Two days after Mozilla delivered Firefox 6 to its wide-release stable channel, Firefox 7 and its much-anticipated spate of better memory management and reduced load times got promoted from the developer's Aurora build to the Beta channel. You can download Firefox 7 Beta for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

The performance improvements are the first major performance changes for Firefox after a summer of complaints from a small yet vocal minority that was experiencing severe memory leaks and crashes. The company is anticipating around a 30 percent gain in performance that derives from changes to the JavaScript garbage collector, implementing Azure Direct2D for Canvas, and adding developer support for a Web timing specification and a CSS3 Text-Overflow option. Password and bookmark changes and additions made in Firefox Sync will synchronize faster, too, according to Mozilla.

If you wish to contribute performance data on Firefox to Mozilla, there's a new add-on called Telemetry (download from Mozilla add-on site) that chips in your experiences to Firefox developers.

Many of the same changes made in the desktop version have been made to the Firefox Beta for Android. These include the optimized memory use, restoring session history and tabs, changes to Firefox Sync, copy and paste from mobile Web sites, and enhanced language detection for localization.

For people who don't like some of Firefox's recent changes to the address bar, I just discovered that there are two new entries in the about:config menu. In Firefox 7 and above, you can force the page's protocol to always be displayed by changing browser.urlbar.trimURLs to False. In Firefox 6 and above, you can disable domain name highlighting by changing browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled to False, too.

If Mozilla sticks to the current release schedule, Firefox 7 will reach the stable channel and thus the majority of Firefox users on September 27.

Online note-taking specialist Evernote has acquired Skitch, a Mac app for annotating photos and otherwise editing images, and plans to dramatically expand the software's availability.

For starters, Evernote is making the $20 app free. In addition, "We are committed, not only to making the Skitch Mac app more awesome, but also to bringing Skitch to every desktop and mobile platform under the sun," Evernote's Andrew Sinkov said in a blog post today.

That expansion begins with Skitch's first mobile app, a free download for Android, Evernote said.

"Our goal is to make Skitch a household name with everyone that wants to draw, sketch, annotate, doodle, sign, or highlight something," he added. The software also can be used to share images; 4.7 million currently are shared through Skitch.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Evernote's service is available over the Web and as a native app for Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems. It can handle text, audio, Web links, and other data, but Evernote wanted to improve how its technology deals with graphics, Sinkov said.

"For years, one of our most requested feature areas has been related to improved handling of images and annotation capabilities. Our users take and share millions of photos and screenshots already, but the experience isn't as good as it could be," he said. "In the coming months, you'll see tighter integration between Evernote and Skitch to let you easily draw, ink, grab screenshots, annotate and share your favorite memories."

Today, Evernote users on Macs can drag images to Skitch, modify them, then drag them back. "Our goal is to make this experience much more streamlined," Sinkov said.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

An app store is officially among the features Microsoft is working to include in Windows 8, much like Apple's App Store for OS X.

The revelation, which confirmed months of rumors, came today from Microsoft President Steven Sinofsky in a Building Windows 8 blog titled "Introducing the team." Among a list of teams associated with building the forthcoming operating system was "App Store."

Sinofsky said that work on the new OS is organized by feature teams, of which there are about 35, each containing 25 to 40 developers.

"Many of the teams listed below describe features or areas that you are familiar with or that you can probably figure out based on the name," he said. "As we post more, team members will identify themselves as part of these teams."

Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Rumors that Microsoft was developing an app store for Windows have been around for more than a year. Based on a series of Windows 8 documents leaked June 2010, Microsoft has reportedly been eager to match Apple at its own game by offering its own dedicated app store.

An app store appeared in a demonstration of Windows 8 that Sinofsky gave at the All Things Digital D9 conference in late June. Included in the start-up menu tiles was a direct link to a Microsoft Store, suggesting that Microsoft was working it own version of an online application store, similar to Apple's App Store.

The company has also been working hard to keep Apple from winning a U.S. trademark for the phrase App Store. Microsoft argues the phrase is too generic to register and would restrict competitors' ability to use of the term to describe their own services.

Microsoft has not officially announced when the new OS would be released, but CEO Steve Ballmer said in May that the new OS would reach consumers in 2012, although the company later said Ballmer misspoke. In June, Vice President Dan'l Lewin hinted that Windows 8 would launch during the fall of 2012.

Originally posted at News - Microsoft