Browsers

Mozilla on Tuesday released Firefox 8, adding Twitter search to the browser and patching eight vulnerabilities.

Since Mozilla kicked off its every-six-week upgrade cycle last summer, each new Firefox has had relatively few visible changes. That held true yesterday.

Firefox 8′s most notable addition was Twitter as a choice in Firefox’s search bar, letting users look up topics, hashtags and usernames on the micro-blogging service. Twitter search is currently available only in the English, Japanese, Portuguese and Slovenian editions of Firefox.

Mozilla also made good on a promise last August to automatically disable add-ons installed without user approval. Behind-the-back add-ons have cropped up at times, most recently in January when one bundled with Skype caused so many browser crashes that Mozilla blacklisted it. When users start Firefox 8, all add-ons that have been surreptitiously installed are turned off by default.

Full Story:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9221663/Mozilla_ships_Firefox_8_adds_Twitter_search_and_patches_8_bugs

A couple of interesting things happened in the world of Web browser usage during October. The more significant one is that Internet Explorer’s share of global browser usage dropped below 50 percent for the first time in more than a decade. Less significant, but also notable, is that Chrome for the first time overtook Firefox here at Ars, making it the technologist’s browser of choice.

Internet Explorer still retains a majority of the desktop browser market share, at 52.63 percent, a substantial 1.76 point drop from September. However, desktop browsing makes up only about 94 percent of Web traffic; the rest comes from phones and tablets, both markets in which Internet Explorer is all but unrepresented. As a share of the whole browser market, Internet Explorer has only 49.58 percent of users. Microsoft’s browser first achieved a majority share in—depending on which numbers you look at—1998 or 1999. It reached its peak of about 95 percent share in 2004, and has been declining ever since.
Net Applications

Where has that market share gone? In the early days, it all went Firefox’s way. These days, it’s Chrome that’s the main beneficiary of Internet Explorer’s decline, and October was no exception.

Full Story Here:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/11/the-end-of-an-era-internet-explorer-drops-below-50-percent-of-web-usage.ars

By Ian Paul, PCWorld  
Feb 11, 2011 1:51 PM

The browser wars are back with a vengeance.
Microsoft recently launched its first release candidate for Internet Explorer 9 (IE9 RC1), which features hardware acceleration, a simplified interface, Windows 7 jump lists, and a new “do not track” feature. Read more»

First fixes for flaws in Reader X, new version that includes sandbox
By Gregg Keizer

February 9, 2011
Computerworld – Adobe yesterday patched 29 vulnerabilities in Reader, it’s PDF viewer, and 13 more in Flash, the popular Web media browser plug-in, as part of an even larger quarterly security update. Read more»