As for Internet Explorer 9 and previous version like IE8 and IE7, all three took a slight hit, according to statistics from Net Applications. IE9 dropped 1.05 percentage points, falling to 20.62% and IE8 lost 0.15%, standing at 23.23% — it’s currently the world’s most popular browser, however. IE7 took a hit of 0.08% to 1.93%, and IE6 fell 0.12% to 6.21%. Yes, more people are using IE6 than IE10 and IE7 combined.

As for Internet Explorer’s competition, both Firefox and Chrome gained a bit of market share during the past quarter. Firefox grew to 20.21%, while Chrome is now at 16.45%. Chrome took some hits throughout the past several months, but it’s slowly starting to recover. It may not pass Firefox this year, but it certainly wouldn’t be out of the question.

As for other browsers, Safari is sitting at 5.31%, while Opera owns 1.74% of the browser market share. It’s not expected for these two browsers to make much ground any time soon, as IE, Firefox, and Chrome are currently way out in front, with IE owning a tremendous lead over Firefox and Chrome, which probably won’t go away for the foreseeable future.

[via The Next Web]

The EU decided to impose regulations on Microsoft because the web browser company, Opera, voiced its concerns about Microsoft including only Internet Explorer with its operating system. Opera stated that the move was hurting competition from other web browsers. Microsoft had complied with the EU and beginning in March 2010, it instated the “Browser Choice Screen pop-up” in its PCs. Everything was going well until a technical error caused the pop-up to not appear on around 28 million machines. The issue was linked to the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 update released in February 2011.

Microsoft released a statement last year saying that they were taking the matter seriously and will work quickly to fix the issue. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has been fined by the EU. Microsoft is actually one of the companies that violates the EU’s rulings the most. Including the fine today, Microsoft will have paid a total of 2.2 billion euros in fines.

This Microsoft violation will set example for all of the other companies currently entangled with the EU, like Google. The EU isn’t scared to impose strict fines to make sure companies comply with them. However, the EU was a bit lenient this time around. It could have imposed a fine of up to 10% of Microsoft’s annual revenue, but instead it imposed a fine that equaled only 1% of Microsoft’s revenue.

[via BBC]

The new web browser is available now for users running Windows 7, and it’s available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. However, you must have Service Pack 1 installed before you can dig deep into Internet Explorer 10, but most Windows 7 users most likely have that taken care of already. The auto-update process will happen over the next few weeks.

Internet Explorer 10 features a handful of improvements, including better JavaScript performance and apparently improved battery life for laptop users. There’s also integrated spell checking and auto-correct functions, as well as support for more web standards like the new CSS3. Overall, a bump from version 9 to 10 should give the boost that users have been wanting.

Other than that, Internet Explorer 10 looks to be about the same design-wise as Internet Explorer 9. Of course, you don’t get the fancy Windows 8 version with full-screen browsing and a metro-style interface, but we can’t really see anything to complain about at this point. If you’re an avid IE user, you’ll certainly appreciate this update.

The overall message of the advertisement was “progress,” which appears at the end of the ad, and reassures users that Microsoft can’t build Rome in a day, but are making progress to improve their web browser and make it as feature-filled and fast as possible. Microsoft has certainly done that with their latest versions.

Anyone who has used Internet Explorer 9 knows that the browser took on a whole new meaning of quality, and the company continued their momentum with Internet Explorer 10. The video above tracks an internet troll throughout the evening, and shows him commenting on Facebook and various forums about how “IE SUCKS.” However, at the end, the troll is succumbed to admit that Internet Explorer has improved after seeing other comments that mention different new features.

While it was a great advertisement from Microsoft, it was a bold, but classy move on their part. Essentially, they admitted that their web browser actually wasn’t that great in the past, and instead of just saying, “it’s all better now! IE10 is now the best browser!,” they simply note that it’s improving and that progress is key for the company.

As expected, the Windows 7 version of Internet Explorer 10 has the same look and feel as the Windows 8 version, and includes features such as full-screen browsing, hardware acceleration, multitouch support, and a “Flip ahead” feature that guesses what webpage you want to see next on websites with multiple pages.

While most Windows 7 computers don’t have multitouch displays, you’ll still be able to do multitouch gestures in the IE10 preview using your trackpad if you have the right drivers for it. It also has the privacy-conscience “Do Not Track” feature turned on by default, which has gotten Microsoft into a pickle once already.

