If you use an alternative web browser on Windows 7, or use multiple browsers like I do, you know there's a game that needs to be played where each browser will continually prompt you about it not being the default browser. And you can choose to make that browser the default or tell it to stop bothering you.
At long last, Mozilla has managed to calculate how many Firefox users have at least one add-on installed: 85%. It gets better, though: the average Firefox user has no less than 5 add-ons installed — but considering over 2.5 billion add-ons have been downloaded in the last 5 years, that's not all that surprising. In total, 580 million add-ons are used every day by the Firefox user base.
Opera Software today set loose the beta of its Opera 11.10 browser, codenamed "Barracuda". Barracuda inherits the streamlined design of its forebears, while its ongoing evolution has resulted in smarter features and faster performance. Download it today for Windows, Mac and Linux computers from www.opera.com/browser/next/.
There is no computer program used as often as a Web browser. Yet too many users never give the browser any thought, spending years with the default program installed on a once-new computer.
The browser wars are back, not least due to hectic and ever shorter release schedules, just about every other week there seems to be some new build promising that it's the faster way to get around online.
October has come and gone, so Microsoft is back with its monthly evaluation of how well Internet Explorer is doing in the market. As with past months, the same general themes repeat again in October: While overall IE share is down a bit, share of IE 9, particularly on Windows 7, is up. As always, the commentary is based on numbers provided by NetApplications.
While Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is gaining use against other browsers on Windows 7, IE and Mozilla Firefox are both losing ground to Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari in the broader browser wars, according to the latest numbers from Net Applications.
In the battle for web browser supremacy, two key aspects have become increasingly important in the past couple of years: performance and security. That has a lot to do with the arrival of Google Chrome, with its burly V8 JavaScript engine. V8 tore up browser benchmarks and threw down the gauntlet, and competitors — even stodgy, old Microsoft — have since responded with greatly improved performance in their recent browser releases.
A new version of Google's JavaScript rendering engine and security fixes land in Google Chrome 14.0.794.0 dev today, available for download for Windows, Mac, Linux. The latest rough version of the browser improves secure HTTP support in several ways, updates the V8 JavaScript engine to version 3.4.3.0, and tightens security when installing Web apps from the Chrome Web Store.
Was it only a few weeks ago, that we were looking at the latest crop of Web browsers? Why, yes, yes it was, but now Google has released yet another newer, faster, better, and more feature-full version of its Chrome Web browser: Chrome 11.
Google's Chrome contains a critical vulnerability that under certain circumstances allows attackers to plant malware on a Windows PC, a security company said last week.
StatCounter data suggests that, on a global basis, the number of people using Chrome exceeded those who were using Firefox last Sunday. Chrome beat Firefox with a market share of 26.22% versus 26.16%. It's not much and it was just one day, but it is a significant event as Chrome has caught up with Firefox on weekend days.
On personal computers, Chrome rose from 15.5 percent of global usage in August to 16.2 percent in September, according to Net Applications, whose Web-based analytics tools monitor usage. Chrome trails Internet Explorer, which dropped from 55.3 percent to 54.4 percent, and Firefox, which dipped from 22.6 percent to 22.5 percent. Safari rose from 4.6 percent to 5.0 percent, and Opera was flat at 1.7 percent.
My CNET colleague Stephen Shankland helpfully points out this morning that Google's Chrome browser is making headway in the browser scrum, increasing from 12.5 percent in May 2011 to 13.1 percent in June, according to figures from NetMarketShare.
Cocoon is a brilliant idea — and like most sparks of brilliance, it's also simple. Fundamentally, Cocoon is a browser add-on for Firefox that shoehorns all of your surfing traffic through an SSL-encrypted tunnel. Unlike VPNs and free proxies, there's no messy configuration — you just install an add-on, type in your password, and voila: safe and secure browsing. The original plan, after graduating from beta testing, was to charge $55 per year for the service, but Cocoon has now announced that it will be a free service.
Although Mozilla will urge users to stick with Firefox's rapid release schedule, there's nothing in a current proposal to prevent them from adopting the much slower tempo meant for enterprises.
