Microsoft’s IE 9 could soon be the third most popular web browser, in spite of the fact that it’s only available on Windows 7 and Vista.

According to NetApplications figures for browser market shares, published on 1st January, IE9 now has 11.48% of the global market, and is closing in on second-placed Firefox 8, which has 12.28%. However, IE8 remains the market leader, with a 27.43% market share, as measured by logging visits to web sites by personal computers.

The December rankings are skewed because Google is currently upgrading users from version 15 (8.71%) to version 16 (7.07%) of its Chrome browser. Since Google more or less forces upgrades, Chrome 16 should soon have a market share of 16+ percent putting it in second place, ahead of both IE9 and Firefox 8.

Microsoft took a big risk by not developing a version of IE9 for the decade-old Windows XP operating system, which still has a large market share. XP users could easily defect to Chrome or Mozilla Firefox instead of upgrading to Windows 7. However, Microsoft decided to bet on the rapid development of IE9, IE10 and future versions rather than invest in XP, which is clearly in terminal decline.

Source: ZDNet

Google Chrome has now captured some 25.7% of web traffic. Firefox now slightly lags behind with a 25.2% share of the worldwide market.

Measuring such things online is an inexact science, and other analysts offer slightly different assessments. But all agree on the trends, prompting questions over Firefox’s chances of keeping pace with two fiercely competitive commercial rivals.

Google’s only remaining superior in market share terms is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the leader of the browser pack now on 40.6%.

When Google released Chrome in late 2008, Mozilla’s Firefox was the only serious rival to Internet Explorer, and for a year that remained true. Firefox’s market share peaked around November 2009, when more than 32% of web traffic came from its users. Since then the trend has been downwards, at an ever accelerating speed.

The force behind Firefox’s decline is clear enough. Soon after its peak, Google began aggressively promoting Chrome, which had mainly been used by only the early adopters and developers. Its alleged speed advantage was advertised on billboards and television, and crucially, users of Google’s dominant web search engine were encouraged to download and use it.

Google Chrome has finally overtaken Mozilla Firefox to become the second most popular web browser in the world, according to new statistics.

Chrome has only been available for three years, but now has a 25.7% share of the global market, according to StatCounter, compared to Firefox’s 25.2%.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains way out in front with a share of 40.6%, but it’s expected that Chrome will continue to close the gap.

“We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally,” said Aodhan Cullen, chief executive of StatCounter. “Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also.”

Chrome became the number two browser in Britain in August, although it has a larger gap to close on Internet Explorer than the global average. Some 42.8% of Britons online currently use Microsoft’s browser, according to StatCounter, compared to 45% in August.

Performance and improved memory use were the goals of Firefox 7, which arrived on schedule on Tuesday from Mozilla.

The wide-release version of Firefox 7 brings changes to the majority of Firefox users that have been available on the beta and Aurora channels for some time. These include claims of significant gains in reducing memory use, “often 20-percent to 30-percent less, and sometimes as much as 50-percent less”, a company representative wrote in a blog post based on work by Firefox developer Nicholas Nethercote.

These performance gains are the first public results of an internal Mozilla project called MemShrink, which, as the name implies, is about reducing the browser’s system impact.

Mozilla cited several specific areas of improvement in Firefox 7, including when the browser is kept open for long periods of time, when multiple tabs are open at once, and when the browser is used concurrently with other programs that also use a lot of memory. The company also noted that MemShrink was successful in part because of the rapid-release cycle that a vocal minority of Firefox users have been criticising.

Other changes in Firefox 7 for desktops include a new version of hardware-accelerated Canvas for faster HTML5 games and animations, and improvements for Web developers. These include support for the W3C navigation timing API, which allows developers to measure page load time and site navigation against factors like bandwidth, and a new set of Firefox tools for developers.

Firefox 7 for Android includes a full list of changes, including the ability to select text in a Web page for copying and pasting. Long-tap on a site, and the Android-style drag handles will appear. There’s a new Quit feature under Preferences/More to force an exit from the browser, the WebSocket API now works on Firefox for mobile devices, and image rendering has been improved on Tegra-powered tablets and phones. The browser also now auto-detects your system default language if it’s supported, and a new Preferences option enables you to change the language displayed in the browser on-demand.