Download the Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7 here for free. If you have auto-update turned on in Internet Explorer 9, you’ll automatically get upgraded to IE10 when it becomes available as a final release. Older versions of Windows, like Vista and XP, won’t be getting IE10.

Do Not Track is a technology aimed at addressing privacy concerns that lets Internet users opt out of being tracked by websites. Do Not Track is like the Internet version of the Do Not Call registry, according to donottrack.us. DNT works via a simple HTTP header, and is the by-product of a collaboration by several advocacy groups, tech companies, and researchers.

In the announcement, Yahoo! stated that it supports DNT “in principle,” and that it is working with partners to create an opt-out standard for users. It followed this by stating that Microsoft’s unilateral decision to enable DNT by default in Internet Explorer 10 makes it “hard to deliver on our value proposition” to users. As a result, the company says that it will still offer Ad Interest Manager and related tools, but will not recognize the Microsoft browser’s DNT signal on its properties.

Yahoo! is working with W3C in the pursuit of a Do Not Track standard that, it says, is in line with user expectations and an optimal Internet experience. “Ultimately, we believe that DNT must map to user intent — not to the intent of one browser creator, plug-in writer, or third-party software service.” W3C recommends that DNT be an opt-in preference.

[via Yahoo! Policy Blog]

“IE6 has been the punch line of browser jokes for a while, and we’ve been as eager as anyone to see it go away. In fact, we launched the IE6 Countdown site last March to help accelerate the process,” said Microsoft’s Director of Internet Explorer Marketing, Roger Capriotti, via the Windows Team Blog. The browser uses non-standard rendering and also doesn’t support HTML 5.

Capriotti thanked IE6 Countdown partners for helping with the process and in this new year, he calls on more folks to make it a resolution to end IE6 and move to something more modern like IE8 or IE9. This is certainly welcome news to developers, who now have one less outdated web browser to worry about supporting. However, developers in China will face this problem for awhile longer since 25.2 percent of computer users there are still running IE6.

[via Windows Team Blog]

This isn’t a new question and certainly isn’t one I’ve not asked my own family when they used to use Windows-based machines, so I’d like to put it back out there today to see how we’re all feeling about the situation. In the time between when AOL was the dominant internet provider in my area up here in mid-Minnesota and now, there was a big period of time when Internet Explorer took over the earth because first, it was installed on your machine when you bought it, and two: because “Netscape” was much harder to remember than the perfectly simple “Internet Explorer.” The brand name is still easily the best one in the web browser market: what do you use to browse the web? The explorer of the internets, of course.

Then there’s Apple’s “Safari” which took a cue from Internet Explorer and comes with your Mac, this leading to SOME people using it, and Google’s Chrome which has shown itself to be amongst the most popular downloads of the last year — Google is beyond an amazing brand, and just like Apple, if you’ve got one piece of the puzzle, you’re inclined to want the rest. Firefox and Opera did an OK job of appealing to the crowds of nerds and gamers out there wanting a custom experience, but in times as recently as this past week, your humble narrator has witnessed hoards of people on places like Reddit and Google+ speaking down on both of these browsers saying they’ve fallen into disrepair. These same people wouldn’t touch Internet Explorer with a 10 foot pole.

Just to be clear: I ask this as both a web developer and a lover of Google Chrome, as it’s been nothing but perfect for use in my everyday life, and developing for Internet Explorer has and continues to be nothing but a pain in the neck whereas all other browsers essentially live by the same basic rules.

So I ask again: why do you and/or anyone you know still use Internet Explorer?

The HTML5 improvements of this platform preview 4 release include the following:

- Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for safe use of XMLHttpRequest across domains.
- File API Writer support for blobBuilder allowing manipulation of large binary objects in script in the browser.
- Support for JavaScript typed arrays for efficient storage and manipulation of typed data.
- CSS user-select property to control how end-users select elements in a Web page or application.
- Support for HTML5 video text captioning, including time-code, placement, and captioning file formats.

This release can be downloaded at Microsoft’s test drive site is only for the IE10 on the developer preview of Windows 8 and is separate from the current IE10 for Windows 7, which is only at platform preview 2. Microsoft released IE10 platform preview 3 for Windows 8 back in September and had revealed that Internet Explorer 10 will not be made available to Windows Vista or XP. New platform previews will be released every 8 to 12 weeks.

