engine found in Apple’s Safari, and Google’s Chrome web browsers.

“WebKit2 is designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process” wrote Anders Carlsson and Sam Weinig. This is similar to what the Chrome team have done, but it allows other developers to use this model right from the framework without having to add an extra application layer.

WebKit2 can currently be compiled for both Mac OSX and Windows users. More information can be found in the WebKit wiki.

No word yet on when this will make its way into the Safari browser, of if Google will be interested in this method over it’s own for Chrome.