A security researcher has discovered a vulnerability in all versions of Internet Explorer, including IE9, on all versions of Windows. This vulnerability allows hackers to steal login information for any sites requiring passwords. The theft of one's credentials is achieved by taking advantage of a flaw in how Internet Explorer handles cookies. While it sounds alarming at first glance, this vulnerability does require a fair amount of interaction from a user for it to be successful - thus being another example of social engineering.
Many moons ago, actually August 31 2006, a website called crashie.com was launched. The purpose of the website was to, as you can guess by its name, crash IE. The idea was simple, a single line of code would cause most versions of IE7 and earlier to crash which forced you to use an alternative browser to view the sites content.
CreNova Technology, supplier to worldwide top-tier OEMs and operators, has implemented an Opera-based HbbTV retail strategy across Europe. CreNova is offering set-top boxes that will enable consumers to access a range of advanced services, including interactive TV advertising, video on demand (VOD) and catch-up TV. CreNova bills its set-top boxes as offering a unique, modular system design that allows them to be tailored to meet individual customer requirements.
The hacker who breached the DigiNotar certificate authority has come out, or at least claimed to. He appears to be the same hacker who breached Comodo, another CA, several months ago. (Hat tip to F-Secure.) "COMODOHACKER" seems to have a problem with the Dutch government.
Scammers are attempting to trick Firefox users into downloading backdoored software via spam emails that supposedly advertise an "update" to the open-source browser.
Firefox tab features slated for the upcoming version may not be available until the following iteration, upsetting some fans who could ditch the web browser and use a competitor's instead -- a development that would be good news for Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.
Firefox 8, which only just appeared on the Nightly channel, is already 20% faster than Firefox 5 in almost every metric: start up, session restore, first paint, JavaScript execution, and even 2D canvas and 3D WebGL rendering. The memory footprint of Firefox 7 (and thus 8) has also been drastically reduced, along with much-needed improvements to garbage collection.
Mozilla isn't officially breaking the seal on Firefox 6 until tomorrow, but the code for the latest iteration of its popular open source browser is already available online.
Mozilla has some big plans for future versions of Firefox, including Internet Explorer 9-style dynamic jump lists, new sharing capabilities, identity management, and the end of the home button.
Firefox 5 is out now for Windows, Linux and Android. Aside from a new look, there is supposed to be a bunch of cool new stuff in the latest version so grab it if you want it, try it if you haven't!
The Firefox developers have been busy working on a couple of new features that are real game-changers for power users. Read on as Jack Wallen explains why he is on the cusp of jumping ship from Chrome to Firefox.
Bill Detwiler overcomes two problems installing Firefox 4—Cisco AnyConnect stops the Firefox installation and corrupt files prevent extensions from installing.
Mozilla Firefox is a web browser developed by the Mozilla Corporation and a large community of external contributors. 3 step guide :download, install and try ! For free ! I'm sure you will like it.
A handful of former Softies who worked on the Microsoft Internet Explorer team have launched a company that is tackling the IE 6 migration problem faced by many businesses.
Google has updated its popular open-source browser Chrome to version 12, introducing a number of notable features. Of most importance is a new extension to the Safe Browsing feature, which now screens downloaded files for known malware in addition to warning against potentially malicious or phishing websites.
A special version of Opera Mini for Vodafone is available for Russian MTS mobile operator subscribers who can now get one-click access to a wide range of their favorite web resources.
Google patched 30 vulnerabilities in Chrome today, paying out the third-highest bounty total ever for the bugs that outsiders filed with its security team.
Google on Tuesday patched several vulnerabilities in Chrome, including two a French security company said could be used to bypass the browser's anti-exploit technology.
Google's rapid release cycle for its Chrome Web browser is continuing to move forward. Google is now out with Chrome 11.0.696.57, the third major browser release for Google in 2011, following Chrome 9 in February and Chrome 10 in March.
Google has announced the release of Chrome 16.0.912.63 to the Stable Channel for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame. And as you may know if you've been following beta developments, this release includes one particularly interesting new feature in the ability to create multiple profiles for a single instance of Chrome.
Google on Friday patched 32 vulnerabilities in Chrome, paying more than $14,000 in bug bounties as it also upgraded the stable edition of the browser to version 14.
