InternetExplorer posts

While there's no shortage of alternatives in web browsing, it looks like Internet Explorer 8 still has some pull out there. Net MarketShare, a company that monitors usage and market share of major web browsers, has released their January report.

According to the report, IE (all versions) holds a solid 62.12% of all browser usage. In addition to a 27% share on Windows, it has also taken a pretty big bite out of other operating systems as well. All these numbers translate to one thing: people are still using IE8...a lot of people. Sure, part of this has to do with the fact that it's the default browser for Windows and used by many large companies but it's still a pretty big deal.

The folks at the Windows software team are humbled, having only released version 8 of IE less than a year ago. They also reported that the popular browser was responsible for blocking over 80 million malware attacks. It will be interesting to see how long the streak will last given the rising popularity of browsers such as Firefox.

ed note: StatCounter currently pegs IE8's individual share at 22.1%, just ahead of Firefox 3.5 at 21.7%

It appears an email is being sent out to the administrators of Google Apps accounts informing them that support for legacy browsers is going to be discontinued. Specifically, IE6 is being called out, but Google specifies that only Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 3.0, Google Chrome 4.0, Safari 3.0 -- and all newer versions of these browsers -- will continue to be supported.

This is great news, as it will lead to more rapid deployment of updates and features to the Google Apps, and will hopefully also lead to speedier performance from them.

Though we haven't yet received this email we expect to see it any day. An old DLS blogger (Adam!) gave us the tip.

Read on to see the full content of Google's browser support email.

I appreciate the fact that Microsoft is working hard to improve their browser -- there's no denying that Internet Explorer 8 is leaps and bounds better than previous IE versions. IE9? Yeah, I'm excited to see what they have up their sleeve.

Thanks to Manan Kakkar's watchful eye, we've got an early look at what Microsoft plans to do to improve user experience in IE9. A recent patent filing spells out the improved tab management system. The current Quick Tab display in IE8 is fairly limited, displaying only a thumbnail and a close button -- hovering a thumbnail reveals the page title.

What's changing? For one thing, a little eye candy is being added -- hovering over a thumbnail will zoom the current page and highlight its tab. Thumbnails can also be clicked-and-dragged to reorganize, and doing so also moves the corresponding tab on IE9's toolbar. More detailed descriptions will also be provided for your tabs -- in addition to the title, that could include the domain name or other useful information.

I'm no lawyer, but I'm guessing there will be FOSS and anti-patent advocates up in arms about this in no time.

Thoughts? Share 'em in the comments!

Microsoft has already fessed up -- admitting that a vulnerability in Internet Explorer was a key component in the Chinese attacks on companies including Google and Yahoo. Today, a post at Wired revealed some very disappointing news: Microsoft knew about the exploit as far back as September of 2009.

Microsoft's senior security officer Jerry Bryant had this to say: "Our investigation into this responsibly reported vulnerability began early September...We became aware of the recent attacks in mid January and as part of our investigation determined the vulnerability being used in these attacks was similar to the one investigated in September."

Apparently the official plan from Redmond was to patch the hole in a cumulative update this February -- a full six months after it was discovered. In the wake of the attacks, however, they were forced into action and released an out-of-band patch for IE.

What's your take on this news?

Six months seems like an extremely long time to make millions of customers wait for you to release a patch to a flaw which is considered to pose a severe risk.

Most of our users have already made the switch - maybe it's time for the rest of the world to look at an alternative browser.

If you've been following the fallout from the Google versus China cyber war, you're probably aware that a weakness in Internet Explorer was exploited to hack into over 30 Silicon Valley businesses. It soon became clear that this critical weakness was exploitable in almost every version of Internet Explorer and under all recent versions of Windows. Fortunately only IE6 has actually been exploited by hackers -- if you use IE7 or 8, or Windows Vista or 7, you should be safe. But just to be sure, Microsoft has moved quickly to plug the hole and prevent any future exploits with patch MS10-002.

I can't find a download link, but the security bulletin says if you have automatic updates turned on, your browser should now be updated and safe -- what's surprising is that this is an out-of-band update meaning that it was pushed immediately, rather than waiting for Patch Tuesday, which would've left machines exploitable for another few weeks.

If you haven't got automatic updates turned on, I suggest you head to Windows Update (or access it via your Start Menu) and make sure you're fully patched.

Or install Firefox 3.6.

Recently, Internet Explorer has taken a lot of heat. This time, however, it hasn't been coming from disgruntled web devs or tech-savvy folks like our readers. No, this round of 'ditch IE' requests came from the governments of Germany, France, and Australia.