[via WinRumors]

Although it offer both interfaces, it’s clear that Microsoft finds the new Metro UI to offer a superior experience. In a blog post, Microsoft Internet Explorer chief Dean Hachamovitch wrote: “While building the entirely new Metro style experience, a funny thing happened: we realized it might just be a better way to browse even if you have a big screen, a desktop computer, and a mouse and keyboard.”

Thus, IE10 will run two separate experiences on the same engine, which Microsoft believes is the best route so that no compromises are made. There are also several improvements to performance, safety, and support for HTML 5.

The platform preview 3 for IE10 is only available through the Windows 8 preview for now with future platform previews of IE10 to be made available every 8 to 12 weeks. The final version will only be supported by Windows 7 and Windows 8.

[via WinRumors]

Dutch company DigiNotar is at the center of this controversy, having had what appears to be over 500 digital certificates stolen from them since July, these including certificates for official sites for the CIA, Israel’s Mossad, and the UK’s MI6. The number set at 531 was written by Mozilla developer Gervase Markham, one of a team who has been working to modify Firefox in order to block all sites signed with the certificates now likely in evil hands. The full list of sites possibly affected is not known, but a short list reads like a who’s who of top sites globally: Facebook, Yahoo, Skype, Microsoft, Twitter, and Microsoft’s Windows Update service.

Reports coming from DigiNotar have noted that they’ve already attempted to revoke all fraudulent certificates but had just in the past few days found out that they’d overlooked certain ones that would allow the hackers access to Google cervices across the board. To combat this situation, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft have stated that in addition to the more than 200 certificates they’d already blocked since DigiNotar originally started releasing information about a month ago, they’d be blocking the whole lot, including those used by the Dutch government, as soon as possible. Google Online Security Blog and Mozilla Security Blog AND Microsoft Security Response Center posted this inside the past few days.

Based on the findings and decision of the Dutch government, as well as conversations with other browser makers, we have decided to reject all of the Certificate Authorities operated by DigiNotar” – Google Information Security Manager Heather Adkins

This will in the end put quite a stopper on DigiNotar’s business as a whole, this echoed through the tweets of infamy this week until the end:

“Effectively a death sentence for DigiNotar” – WhiteHat Security CTO Jeremiah Grossman

Gervase Markham, again one of a team who has been working to modify Firefox in order to block all sites signed with the fraudulent certificates, commented on the idea that there may well have been a bigger break-in than has been widely understood at this point, this building on what Helsinki-based antivirus company F-Secure said, that it had found signs that DigiNotar had been compromised as early as 2009.

“It is at least possible (but entirely speculative) that an initial competent attacker has had access to [DigiNotar's] systems for an unknown amount of time, and a second attacker gained access more recently and their less-subtle, bull-in-a-china shop approach in issuing the [hundreds of] certificates triggered the alarms.” – Markham

Those of you having panic attacks at this point can rest easy, as the set of three (Microsoft, Google, Mozilla) will more than likely ax out the entirety of the fraudulent certificates from ever affecting you. Lucky you, these groups who lead you into the internet on a daily basis really do appear to know what they’re doing and will continue to keep you safe like superheroes.

[via ComputerWorld]

Suspicions were raised after it was noted that the ApTiquant site had only been up and running for a month, though the company claimed to have been established in 2006. Further investigation showed that the site had copied all of its staff profile photos from a French business, research firm Central Test, which has denied any knowledge of the hoax.

“With just a look at the graphs in the report, it comes out pretty clear that Internet Explorer users scored lower than average on the IQ tests. Chrome, Firefox and Safari users had just a teeny bit higher than average IQ scores. And users of Camino, Opera and IE with Chrome Frame had exceptionally higher IQ levels” ApTiquant

“I believe these figures are implausibly low – and an insult to IE users” Cambridge University stats professor David Spiegelhalter told the BBC, though security researchers failed to find any phishing or malware payload in any of ApTiquant’s content. No record of the “psychometric consulting company” exists at the address the URL is registered to.