The company behind the free and popular Firefox web browser announced today that it had secured a new three year agreement with Google. The new arrangement will allow Google to remain the default search engine for Firefox during that time period. The financial specfics of the new deal were not revealed.
Google has release another Chrome browser point update to fix multiple critical security vulnerabilities that affect Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome Frame users.
Following news that Chrome has surpassed Firefox in market share in November, there have been rumors that Google may not extend a contract with Mozilla, which provides the lion's share of Mozilla's revenue.
Google caused quite a ruckus last year when they announced that they were dropping support for Internet Explorer 6. Even Microsoft has supported the move away from IE6, due to the various issues that brings with it - security being a primary concern.
There was talk a few months back of a compact mode in Chrome that would turn the URL bar into a contextual element. Now it's seeping into early builds of Chrome 13. Here's how it works:
Whenever we write a glowing story about Firefox or Mozilla, the ExtremeTech postbag has a tendency to fill up with letters and missives from concerned readers who are worried about Mozilla's close ties with Google. Almost the entirety of Mozilla's income — 97% of $104 million — arrives in the form of royalties from the Firefox search box, and the lion's share (86%, $85 million) of those royalties are paid by the default search engine: Google.
Bill Detwiler shows you how to prevent Windows Update from marking Internet Explore 9 as an important update using Microsoft's free Internet Explorer 9 Blocker Toolkit.
We've long sung the praises of Google's site-specific searches, but unless you create a bookmark with a keyword, Firefox's awesomebar doesn't like the site: operator. Reader ri59 shows us how to make it work.
Internet Explorer 9 has a lot of cool new features. "Pinned sites" lets you create site-specific browsers on your Windows 7 desktop. Pinned sites by default recolor IE9's Aero glass-style interface based on the color schemes in the site's favicon, which is a neat little trick, and use the site's favicon as the Windows 7 taskbar icon.
Microsoft is fully embracing HTML 5 and it is encouraging developers to start working with the new technology. Microsoft has even put together an IE 10 developers guide which you can read about here.
IE9 left no doubt that Microsoft understood the importance of supporting modern Web standards. But IE10, updated yesterday with the third platform preview, is the vehicle delivering much of that support.
According to California-based Net Applications, one of a handful of companies that regularly publishes browser usage data, IE lost eight-tenths of a percentage point of share in April, falling to 55.1%, a new low for Microsoft.
Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 9 four weeks ago. Since then, I've been using it steadily, and I've also been fielding a steady stream of questions from readers. Here are the answers to the questions I hear most often.
Microsoft continues to promote the use of its Internet Explorer 9 web browser ahead of others. In its newest IE blog post the company showed that with PCs that are running Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9 is now just barely above Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox browser in usage, with IE 9 now being used by just under 25 percent of people with Windows 7 PCs worldwide.
Last night here at SxSW, Microsoft officially rolled out the shipping version of Internet Explorer 9. It's available here for download, and very much worth checking out if you use Windows 7 (or, gasp, Vista). More thoughts soon, but it's the best version of IE in years—and its release means that every major Web browser is a solid product. (In fact, in many ways they're remarkably similar: Everyone's settled on nearly identical browsers.)
Now that Microsoft has finally made Internet Explorer 9 available to the masses, it's time for a BIG browser benchmark where we take the leading browsers and pit them against four of the toughest benchmark tests available to see which is the tortoise, and which is the hare.
In a posting over at the Exploring IE web blog, Ryan Gavin the General Manager for Internet Explorer Business and Marketing, has stated that from January onward, Microsoft will automatically update older Internet Explorer versions on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.
Opera Software today announced that InOutTV, the largest Over-the-Top operator in Spain, has chosen the Opera browser for its television platform. This opens the door for advanced web technologies adoption as a seamless means to bring content to millions of end users running Opera on their TVs.
Since I've written about how much faster 32-bit Internet Explorer (IE) 9 is than 64-bit IE 9, and all other browsers, on Windows 7, I've been buried by people running 64-bit Windows, and one poor soul who was still running 64-bit Vista, wanting to know how to install 32-bit IE 9 on their 64-bit Windows 7 systems. It's actually both quite easy and a bit confusing, so here's how to do it and a little of the back story.