Source: CNET

The Firefox 6 browser was launched in beta form on 8 July and is now scheduled for general release on Tuesday 16 August.

Changes in Firefox 6 are largely under the bonnet but include extended CSS and HTML 5 support, such as the ability to create an HTML 5 progress bar and better display for web sites using iframes. It also enables WebSocket support – previously disabled due to security concerns – and adds a plug-in compatibility checker to the add-ons manager. It also brings a new ‘Data Management Window’ to give users more control over which websites have access to personal information such as cookies, passwords and location information. It is accessible by typing ‘about:permissions’ in the address bar.

The release on Tuesday also coincides with the launch of the Firefox 7 beta as Mozilla continues on its accelerated rolling release schedule.

Some enterprise users of Firefox have complained that the fast-paced releases make it impossible to deploy in large environments.

For future release Firefox 8, which moves to the ‘Aurora‘ channel on Tuesday, will add new features which provide extra security from unwanted or malicious add-ons being added to the browser without a users’ knowledge.

Source: ZDNet

Nearly one in four British internet users now use Google Chrome as their web browser just three years after it was launched.

It is now the second most popular browser, overtaking Mozilla’s Firefox and quickly gaining ground on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), the current market leader.

IE’s market share is still falling despite the programme being pre-installed on almost every computer sold in Britain.

According to new figures, Chrome accounts for 22 per cent of the British web market compared to 45 per cent for IE. Apple’s Safari is number four with a nine per cent share.

Chrome is also the number three browser worldwide, with one in five users preferring it, according to Statcounter, a web metrics firm.

Chrome’s growth comes on the back of Google’s domination of the search engine market, which it is led for years.

Google said Chrome’s surge in popularity could be explained by its speed, security and a new national advertising campaign. Chrome was the first Google product ever advertised on British television.

Lars Bak, the Google engineer responsible for Chrome, said the company’s aims was speed. He said users should “never be happy” with existing speed.

Source: The Telegraph

Adobe has begun putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to improving Web page design.

Today, the first bit of Adobe-written code landed in the WebKit browser engine project, an early step to try to bring magazine-style layouts to Web pages using an extension to today’s CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) technology. Adobe calls the technology CSS Regions.

The move begins fulfilling a plan Adobe announced in May to build the technology into WebKit and – if the company can persuade others to embrace it furthers Adobe’s ambition to standardize the advanced CSS layout mechanism.

WebKit is the browser engine within Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome, among others, but inclusion in the software doesn’t guarantee those browsers will adopt it. Google, however, is helping shepherd the technology, so it seems likely at least Chrome will get it, and inclusion in the main WebKit code base makes it easy for others to do so.

CSS (particularly the present CSS3 version under development) is a major frontier for more sophisticated Web pages. Recent CSS advances include downloadable fonts and animations that can move elements around a Web page, and hardware acceleration arriving in browsers is making its use faster and less battery-taxing.

Adobe’s move is notable given how important a competing technology, its own Flash Player, is to the company. Adobe argues it’s a toolmaker that offers multiple tools, but the WebKit work signifies a more active role in Web technology. The WebKit contribution shows it’s putting a priority on improving Web publishing’s foundations.

For those who don’t want to wait for all the patches to be approved in WebKit, Adobe makes a custom version of WebKit available on Adobe Labs for those who want to try CSS Regions and its close cousin, CSS Exclusions.

Source: ZDNet

Mozilla’s new Firefox 4 browser has managed more than 6 million downloads despite being available for less than a day!

The browser beat Internet Explorer 9’s launch figures by more than double but has yet to catch up with Firefox 3, which was downloaded more than 8 million times on its first day.

Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 saw a return to form for the companies’ web browser which for many years has received poor reviews from the tech community. Firefox 4, however, appears to have set the bar even higher, bringing in faster page loading and improved privacy and security. The browser also includes WebM video and WebGL 3D graphics and, unlike Internet Explorer 9,it is compatible with Windows XP.

The new WebGL 3D will allow developers to bring more complex gaming and visualizations to the web, all of which will run within the browser.

Those who currently use Firefox can upgrade to the new browser by clicking on the help menu and selecting check for updates.

Firefox 4 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

One out of every 10 people surfing the web in December 2010 used Google’s Chrome browser, according to the latest statistics.