The Mobile Test Drive site will work similar to the Internet Explorer 9 desktop version test drive site where various development samples will be published to highlight features and capabilities. Both the desktop and mobile versions of Internet Explorer 9 use the same core rendering engines and adhere to the concept of “same markup,” but the Microsoft team felt it was important to demonstrate how to optimize content for differences in screen size and device capabilities.

Additional samples will be posted to the site over the coming months leading up to the Windows Phone Mango release. But to start things off, the first 15 samples that will be available on the Mobile Test Drive will be:
– Audio Player (from MIX11)
– Geolocation
– Border Radius
– DOM Local Storage
– Scalable Vector Graphics
– CSS3 Media Queries
– DOMContentLoaded
– FishIE Tank
– Speed Reading (from MIX11)
– Animated Text
– HamsterDance Revolution
– Business Charts
– IE Logo
– Video Panorama
– Browser Control Theming

[via Windows Team Blog]

Older browsers to have their support phased out starting this fall, include Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3, and all of their predecessors. Google says that these browsers simply cannot support the HTML 5 needed for new Google Apps to work. For instance, the desktop notifications in Gmail and the drag-and-drop file uploading in Google Docs.

Google will continue to support up to three of the most recent browser versions on a rolling basis for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Whenever a new version is released, support for the third-oldest version will be dropped.

[via Google Enterprise Blog]

Jump forward to around the 1:08 mark in the video below, and you can see the PadFone tablet section using the PC browser. Of course, this could be an impromptu demo of the same Eee Pad PC Suite remote access app as on the Transformer, allowing you to log into your home computer and use it as if you were there.

Still, we can’t mock too much, not when ASUS CEO Johnny Shih is so darn enthusiastic about his new toy. “Have the best of both devices with an ASUS PadFone” he suggests, and – when the tablet finally does make it to market in Q4 2011 this year – we reckon plenty will at least consider it.

1. HTC Sensation
HTC Sensation hands-on [Video]
HTC Sensation offers just 1GB of 4GB ROM to users
HTC Sensation Benchmarks with SunSpider and Quadrant
HTC Sense 3.0 UI Only For New Devices, Not Completely True

2. Cisco Flip cam
Cisco Stops Flip Video Production
Why Cisco Shut Down the Flip Business
FlipLive dead as Cisco pulls plug on Flip line

3. Apple announces Final Cut Pro X
Apple Unveils Final Cut Pro X, Now 64-Bit Awesomeness

4. Microsoft first preview of Internet Explorer 10
Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 First Preview

5. Windows 8 leaked
Windows 8 Early Version LEAKS

6. Windows App Store screen shot leaked
Screenshots of Windows 8 App Store leak

7. Mango update
Microsoft Reveals Details of Mango

8. Angry Birds To be on WP7
Angry Birds For Windows Phone 7 Launching May 25th
Angry Birds To Get Game Syncing Across All Platforms

9. IFA 2011 Global Press Conference

10. T-Mobile G2x unboxing and hands-on

Featured Column:
Is An App Store-Equipped Apple HDTV A Game Changer?
What is Personal Computing in the Post PC Era?

Reviews:
Looxcie Bluetooth Video Camera Review with an HTC ThunderBolt

SlashGear 101:
What is the Sony NGP?
What is Android 3.0 Honeycomb?
And more!

Giveaways Reminder:
1. Motorola XOOM, contest ends April 24!
2. BlackBerry PlayBook, contest ends Tomorrow (April 1)!
BlackBerry PlayBook Review Roundup

Internet Explorer 10 is another step towards Microsoft’s long term commitment to adopting the HTML 5 standard, built on the performance breakthroughs and native HTML 5 support that was developed in Internet Explorer 9. New CSS3 features include the support for multi-column and grid layouts as well as gradients, transitions, 3D transforms, and strict mode.

The Preview Platform for Internet Explorer 10 is ready for download at Microsoft’s Test Drive site. The new version has only been in three weeks of development but should have new preview versions coming every 12 weeks. The new browser is expected to ship with Windows 8 operating system.

[via Tech Radar]

Obviously only Windows users get to experience IE9, limiting Microsoft’s audience a little. The new app is fully hardware accelerated, with a Tracking Protection system that uses managed lists of trusted sites to attempt to control who has access to your information and surfing patterns.

