Just days after a former employee blasted Mozilla for its frequent updates, the company on Tuesday shipped Firefox 14, patching 18 vulnerabilities and adding automatic encryption of searches passed to Google's search engine. The upgrade also lets users set an option that loads plug-ins - such as Adobe's Flash Player or Oracle's Java - only after approval, an additional security measure that may prevent stop some attacks.

Google has taken a new step to significantly expand what Web apps can do - and thus also lend new muscle to its Chrome browser, Chrome OS browser-based operating system, and Chrome Web Store for finding and buying Web apps. This week, Google released a new developer version of Chrome 22 that by default enables a technology called Chrome packaged apps.

OS X Leopard users are about to have yet another reason to spring for an upgrade — especially if they're hooked on Google's Chrome browser. The Chrome team wrote on Monday that Chrome will soon drop support for OS X 10.5 and that future versions will only be available for Snow Leopard (10.6) or higher on the Mac. The version of Chrome that will do this will be Chrome 22, which has just been seeded into the dev channel for Mac, Windows, Linux, and Chrome Frame users.

Opera users who are administrating a blog on Blogger, Google’s free blog hosting service, receive warning notifications as of lately that the browser is no longer supported by the service. Google notes that “parts of Blogger will not work” and that users may experience problems on the site because of the browser that they are using. A test in Firefox and Internet Explorer reveal no such notification on the site or the admin dashboard.

Google took the wraps off of Chrome for the iPhone and iPad, complete with the omnibar that allows for instant searches, pre-fetching pages, and swipe gestures to manage and close tabs, all on your iPhone or iPad. Hot on the heels of Chrome for Android coming out of beta, Chrome for the iPhone and iPad both sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and even saved passwords for web pages with other instances of Chrome, including desktop and Android devices. Chrome for iOS also supports incognito mode for private browsing.

Mozilla last week announced big things coming to Firefox for Android in a Twitter message without revealing too much about what they meant by that. Yesterday, Mozilla has released the next version of Firefox for Android that is faster and more powerful than the previously available app for the operating system. Firefox for Android has been redesigned to improve the browser’s performance on Android devices. According to Mozilla, this makes the browser faster than the stock browsers that ship with android phones.

Privacy-conscious users have sounded the alarm after it emerged the New Tab thumbnail feature in Firefox 13 is taking snapshots of the user's HTTPS session content. Consumers discovered the feature after opening a new tab only to be "greeted by my earlier online banking and webmail sessions complete with account numbers, balances, subject lines etc. This content is behind a secure login for a reason, they said.

Mozilla added a new app to its Webmaker suite today, with the launch of Thimble — a tool designed to simplify website creation. Thimble, in its most basic form, is a visual HTML editor and tutorial that allows users to create and preview sites in real-time, using side-by-side editor and output panels. The app also alerts users whenever they make a coding error, providing simple explanations that underscore its focus on HTML novices, rather than veterans.

Mozilla is developing a new Web browser to challenge Safari on Apple's iPad. The organization behind the Firefox desktop Web browser is working on a new mobile browser called "Junior," according to a video presentation delivered by company's Product Design Strategy team. Junior is an iPad browser that makes browsing more fun, more ergonomic and re-thinks browser user experience from the ground up, the company said on an intro page to the presentation.

For those of you who love to customize your desktop apps down to every minute detail, then you’ll probably be interested in the latest update to the Opera browser. Most obviously, the latest upgrade focuses on aesthetics. Opera is adding Themes to the mix, allowing users to add a “lightweight” skin and design to the browser window. Lightweight is the keyword as often times these kinds of graphic-heavy additions can slow load times considerably, making the user experience frustrating.