Internet Explorer News & Articles

Desktop or browser-integrated blogging applications have been around for some time now and many are quite similar in function. Blogging suggestion tools that will suggest related articles, images and links based on what you are writing are also not new. But a partnership between ScribeFire and Zemanta bring the two together in an single browser add-on setup.

We've been following Zimplit from the very moment of birth of this new open source, PHP-based micro CMS venture. Then, we covered Zimplit on a number of occasions, including when the vendor released Zimplit CMS 1.1 and evolved to the point of adding inline editing capabilities.

So what is it now, you ask? Aside from the fact that the CMS designed for "normal people, not for IT gurus" grew its customer base to more than 50,000 users around the world, Zimplit (all encouraged by this kind of attention to develop further and add new features) released a set of new features to make its little mini CMS more powerful than Mini-Me.

As the browser wars rage on, third-party extensions, plug-ins and add-ons have become key players. With Google Chrome out of beta, Microsoft Internet Explorer is working hard towards a full public release. Here to help them on their way is OneRiot’s Hot Topic Web Slice.

Yesterday sparked an unprecedented rush to fix browser security issues. With the announcement of Internet Explorer’s security flaws, both Microsoft and Mozilla have released fixes for their respective browsers. The fixes for both Internet Explorer and FireFox are available now.

Less than 24 hours after news was released about security issues with Internet Explorer, Microsoft has released a hack patch for the security flaw that affects all versions of IE version 5 to 8 beta. According to Microsoft, there was not a security patch due out until January 13, 2009, but with the recent announcement and the push for users to switch browsers, Microsoft opted to push the release today.

To update your Internet Explorer all you need to do is simply visit the Microsoft update center, run the check for updates, and it will show up as a high priority update labeled “Security Update for Internet Explorer (your version number)”. You can either install express or custom, but it is recommended that your antivirus software also be checked and updated and full scan be run to ensure that no breaches occurred.

Mozilla has also released a group of fixes for their FireFox browser. These updates come at a time when neither party wants bad publicity, largely due to the heavy competition between the two browsers. FireFox 3.0.5 and 2.0.0.19 are both available for Windows and Linux now. The update to 3.0.5 fixes 3 major XSS issues including crashes with evidence of memory corruption. These issues have been labeled critical on top of five other minor security fixes.

As for FireFox 2.x, the patch fixes 10 issues, four of which are critical. These vulnerabilities are again tied to XSS issues, but these fixes also address an issue related to additional XSS attack vectors in feed preview. The bad news for FireFox 2.x users is that after this update there will be no further support for 2.x. Mozilla urges FF users to upgrade to 3.x as soon as possible. Updating your version should happen automatically when you log in to your browser. If it does not, under "Help" in your menu there is an option to check for updates. You can upgrade your version from FireFox 2.x to 3.0.5 here.

So whether you are an Internet Explorer die-hard or a FireFox advocate, both browsers have acknowledged severe security vulnerabilities. It is urged that you update your browser.

Internet Explorer has long been the topic of negative conversation in the tech community. And today is no different as a major security flaw has been announced that affects IE5 through the new IE8 beta.

The flaw allows serious and far reaching attacks that are not just theoretical in nature. According to sources this particular issue is already in wide use with attempts to steal game passwords. There are a reported 10,000+ websites infected with the code necessary to take advantage of this breach.

Amazon has recently informed its AWS customers that Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will allow users to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server later this fall. For those who take advantage of those two Microsoft products, this is surely news to get excited about.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is now available for download by the public. Microsoft certainly needs to push IE8 out soon — especially when considering the recent developments within the Web browsing market. The company is touting the premise that IE8 is the most secure, reliable and privacy-aware version of the product to date. Will it be enough to impress the users of other browsers while keeping up with the expectations from current users?

Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera, watch out — Google is entering the fray with its shiny new creation called Chrome. Google’s newest creation will be available for download today in more than 100 countries for people using Microsoft Windows, but is the amount of drama brewing from Google’s announcement just the beginning of a new browser war? Are we prepared for what Google will bring to the table and what personal information they make take from it as a result?

It was about mid-December, just after Opera Software filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft — partly focused on Internet Explorer not following web standards — that Microsoft finally came out and publicly announced their support for key web standards in version 8 of their prolific web browser.

With the recent release of IE8’s first Beta the public can now finally find out for themselves just how well they have done that. What is even more interesting — and perhaps a matter of debate — is that they have done it in such a way as to not “Break the Web.” Or in other words, they plan to deliver IE8 with backwards compatibility by introducing a controversial third operating mode.

Installing Google for your public website or intranet does not replace the need for professional management.

Two browser-related stories broke while you were all making merry over the festive season.
Microsoft, under pressure from agitated developers, finally took steps to ensure compliance for IE8 with web standards, breaking long-held traditions.

Then AOL quietly announced that Netscape was being cut loose to pass into the cold hereafter, as they announced the end of support for the once-preeminent browser marque which introduced the world to the Web.

The browser wars continue as the Mozilla Foundation, also known as the Rebel Alliance, releases the second beta of the upcoming 3.0 version of Firefox.

No longer considered an upstart competitor to Internet Explorer, the open source web browser has enjoyed steadily increasing market share and continues to be the browser of choice for those web workers fortunate enough to not be trapped behind a corporate firewall.

User Interface improvements in the beta include:

• Improved security with an upgraded Password Manager, automatic version checking of plugins and extensions, anti-virus integration with Download Manager, and the new Effective Top-Level Domain (eTLD) service designed to improve user privacy.
• Enhanced functionality with an upgraded Download Manager, improved rendering of international characters, full page zooming, and an animated tab strip.
• New personalization features with organized browsing using Places, a new organizer for managing history and bookmarks, plus an upgraded location bar.

Beneath the UI, there are two enhancements of particular interest:

1. Implementation of a cycle collector for better memory management. Firefox is known to devour memory a gigabyte at a time. Therefore, any improvement in memory management will be most welcome.
2. Support for offline browsing and web-based protocol handlers. Does this version of Firefox coupled with rich internet applications like Google Apps and Zoho Office Suite finally challenge Microsoft’s supreme dominance in desktop productivity arena?

Stay tuned and find out.

35.4% versus 34.9%

Those numbers are cause celebre for every open source advocate and Microsoft hater across the globe.

According to the most recent set of browser usage statistics from W3Schools, Firefox has captured 35.4% of the browser market as compared to 34.9% for Internet Explorer version 6.

As exciting as this news is, the trends show that it was only a matter of time before Firefox took the lead in the race between the two most widely deployed browsers in the world.

Is Microsoft concerned? Probably more than they would ever admit. Regardless of the viability of these statistics, the Firefox development team deserves some major kudos for bringing some much needed competition to the web browser space.

How worried should Microsoft be about their declining marketshare and how satisifed should the Mozilla Foundation be with their growth? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Oh man, I can see the IE7 Program Managers’ heads spinning right now. Google has done some tricks in the dev shop with Microsoft’s latest browser and gone and released a Googlified version of IE7.