Moments ago, Microsoft released Platform Preview 2 of Internet Explorer 10. The most notable additions are the inclusion of a number of HTML5-related features: drag-and-drop, web workers, and sandbox. On the CSS3 side of things, positioned floats and gradients have now joined the fray.
One of the new neat features coming to Internet Explorer 10 is the first browser-based implementation of auto-correct. As the Internet Explorer blog points out, this will complement the system-wide spell check to be offered to all applications running in Windows 8, in addition to built-in spell check for IE10 on Windows 7.
Windows 8 will come with Internet Explorer 10, the next version of Microsoft's web browser. As we have reported before, IE 10 will allow users to choose from either a standard web browser interface or the touch screen-based Metro interface. But another important element of IE 10 is that its Metro interface won't be using plug-in programs, such as Abobe's Flash, that run on many web sites.
Late yesterday, Microsoft unveiled the new Windows 8 user interface -- or rather, the new Start Menu, and a hint of what Windows 8 apps will look and feel like. The new Start Menu -- or home screen -- is tiled, like Windows Phone 7 (WP7), while apps themselves look like a smooth amalgam of the Windows 7 and WP7-Metro design paradigms. Like Windows 7, apps can be Aero Snapped to the sides of the screen, and an Aero Flip-like interface lets you switch between running apps with a flick of the thumb. Like Windows Phone 7, the Windows 8 home screen is made up of Live Tiles, which are an awesome -- and fully customizable -- innovation that turn your home screen into a web-connected, regularly-updated portal to your email, social networks, calendar, and most-used apps -- or widgets that show the latest weather, news, and YouTube's videos.. The Windows 8 home screen, put simply, is the classic Start Menu, desktop, and Windows 7 taskbar all rolled into one.
18 months ago, Microsoft president Steven Sinofsky demonstrated a very early version of the company's next web browser, Internet Explorer 9, establishing right way the product's three core tenets: Performance, interoperability standards, and hardware acceleration. Sinofsky and company also promised they would develop IE 9 at a faster pace than with previous versions, answering criticisms that Microsoft couldn't move as quickly as its competition.
The browser market share stats for June are out from Net Applications. Overall, the news is not all that rosy for Microsoft as Internet Explorer usage overall continues to erode. But, if you view the data through Redmond-colored glasses the news is actually pretty positive.
The new Web browser features a lot of interesting new tools such as taskbar shortcuts and dynamic jumplists, extensive HTML 5 support, hardware acceleration for improved graphics performance, and has a streamlined interface that puts more focus on the Web page and less on the browser window.
At the beginning of this month we saw a fascinating video on the Windows operating system being upgraded from the initial 1.0 version right through to the current Windows 7. For the most part it worked without a problem, and Microsoft has to be commended for that.
First of the month means fresh browser usage data from NetApplications. Despite all the hoopla about IE9, Internet Explorer's share, as measured in usage, declined (again) in June -- to 53.68 percent from 54.27 percent in May and 55.11 percent in April. Internet Explorer 9 launched in March.
With Net Applications publishing its September 2011 web browser market share usage share numbers, Microsoft is once again framing the discussion around the gains it is making getting its most modern browser, Internet Explorer 9, deployed to its most modern OS, Windows 7. In a similar vein, the software giant is touting that usage of the aging and insecure IE 6 browser has once again dropped significantly.
A BBC investigation has revealed that a widely cited survey claiming Internet Explorer users had lower IQs than people using other web browsers was a hoax.
Internet Explorer may not be everyone's favorite browser of choice, but Microsoft may be disheartened to hear that Microsoft's once-great browser is in further decline. Internet Explorer's global share of the market (Mobile and desktop browsing) has dropped below 50 percent for the first time. This latest data comes from information received last month. The data comes courtesy of Net Applications and Ars Technica. The pie charts of last month's desktop browser market share and combined market share are contained below.
Ed Bott's March 22nd ZDNET post "Why Internet Explorer will survive and Firefox won't" answers the question yes. "So long, Firefox. It was nice to know you," he writes about the browser's future. Well, I don't agree with that. But Bott makes another prediction that rings right. If so, the new browser wars will make the 1990s skirmish between Microsoft and Netscape look like kids fighting with sticks.