The result: their citizens ditching IE en masse.

As you can see in the chart, nearly 300,000 Germans have downloaded Firefox in the last four days. Opera has seen a significant jump as well, reporting that downloads in Germany have doubled. In France, the uptick seems to have primarily benefited Mozilla, with Opera reporting only a slight increase. Mozilla won't have stats ready for a few days, but they've said the change was noticeable.

Opera also reported that downloads in Australia jumped 37%.

There's every reason to think Google Chrome is getting in on the action as well - but Google's not keen to make with the numbers. They suggest we sit tight and check third-party reports at the end of the month.

ed: if you're not up to speed about why this happened, check out Sebastian's post regarding the critical patch issued by Microsoft today!

[via The Register]

There is a lot of news coming out about the attack on Google and everyone involved is trying to figure out exactly what happened. While nothing is official, a lot of the evidence has started pointing to the Chinese government as being behind it. Even so, our friends over at Microsoft might have some insight as to how the attack was accomplished.

Microsoft says it best in their security blog:

"We have determined that Internet Explorer was one of the vectors used in targeted and sophisticated attacks against Google and possibly other corporate networks."

Earlier today, VeriSign provided some information about the way Google was hacked, but here we have the software giant taking some responsibility for what happened. While the vulnerability still exists, Microsoft doesn't seem all that worried that the hole could cause problems for the average user. IE8 and their newest OS releases all have security features in place by default that can prevent attack, leaving only the more outdated versions of the browser at risk. Even so, they've released a security advisory to clarify what the vulnerability will and won't do.

Developments on this cyberattack will probably continue coming out but this news will definitely help narrow down the problems and may even help reveal who was truly behind it all.

The real question: why is Google using Internet Explorer anyway?

It's the second of January 2010 and the figures are in from December. In just 16 months, Chrome has caught up and passed Apple's Safari browser. Google Chrome now has 4.63% of the global market share, while Safari has only 4.46%!

It doesn't look like a lot when you're talking about a fraction of a percent, but when you consider that last month Chrome only had 3.93% you can see just how quickly it's being adopted. Last month was actually Chrome's biggest leap since its launch, which probably has something to do with Google's current large-scale advertising campaign. PC World speculates that the large surge could also be due to the Mac and Linux Chrome Beta releases last month.
Despite Chrome's progress in December, it was not at the expense of Opera or Safari's market share -- both actually made slight gains. Firefox lost 0.1% and Internet Explorer lost almost an entire percentage point, but thankfully not from IE8! Down with IE6 and 7, down I say!

Lifehacker recently found a neat (if not somewhat convoluted) trick for syncing Firefox bookmarks to an iPhone. This is going to work for you if you're running Windows and using Firefox, and it also requires using Internet Explorer. You're also going to need the very useful bookmark manager Xmarks.

I know, I know, but bear with me, here. Apparently, all the easier methods disappeared when Firefox 3 came out.

The Xmarks trick was written up by blogger Shawn0, has quite a few steps, but it's actually pretty straightforward. You install Xmarks, use it to sync your bookmarks from Firefox to Internet Explorer -- which you can then sync to Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Three browsers, one add-on, and iTunes -- just for bookmarks? Well, it beats entering them all manually on your phone.

Step-by-step instructions from Shawn0 are available for anyone who wants to give this method a shot. Be sure to let us know how it goes.

We've all been watching the browser share trends for quite some time now, wondering when the day would come that an alternative finally shoved Internet Explorer off its perch.

It's finally happened - at least when we're talking about the most popular single version of a browser. You can see it all in the bar graph above: Firefox 3.5 has dethroned Internet Explorer 7.

Yes, we can all see the other two lengthy bars below IE7. Add them up, and it still means Internet Explorer (6,7, and 8 combined) is more popular overall. Still, for anything to overtake IE anywhere is pretty dang impressive.

We've still got 10 days left in 2009 to see where things wind up, but there's no denying that this has been a good year for Mozilla.

[via TheNextWeb]

EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes had some big news this morning. At long last, a deal has been worked out that will see Microsoft implement a browser ballot screen which allows users to choose something other than Internet Explorer.

So, what are the major changes which finally allowed the two sides to see eye-to-eye?

• The screen will be presented in a "neutralized window" rather than a full Internet Explorer window. I'm guessing this means the window title and taskbar icon will be free of Microsoft and IE branding.
• Browsers will be presented in random order.
• The ballot screen's design has been de-cluttered.
• Microsoft provide a status report to the Commission within six months - and then on an annual basis.
• Microsoft will be required to make changes to the ballot upon the Commission's request.

