Q: Dad, what browser do you use? A: One that browses well. Q: Okay, what’s it called? A: A browser.
I don’t know about you, but I try to avoid technological discussions with my parents. Even though they are relatively tech aware, they tend to be Team Windows and I am Team Mac. Also: While the “My cool grandma owns an iPad” trope is totally ubiquitous and real, older people tend to be over-sensitive about their level of tech acumen. It’s a fear of mortality thing, I’m thinking. → Read More
Mozilla has just released Firefox 4, and in less than a day clocked more than twice the downloads Microsoft boasted about after the release of Internet Explorer 9.
Now website analytics company StatCounter says Mozilla’s new browser has already taken 1.95 percent of the worldwide Internet browser market. In contrast, StatCounter adds, Internet Explorer 9 has taken only 0.87 percent of the worldwide browser market a week after its debut. → Read More
Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 9 the other day, and I think it’s fair to say it was reasonably well received. The problem is that so many of the “tech guys” online have such a low opinion of the browser, partially owing to its tortured history, that the reviews all end with something like, “It’s not bad, but it’s IE, so there’s that.” → Read More
Microsoft has officially released Internet Explorer 9. Not a beta, not a release candidate, but the real deal. You’ll recall that a Mozilla rep had already spoken out against it a few weeks ago, saying that it was not a “modern browser.” GPU acceleration and a fancy new user interface would suggest otherwise, but there’s no need to get into a browser fight. Use what you like, I say. → Read More
Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 were the first two Web browsers to fall in the latest Pwn2Own contest. And yes, this takes into account Apple’s latest Safari security patch that dropped yesterday. → Read More
In late November of last year, we noted a changing of the guard: Chrome had become the most-used browser amongst TechCrunch readers, ending the four year reign of Firefox in the pole position. And since then, Chrome has actually widened its lead. In the past 30 days, it’s a full 2 percentage points ahead of Firefox now. And that lead continues to grow. But something really odd happened last week. Chrome wasn’t number one. And neither was Firefox. Instead, it was Internet Explorer.
Yes, IE took the crown last week.
You might not think that’s a big deal considering that IE is still by a fairly large margin the most-used browser overall. But as long as we’ve been keeping track of stats for TechCrunch, it has never been the top browser here. In fact, it has been number four for quite some time. And it’s normally about five percentage points behind number three: Safari. So for it to surge to number one is a real oddity. → Read More
Oh, dear. Microsoft has revealed a new security flaw in Internet Explorer that, if taken advantage of, could let evildoers take over your computer. That’s nice. The good news is that Microsoft hasn’t heard of any consumer attacks brought about as a result of the glitch, so there’s no reason to freak out just yet. → Read More
In September 2009, we wrote about something very interesting that Google was doing in order to penetrate the business market: they were essentially turning IE into Chrome. Chrome Frame was a plugin for Microsoft’s browser that would recreate the Chrome browsing experience inside of IE. The reason Google did this is that they realized that many users at work were not able to install Chrome because their computers were on lockdown by their IT department. Well today, Google has announced a more straightforward way to get Chrome at work: an MSI installer — aka, a standard Windows installer for businesses.
“Today, we’re announcing that Chrome offers controls that enable IT administrators to easily configure and deploy the browser on Windows, Mac, and Linux according to their business requirements,” Google writes on the Chrome blog. This new installer allows businesses that use standard deployment tools to install Chrome for all their managed users, the company says. Google has also outlined some policies to show what Chrome will respect with regard to security and settings that can be set by admins. → Read More
Browser market share numbers are out for October from Net Applications. Chrome made the biggest gains with a 0.49 percent jump from September to 8.47 percent.
Chrome is the third most popular browser after Internet Explorer (59.26 percent) and Firefox (22.82 percent). Both FireFox and IE saw their overall market share positions erode slightly by 0.39 percent and 0.14 percent, respectively. Safari was up a smidge (0.06 percent) to 5.33 percent, and Opera declined 0.11 percent to 2.28 percent. → Read More
According to the the latest data from the company, last month, September 2010, marked the first time IE fell below the 50 percent share mark in the past decade. Of course, this data only counts what StatCounter collects, but they claim that it’s a huge dataset worldwide — billions of visits from millions of sites. And the trend is clear: two years ago, two-thirds of those people were browsing the web with IE, now less than half of them are.