It happened again today and it's getting tiresome. I'm referring to browser auto-refreshes. The folks at Mozilla and all the other browser vendors have got to do something about this immediately. It kills your entire system as it steals cycles in the background. Everyone has noticed what I am about to explain. It needs fixing, and I do have a solution. But bear with me.
At the CTIA Wireless show kicking off next week, Opera enters the stage with launching brand new versions of the world's most popular mobile browsers, Opera Mini 6 and Opera Mobile 11. All new, tablets join the performance to showcase smooth browsing with a sparkling new interface that is sure to knock your socks off.
Every time I write about Internet Explorer, it's usually a matter of minutes—sometimes even seconds—until someone in the Talkback section proclaims, smugly, that they've switched to Google Chrome or Firefox and are therefore immune from malware attacks.
Users of Microsoft Security Essentials and Google Chrome have been reporting a very unusual issue with their anti-virus program of choice. According to a thread originating on the official Google Chrome support forum, the browser is being identified as a trojan. The first post about the issue was made at 8:02AM, with the following being a direct quote from the thread:
Windows 8 will include a version of Internet Explorer 10 that uses Microsoft's "Metro" touch interface, and this new-age browser will not allow plugins — at all. The move is yet another blow to Adobe Flash, which is famously banned from Apple's iPhone and iPad.
Just like it did a year ago, Microsoft is using its Mix designer/developer show in Las Vegas this week to launch the first preview build of the next version of Internet Explorer (IE).
Microsoft on Monday announced the global availability of Internet Explorer (IE) 9, its next-generation web browser for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. With more than 40 million downloads during its year-long pre-release phase, IE 9 was Microsoft's most downloaded browser beta of all time. Now, the software giant hopes the final release can reverse IE's years-long usage-share slide.
Microsoft said today that it is looking into a report of a critical vulnerability in Windows 7 that could be used to take over the computer if a user opened a malicious Web page using Apple's Safari browser.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) again lost ground to Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome last month, even as the company launched its newest browser, Web metrics data showed today.
Known in the past for taking a soft touch when it comes to forcing users to update their browsers, Microsoft's pulling off the kid gloves and going for a bullet to the head.
Microsoft reports this weekend that its recently-released Internet Explorer 9 web browser continues to race up the usage share charts, achieving almost 10 percent share for Windows 7 users in April. (The company cites market research from NetApplications.)
Microsoft today revealed that Internet Explorer 9 is now used by over 20 percent of all Windows 7 users, according to data from Net Applications. In the US, it's even higher: IE 9 is used by over 28 percent of all Windows 7 users.
Firefox add-ons are a great way to add features and improve security in Mozilla's browser, but they can seriously slow performance too. Now Mozilla is taking action against those speed-killing extensions.
Over the last couple of years, Mozilla Labs has been fervently working on features that empower both Firefox and the web in general. Mozilla doesn't have to concern itself with commercial ties or conflicts of interest — it doesn't have worry about whether a new feature will impact the viability of its other products, like Microsoft and Google with their browsers. As far as Mozilla is concerned, its only real interest is in the long-term freedom and openness of the web, and thus your freedom, privacy, and security on the web as well. Which leads us neatly onto BrowserID, where effectively your web browser becomes you.
In the last year, the United States government has seized approximately 120 domains suspected of harbouring piracy activities. Who requested the takedowns? The media industries of the United States of course - the RIAA and MPAA. Some of the domains belonged to site owners outside of the United States. To counter this move, a site named MAFIAAFire.com was setup - MAFIAA being the Music and Film Industry Association of America. The site allows users to be automatically redirected to a domain's original IP instead of the seized domain by installing extensions for browsers. The site's basis was that Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the American government does not do a diligent job of doing background checks on which sites they're pulling, choosing instead to act on the advice of say the media industries first.
Mozilla's identity team has launched a new decentralized identity system aimed at replacing ad-hoc application-level authentication based on site-specific user-names and passwords.
It has been a momentous year for Mozilla and its Firefox and Thunderbird products. Last March, Mozilla released Firefox 4 as part of a new rapid-release cycle, adding Thunderbird to the same cycle shortly thereafter, which ensured a brand new version number would appear every six weeks or so.