This could be a big win for Google Chrome. I'm not sure how things are in Europe, but many of my customers already think Google is their web browser - even though it's really Internet Explorer. Even with Firefox, Opera, and other options available, the ballot race could well come down to two ponies - Microsoft and Google.

For web developers, the idea behind Lunascape makes a lot of sense - a single browser with all three major rendering engines built-in. It's also a great browser if you just have a hard time making decisions.

Lunascape has recently been updated to version 6, and the new version includes even greater multi-browser functionality. In addition to being able to install native Lunascape plugins, you can now also utilize Internet Explorer and Firefox extensions. That's pretty slick.

The updated Gecko and WebKit engines are faster, of course, and you can now display all three renderer's versions of a page side-by-side in a single tab. Lunascape's new default theme (called Orion) is sharp-looking, and I like the option of a "large screen view" - think full screen but with tabs and address bar. There's also the standard fullscreen view, should you need it.

You can also choose to create a portable install during setup. Wouldn't it be awesome if the big boys allowed you to do that?

Check out the intro video after the break to see what Lunascape is all about - or download Lunascape yourself and give it a go!

August 27, 2001 - Internet Explorer 6 launches. The entire Internet (minus the three Opera users) adopts the new-and-shiny Microsoft browser. In the eight (8) long, soul-destroying years since, users have been mostly oblivious to the pain and misery that Microsoft has brought upon senior Internet architects and lowly website designers alike.

For 8 years, a vast percentage of the Internet's user base have been accruing malware and useless toolbars. Today, even after the invention of Firefox, Safari and Chrome, and the updates of Internet Explorer 7 and 8, a full TWENTY THREE PERCENT of the Internet still uses IE6!

23%! And Microsoft are to blame! History took a turn for the worse when IE6 was fatefully included as the default browser in Windows XP. Couple in the fact that it was made available for both Windows 95 and 98, and the huge number of Internet and corporate Intranet web apps that were developed in the past decade with only IE6 compatibility in mind... and you can see why IE6 and its antiquated, creaking, non-standard and insecure rendering engine still reigns supreme.

But that's all about to change. Hopefully. Microsoft is now advertising their IE8 browser as a direct competitor to its grunting, hairy-hobo, spyware-ridden predecessor. Touting better security and neat new features like Web Slices, Microsoft are hoping to shift those steadfast 23% to their new browser.

It won't work of course. Most of those IE6 users are enterprise or corporate users that are tied down due bespoke software or useless IT directors. It's not like Microsoft can force IE6 to update automatically. But it sure is nice to see them making an effort.

[via CNET]

It's only three weeks into its development, but Internet Explorer 9 has officially been unveiled today at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). In fact, as I write this now, they're still talking about IE9 and other tech advances over on the Microsoft PDC09 website.

Their goals with IE9 seem pretty obvious from the graphs shown in their presentation: faster, more standards-compliant website rendering. If you look at the slide above, lower is faster. And that's just three weeks into their development of a new browser and web rendering engine!

They're also including 'hardware accelerated' rendering using your graphics card using the DirectX D2D technology. Whether you're trying to perform funky stuff with CSS3, Javascript or DHTML, IE9 should render things a lot faster.

There's a big video (that requires Silverlight!) after the break. It explains and impressively-demonstrates the new DirectX D2D speed-up.

[via GeekSmack]

Moneyseize is a very straightforward single-screen platformer with charming 8-bit graphics and music. The goal in Moneyseize is to, well, seize all the money.

You're in charge of the 'gentleman', and your job is to jump around in each level and collect all the gold coins. Your gentleman is attempting to build a skyscraper, and needs to collect 1000 coins to complete it. There are critters in most levels, and they also hold coins, and you must also avoid the various obstacles and hazards, like the prototypical spikes.

An interesting twist in the game is that while there are 25 coins available in each level, in many levels it is not possible to reach them all. As you progress through later levels, you can press switches that will occasionally change the layout of previous levels, making once impossible-to-reach areas reachable. Since you control which levels you visit from the map screen, the game takes on a bit of a puzzle flavor to go along with the straight platform style, which feels very reminiscent of early Mario Brothers games.

While I can't imagine actually completing MoneySeize, my building has already grown far larger than I ever intended it to get, just in testing it for this post. That's usually the sign of a good game.