Chrome’s gains have come largely at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE), which has seen its usage share dropping for years. However, IE9, which embodies Microsoft’s ambition to build a cutting-edge browser once again, saw its share of the market grow from 0.4 percent in November to 0.5 percent in December, according to new statistics from Net Applications.

Mozilla’s Firefox, the second-place browser, stayed flat at about 22.8 percent, Apple’s Safari rose from 5.6 percent to 5.9 percent, and Opera was flat at about 2.2 percent. Chrome and Safari grew at the expense of IE, which dropped from 58.4 percent to 57.1 percent.

Microsoft can take consolation that its share losses have come from older versions of its browser.

IE6, an advanced browser when released nearly a decade ago but now despised among Web developers for retarding progress on the Web, dropped from 13.7 percent in November to 13.1 percent in December.

IE7 dropped from 9.5 percent to 8.8 percent.

Source: Zdnet

Google is planning to break into the business space with new admin tools for its Chrome browser.

While Chrome is slowly growing in popularity, IE still dominates, especially in businesses, large and small. IE8 has the largest piece of the business pie, with a 34.1% slice globally, while IE6 still holds 10.3%, according to Net Applications.

To battle that impressive dominance, Google has unveiled new configuration and deployment tools to make it easier for administrators to roll out Chrome across multiple business PC’s. “We’ve created an MSI installer that enables businesses who use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users,” product manager Glenn Wilson and software engineer Daniel Clifford explained in a post on the Google Enterprise blog. “We’ve also added support for managed group policy with a list of policies and a set of templates that allow administrators to easily customise browser settings to manage security and privacy,” they said.

Google also added group policy support to Chrome Frame, the plug-in that lets Chrome run applications that are still dependent on Internet Explorer. The tool could help businesses running Windows XP, as Microsoft’s next browser, IE9, won’t work on the ageing but still popular OS.

The new policy controls are only the first step, Google said. “We have some interesting ideas that we’re working on, including more policies to manage everything in the content settings and authentication protocols, and interesting new ways to deploy policy cross-platform,” said Wilson and Clifford.

Source: PC Pro

According to Microsoft, users of the new IE9 browser will get far more control over what sites can collect about their online activities.

The browser has built in tools that will let you stop a site from sharing information about what you do while you are surfing and shopping online. This will prevent them from sharing this ‘marketing’ information about you with other companies.

You will be able to create lists stating that your data may only be shared with sites that you trust.

The news comes as the US government criticises the computer industry for its slow progress on protecting user privacy.

In a blog post, Microsoft said many people did not realise that when they visit a website what they look for, view or buy there is often shared with other companies without that user’s knowledge.

In IE9, Microsoft is planning to introduce what it calls “Tracking Protection Lists” that it says will work like the “Do Not Call” lists that limit who marketing firms can cold call. The lists will be defined by users and limit the sharing of data only to those sites which a user is happy to see the information. When switched on, the system might mean that some adverts or other features do not appear when users visit sites.

Microsoft added that early versions of the tools would be included in the version of IE9 due for release in early 2011.

Let’s hope that IE9 really is the best browser that Microsoft have ever built, fully compliant with current web standards!

The latest figures for web-browser usage show a continuation of previous trends as Internet Explorer lost share to Chrome, while Firefox and Opera idled, and Safari held its ground.

Statistics for October 2010, based on Net Applications’s monitoring of millions of websites in its analytics network, show that this summer’s resurgence of Internet Explorer has faded, at least for the present. At the same time, Chrome – which is now two years old – made its dip in July look like a blip rather than a foreboding omen.

IE remains the top dog, but its usage dropped from 59.7 percent in September to 59.3 percent in October. Firefox moved down from 23 percent to 22.9 percent over the same period; Chrome grew from 8 percent to 8.5 percent; Safari stayed level at 5.3 percent; and Opera dropped from 2.4 percent to 2.3 percent.

IE8′s usage changed little from September to October, but Web developers will doubtless be gleeful that the much-loathed IE6 gave up a half a percentage point of share, sliding to 15 percent of worldwide usage.

Microsoft is feverishly working on IE9, currently available in beta and platform preview editions, and its usage reached 0.3 percent in September.

Source: CNET

The Mozilla Foundation has announced the first beta version of Firefox 4, the next generation of its cross-platform web browser.