The Mozilla Foundation, the developer of the Firefox Web browser and an organization charged with defending openness on the Web, plans to report today that its revenue increased 18 percent from $104 million in 2009 to $123 million in 2010.
Microsoft released its fourth "platform preview" of Internet Explorer 10 today, adding a collection of new features to what's shaping up to be a surprisingly feisty browser.
Opera has updated its Opera Next browser, which contains the latest developmental (and unstable) build of Opera to version 12.00. This is a pre-alpha release, and contains only a series of minor bug fixes and stability improvements, with "juicy and fresh stuff" promised for future releases.
Opera Software on Tuesday released Opera 11.6, an interim build to tide over users while the company continues to work on Version 12 and its hardware acceleration.
Almost 1.2 million stormtroopers, droids and janitors can fit into a fully operational Death Star. Nearly 11 million people follow Lady Gaga on Twitter. Now, Opera aims to put those numbers to shame with the number of downloads for its newest browser.
Opera 11.50, codenamed "Swordfish," wraps up a fast two-month public development cycle worthy of its codename with a new release today. The new version of the desktop browser is now available for Windows, Mac OS X, and various flavours of Linux.
Despite being the most widely-used mobile browser on the planet, Opera still fights for street cred on the desktop — where it typically pulls up fourth or fifth in the rankings. In some places, like Russia, Opera has gained a strong foothold. Getting a user to change browsers is no small task, however, but Opera 11.50 makes a strong case for itself.
Opera has released the final version of its popular alternative web browser for Windows, Mac and Linux, Opera 11.50. Codenamed "Swordfish", this latest release actually debuted yesterday as Release Candidate 5, but was quickly updated to become a final release.
Opera has released a new incarnation of its desktop browser — Opera 11.10, aka Barracuda — improving the speed of its Turbo traffic-compression service and expanding its SpeedDial interface to provide quick access to an unlimited number of your favorite sites.
A significant update to the Opera browser's Speed Dial feature launched today in Opera 11.50 alpha (download), along with Opera Next, which includes a mechanism that makes it easier for Opera fans to automatically download under-construction builds of the browser. Opera Next will install separately and alongside the "stable" release of Opera, sporting a silver Opera logo much like Google Chrome Canary is visually distinct from the other versions of Chrome with its all-yellow icon.
Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple — Opera today joined the ranks of those web giants as the company unveiled the most expensive ad ever created by the company to promote the launch of the Opera 11.10 browser. Opera spared little expense to showcase a major overhaul of the Opera Turbo feature, the crowning achievement in the new version.
Opera Software today announced its partnership with leading Hispanic portal Terra to offer premium content to the users of the Opera Mini mobile browser and the Opera desktop browser all over Latin America.
Opera Software and one of Brazil's top portals, Internet Group do Brasil (iG) announced a partnership today to offer premium content to Brazilian users of the Opera Mini mobile browser and the Opera desktop browser.
Lars Boilesen, who took over as CEO from von Tetzchner early last year, will continue to lead the company. Since Boilesen took over, von Tetzchner had been working at Opera full time as a strategic adviser.
Opera Software today announced a new partnership with Humax, the global set-top-box manufacturer. With this partnership, Opera Software will provide licenses for the Opera Devices SDK (Software Development Tool Kit) on Humax's Hybrid set-top box (STB) including HbbTV.
This week, the Opera web browser became the first non-native browser made available in Apple's Mac App Store, but only for those over seventeen years of age. Jan Standal, VP of Desktop Products for Opera Software, is surprised.
Opera Software today tinkered in its giant statistics machine and found that Opera Mini reached 100 million monthly users in March and two billion daily page views — new peaks for the world's most used mobile browser.
Grab the nearest couch! At the IP&TV World Forum this week, Opera Software will unveil a new version of its embeddable browser engine for TVs, so, in addition to watching your favorite shows, you can also browse the websites to your favorite shows and a host of rich associated web applications directly on your TV.
In this edition of the Windows Desktop Report, Greg Shultz shows you how to use the Internet Explorer 9 Blocker Toolkit to prevent the automatic delivery of Internet Explorer 9 on a Windows 7 system.