However, Tracking Protection has already come in for criticism, with Which? pointing to issues IE9 has when using multiple TPL (tracking protection lists). In such a case, the browser amalgamates the TPL into a single list where “allow” is given priority over “block”; that could leave some users unprotected from certain sites.

This browser has been in production for approximately a year, and now they’re going to release it, thanking profusely the community of developers who have stepped up to help them in making this a platform that has a chance at competing with the rest of the powerhouse browsers out in the market today. As you know, Internet Explorer

Hachamovitch will be doing a keynote at MIX 10 as well, showing off how the platform is rolling out, as a sort of “look what we did in a year” sort of thing. These two fellas sitting on the couch are super excited about this rollout and after saying what they came to say, they made sure to prompt Channel9 for what they call an “uncomfortable question.” What Channel9 decided to ask about was HTML5, to which they reply “WE’RE FOR IT!”

Of course the developer community knows this already, so the question is pressed, beyond what HTML5 can do for the everyday user, what does IE9 offer the fringe users who want features that not everyone will use? Hachamovitch replies with a sort of well, we DO do that, we’ve implemented things like Navigation Timing which “got 0% usage on the web,” he then going on to say that they’ve added items that don’t just come from developers who request things, they’ve essentially come up with elements that they and people at Yahoo, Google, and etc have spoken about behind the scenes, bringing these “fringe” features into IE9 at launch.

Essentially what they’re speaking about in this video and what will be coming with Internet Explorer 9 is depth as well as quality implementation of features. We’re hoping for the best!

Brian Hall has been with Microsoft since 1995 and ran the worldwide launch of Windows XP and previously worked as a product manager of Windows 95, Windows 98, and Internet Explorer 3 through Internet Explorer 5. Internet Explorer is still the world’s most popular web browser and Microsoft said Tuesday that 36 million copies of IE 9 beta since its release in September. The final milestone was launched on February 10th.

The biggest addition with the newest iteration of Internet Explorer is the Tracking Protection feature. It will give users the ability to block different ways of being tracked on the web including cookies, web beacons, trackers, and advertisements. The user can now also block ActiveX controls with “ActiveX filter”. The filter lets the user turn off the ActiveX while browsing.

With Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox bearing down on Internet Explorer, Microsoft is facing some stiff competition. You won’t find many people using Internet Explorer if they have one of those other options to use. Microsoft needs Internet Explorer to reclaim some of the market if it hopes to stem Chrome and Firefox from snatching up more users.

[via WinRumors]

They are actually working on four different interfaces: classic, sidetab, touch, and compact. The classic is like your current Chrome browser, the sidetab places navigation elements on a sidebar, and touch is for touchscreens.

The compact is the interface that may have a vanishing address bar and features all navigation elements on one line resembling the recent RC release of Internet Explorer 9, which sports a sleek new interface with the address bar and tab bar being in the same row.

[via CrunchGear]

When it comes to the interface, IE 9 has a more svelte header area and features a “One Bar”–an all-in-one search and address bar similar to that of Google’s Chrome. The tabbed area, however, is aligned with the One Bar which may be a nuisance for folks who like to open a dozen tabs at the same time as they would have to either drag the tabs into a second row or shrink the width of the One Bar.

As for security and performance features, IE9′s new Tracking Protection is essentially the same as the previous InPrivate Filtering feature except with added functionality. It will automatically block tracking cookies, but also can be customized to block only the ones you select.

Improved support for HTML5, CSS3, and geolocation is also included in this release along with the ability to pin web apps to the taskbar.

[Via Download Squad]

During last year’s contest, Google Chrome was the only browser undefeated but with this additional cash prize and added publicity it is likely that more hackers will seriously take this to task. Details of the Google Chrome contest are as follows:

On day 1, Google will offer $20,000 USD and the CR-48 if a contestant can pop the browser and escape the sandbox using vulnerabilities purely present in Google-written code. If competitors are unsuccessful, on day 2 and 3 the ZDI will offer $10,000 USD for a sandbox escape in non-Google code and Google will offer $10,000 USD for the Chrome bug. Either way, plugins other than the built-in PDF support are out of scope.

Other web browser targets for this year include the latest release candidates of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari, and Mozilla Firefox. Each browser will be installed on a 64-bit system running the latest version of OSX or Windows 7.

[Via ZDNet]