Although there is some time before the final release of Firefox 4, the beta product is considered to be stable and safe enough for daily use.

Mozilla is aiming to sign up to 4 million users in an interactive process to shape the final release. Feedback opportunities are prominent in the user interface, with users encouraged to submit their thoughts to the developers.

The popular browser is undergoing many changes, both visible and under the hood. The Windows release has seen the most apparent refinements, with tabs moved above the address bar as well as a single Firefox button to replace the menu bar.

Universal changes include a Smart Location bar, updated add-ons manager, replacement of the bookmarks bar with a bookmarks button, support for high definition WebM video, extra privacy protection and crash protection against media plug ins.

For web developers, the main feature to embrace is the new HTML5 parser – which has full support for drag and drop, audio, video, file handling, and in-line SVG and MathML support.

Taking a leaf from the book of Chrome, the rendering of web pages is instantaneous and video sites such as YouTube load up in record time.

Source: Guardian newspaper

Google’s Chrome browser continued to carve away a share of worldwide browser usage from rivals in May, new statistics show.

Chrome rose 0.3 percentage points to 7.1 percent of share, said Net Applications, which monitors browser usage on a network of Web sites. The statistics reflect activity, not the number of people using a browser, as people load up about 160 million pages each month on sites Net Applications monitors. Because web usage is still rapidly increasing, the absolute number of people using a particular browser can increase, even if its fractional share of usage drops.

The share losses came from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dropped 0.3 percent to 59.7 percent, and Mozilla’s Firefox, which dropped 0.2 percentage points to 24.4 percent. Fourth-place Safari from Apple rose 0.1 percentage points to 4.8 percent, and Opera rose 0.1 percentage points to 2.4 percent.

The browser market has become hotly competitive with new features being built in to support new Web standards. Even Microsoft, long considered a technology laggard, is back in the game with aggressive work developing on Internet Explorer 9.

Source: CNET

Mozilla has announced the first 64-bit Firefox builds for Windows, offering an FTP site for those who want to download it, although the software is not for mainstream users yet.

The builds, announced by programmer Armen Zambrano Gasparnian on Friday, do not yet have an installer, though that work is under way. The software is still one of the very raw “nightly” builds for developers. Support for 64-bit processors is one of the planned Firefox 4 features. Mozilla hopes to release Firefox 4 by the end of November.

The transition to 64-bit computing often offers a modest computing performance boost, but the main reason for the transition is getting around the 4GB memory limit of 32-bit computing. Since relatively few applications today require that much memory – or even whatever fraction remains after the operating system and other applications claim their share – the 64-bit change for desktop computing has taken years.

Source: ZDNet

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) web browser, now accounts for less than 60% of the market, down from 95% at its peak in 2003, according to new figures.

Latest statistics, from measurement firm NetApplications, show that IE has 59.9% of the market, with Firefox gaining on it, with 24.5%.

While third-place Google Chrome’s 6.7% share of the market looks tiny by comparison it is rising sharply, up from just 1.7% this time last year.

Microsoft has gradually been losing market share, largely due to concerns over security, experts said. However, a new version of IE is now imminent and will support HTML 5.

Apple remains a key rival for Microsoft in the browser market and it has seen its Safari browser gain market share but the two rivals are united when it comes to supporting the HTML5 web standards.

Apple sees HTML5 – along with other technologies such as the h.264 standard for video – as a replacement for Flash and has been involved in a high-profile spat with Flash owners Adobe. Apple has even banned the video standard Flash on many of its products.

Source: BBC Tech News

Microsoft says a serious zero-day flaw is being actively exploited by attackers, affecting Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

The vulnerability was announced on Tuesday (9 March), the same day that Microsoft released its monthly patches, distributing two patches to address eight vulnerabilities in Windows and Microsoft Office. Microsoft ranked both patches as “important”.

Microsoft said it is investigating public reports of the flaw in IE6 and IE7, which could allow an attacker to execute malicious code remotely on a user’s system – for instance, by tricking the user into visiting a malicious web page.

The latest version of the browser, IE8, is not affected by the flaw, nor is IE5.01 Service Pack 4 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4, Microsoft said in an advisory.

The company also noted that all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail open HTML email messages in the Restricted Sites zone, meaning an attacker would not be able to carry out an attack via an email message.