This is the portable version of Google Chrome, called Chromium. All you have to do is unpack and run and all program settings are saved in "Chrome" folder while user settings go in "Profile" folder.
According to Web analytics group Net Applications, Apple's Safari Web browser posted an 8.1 percent jump in market share for the month of July -- the largest one-month increase for that browser. Apple's browser passed Mozilla's browser and Microsoft's newest version of Internet Explorer to hold second place. Net Applications reported Safari 5 use at 11.2 percent, Internet Explorer 9 use at 11.0 percent, while Firefox 5 took fourth place at 9.0 percent use.
Even by the standards of alpha browsers, Internet Explorer 10's Platform Preview is rather lacking in features. There's no toolbar, no sidebar, no security, no real configuration options, and it's little more than a window for browsing Microsoft's latest HTML5 demos.
By the time you read this, Microsoft will have released its latest web browser, Internet Explorer 9, to an adoring public. IE 9 is a truly advanced browser, with useful and exciting new features for end users that place a special emphasis on the websites they visit. And it even has some important security enhancements, such as tracking protection and an ActiveX filter that will be welcome in many business environments.
Just three weeks ago, we kicked off the Year of the Rabbit with a speedy Chrome beta. Today, we're excited to bring these speed improvements and more to everyone using Chrome. With today's stable release, even your most complex web apps will run more quickly and responsively in the browser. (For the curious, this boost corresponds to a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance on the V8 benchmark suite.)
Jack Wallen pulls no punches with his thoughts on the current release of Firefox. Will bugs and bloat bring the flagship open source browser to a screaming halt?
When Microsoft first introduced Internet Explorer 9 at PDC in November 2009, it didn't show much. A few benchmarks, some talk about the technologies that the browser would use, and a little information about the direction that development would take. But it was a significant event nonetheless. After years of playing catch-up—the stopgap Internet Explorer 7 added tab support, and then the solid Internet Explorer 8, which offered little in the way of support for new Web innovations—Microsoft was starting to position its browser not only as good, but able to take on the competition and be best in class.
You'll have to wait a year for the real thing, but in the meantime, if you want a dash of Windows 8, here's a little sustenance for you. A clever Czech Web programmer/designer named Lubomír Krupa has come up with a way to give your browser the tiled Windows 8 Metro UI look. Of course, this tip won't give you the full Windows 8 tile functionality—it won't update the current weather or stock prices in tiles, but if you crave the Metro look, it's a start. Krupa offers the customization under the MIT license, which means it's free to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell, as long as the copyright info stays intact.
It this test, we did a performance benchmark of the most popular web browsers. We did the comparison on one of lower-end processors used in laptops, the AMD E-450.
Like most people, I'm a big fan of anything that will save time. I find that there are many shortcuts to assist us in the way we interact with our computers that will help us work more efficiently.
Yes, Silverlight was vulnerable to the same DoS issue that WebGL suffered from. Yes, there are developers from Google, Mozilla, and Opera that are damning the Internet Explorer team's decision to shun WebGL. Yes, there's even a Microsoft employee who was brave enough to go on the record about his own company's silliness — and yes, Microsoft probably has a conflict of interest with DirectX. But these esteemed, expert developers are all missing the point: it isn't about faulty drivers, and it isn't about patching vulnerabilities as they're discovered. It isn't even about Microsoft taking a dump on open web technologies. It is, in fact, all about WebGL being a fundamentally flawed specification.
In the most recent stable build of Google Chrome (version 14, if you're keeping track) an exciting and slightly alien feature has been added: Native Client, or NaCl (sodium chloride, salt) for short. Native Client has been coming down the pipe for over a year in various alpha and beta forms, but the fact that it has finally emerged in a consumer-facing version of Chrome could announce a shift in direction for Google.
Google has released a new version of Chrome, version 10. If you're already using Chrome, you probably have the updated version and didn't even realize it. Why? Because it updates itself.
Google's Chrome web browser has made significantly usage inroads in the past year, and some are predicting that it could actually surpass usage in Mozilla's Firefox browser by the beginning of 2012. But not if Microsoft can help it: The software giant's free antivirus solution, Security Essentials, was flagging Chrome as malware and even deleting it from users' PCs late last week. It was like an early Christmas present for Mozilla.