The government has said its departments are free to consider any browser, and should consider open-source software including Firefox.

According to a parliamentary written answer from Cabinet Office minister Angela Smith, there is no rule that says government departments must use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, even though it is the browser most widely used within Whitehall. When asked by Francis Maude MP what the government’s policy on the installation of different web browsers is, Smith said: “Government policy regarding installation and use of web browsers is that all decisions must be in line with value-for-money requirements. “In addition, the open source, open standards, re-use strategy requires departments to consider open-source browsers such as Firefox and Opera on a level basis with proprietary browsers such as Internet Explorer,” she added in a written answer published on 24 February.

The use of Internet Explorer, particularly IE6, by some government departments has caused controversy as the browser is considered to pose security risks. In July 2009, Labour MP Tom Watson told GC News that he was dismayed that some departments still use IE6, adding that civil servants should be given the choice of using Firefox, Chrome or Safari browsers.

Source: ZDNet

Google released Chrome back in 2008, and although it received a lot of good reviews, it never became widely used… until recently. The update that everybody was hoping for finally happened a couple of weeks ago, with Google announcing Chrome would fully support extensions.
The biggest appeal to Firefox is the extensions – as you are able to completely re-skin, extend and improve. Now that Chrome is copying suit, has it become a genuine contender in the browser market? We believe so, and here’s why.

Google Chrome Advantages over Firefox

Speed – Originally, Firefox was a refreshing change from Internet Explorer and other browsers due to how fast it was. From opening the program to opening web pages, Firefox seemed to have got it right, but now Chrome has taken it a step further. Chrome is the ultimate in fast browsing. With Internet connections getting faster and faster, a browser should be able to keep up with the pace of rendering images and content, which is what Google have managed to do perfectly (as you would expect being such an Internet giant).

Simplicity – Firefox can often seem a bit cluttered due to various buttons, options and information bars. Chrome on the other hand has arranged everything in an organised manner, meaning the focus remains entirely on what it should be – browsing the Internet.

Extensions – The extension support in Chrome has been done fantastically. The ease of installing new plugins means no restart is needed, and the browser speed doesn’t suffer when lots of extensions are installed. The functional support for addons means full support for Grease Monkey scripts too, which is a great added bonus.

Google Chrome Disadvantages

With advantages comes disadvantages – but that isn’t to say there are many. The biggest disadvantage could be simply ‘why switch?’. Chrome is fantastic at what it does, but if you are already using Firefox then there isn’t that much of an incentive to make the jump over to Google’s browser.

To succeed in gaining a higher market share in the browser market, it may be best for Google to target Internet Explorer users as opposed to directly taking a slice out of Firefox usage – and ultimately play the long game. Google have already taken strides to target IE users with the Google frame work that plugs straight in to IE6 – directly transforming it to the Chrome engine for free. They are also working on their own operating system, which will of course be shipped with Chrome as the default browser.

So which browser to use? This guide might be best: Using Firefox? Maybe stick with it for the time being – but don’t rule out Chrome for the future. Using Internet Explorer? Switch to Chrome and don’t look back – it’s the future of web browsing. Using Safari or another browser? As with IE users – it is probably best to make the switch to Chrome.

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The above post is courtesy of Axon-IT – Manchester IT support experts, specialising in outsourced IT for small and large businesses across the UK. If your business needs help making the switch, or could benefit from IT support and consultancy, then visit Axon-IT.com today.

Microsoft will finally start offering some European Windows users a choice of web browser this week, the company announced on Friday, as it starts to publically test its legally mandated browser ballot process.

The ballot screen, which follows extensive negotiations between Microsoft and the European Commission, is still being tested internally at the company, but will see its first external testing this week, before a wider European rollout that will start around 1 March.

In the external testing phase, Windows users who have Internet Explorer set as their default browser will be able to voluntarily download the browser ballot through Windows Update. The update, which presents an information screen about browser choice before displaying the ballot screen itself, will be rolled out next week.

Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari are among the browsers to be presented to users. According to the latest statistics from Statcounter, IE currently has a 45.5 percent browser market share in Europe, followed by Firefox with 39.2 percent, Chrome with 6.3 percent, Opera with 4.3 percent and Safari with 3.7 percent.