According to the the latest data from the company, last month, September 2010, marked the first time IE fell below the 50 percent share mark. Of course, this data only counts what StatCounter collects, but they claim that it’s a huge dataset worldwide — billions of visits from millions of sites. And the trend is clear: two years ago, two-thirds of those people were browsing the web with IE, now less than half of them are. → Read More
I love the whole concept of Google Chrome Frame. It’s Google spitting in the face of Microsoft and showing them that their software isn’t good enough for the modern web — by recreating it as Google software. Granted, Microsoft finally looks to be evolving with IE9, but they had years to do that, so Google stopped waiting and did it for them. Ballsy. Brilliant.
But Chrome Frame, which became an official stable product today after a few months in beta, has had one major weakness: it requires administrator rights to install the plug-in. Sadly, that’s something a ton of users in corporate environments don’t have. And that’s one segment that needs Chrome Frame the most, because they don’t have the option to install another browser. But Google is working on getting around that requirement. → Read More
At this morning’s launch of IE9, Microsoft tried to reignite the browser wars with its latest iteration of Internet Explorer. You can test drive it yourself by downloading the beta version on BeautyOfTheWeb.com, but if that sounds like too much effort, you can also sit back and watch our video tour with Senior Director of Internet Explorer, Ryan Gavin. Video ahead. → Read More
By now many of you probably know that Microsoft is unveiling the full public beta of the much-hyped new version of its browser, Internet Explorer 9, today. For those of you who want to take IE9 for a spin, Microsoft just launched the page where you can download the new browser; under the URL BeautyOfTheWeb.com.
As we wrote in our initial review of IE9, the new browser is built for speed, takes advantage of the latest HTML5 and other modern Web technologies, and has a relatively simple UI. And the IE9 browser will only work on Windows computer, with Bing loaded as the default search engine. → Read More
Microsoft just announced the results from their latest preview version of Internet Explorer 9, and the results are good. Typically results are measured using the Acid3 accuracy test, designed to verify that the browser is displaying the website code accurately. In the past, Safari and Chrome has scored perfectly on the test, with FireFox coming in at a 94. The results the Microsoft reported using IE9 are on par with the score that FireFox received, meaning that this version of IE9 will most likely be the final beta. What’s more interesting is that this will be the first version of Internet Explorer to use graphics hardware acceleration, meaning it could run faster then Safari 5 on the Windows platform. [via Electronista] → Read More
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is showing early signs of a ‘comeback’, reversing a practically constant slide in browser usage over the past few years for the month of June, according to figures just released by Net Applications.
Still the dominant browser in terms of market share any way you slice it, Internet Explorer appears to be reclaiming share at the expense of Mozilla Firefox, specifically, with Google Chrome and Safari also showing decent growth for the first part of the year. → Read More
It’s a pretty old video, and it has garnered some 230,000 views since its publication in November 2009, but we hadn’t seen it yet and perhaps neither have you.
Try not to grin while watching this demo video on the Office Live Workspace website.
Looks like the person demoing how to add multiple documents to your workspace is keen on using Mozilla Firefox (around the 0:25 mark) to showcase how to download Silverlight, Microsoft also competing in the browser space be damned. → Read More
Back in September of last year, Google unveiled an early look at an interesting (and rather hilarious) new project: Chrome Frame. What it does is take Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and basically turn it into Google Chrome via a plug-in. Today, that plug-in has progressed enough that Google is graduating it to full beta status. “We think it’s really stable,” engineer Alex Russell tells us in noting the move to beta.
To use Chrome Frame, all a user has to do is go here and install the plug-in on either IE6, IE7, or IE8 running on Windows 7, Vista, or XP. For developers, it’s even easier to target these users: they just have to include a meta tag in their sites’ code and their pages will start to render in IE (with Chrome Frame installed) just as they would in Chrome itself. → Read More
Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of its web browser, Safari 5. In their release notes, they highlight not only new features, but also the fact that it’s faster than the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. One competitor they didn’t mention was the most-used web browser in the world: Internet Explorer. Today, Microsoft has responded to that.
In a post on their Blogging Windows blog, the IE team has posted a video showing the latest version of IE, IE9 (still in beta testing), running against Safari 5. The result? IE smokes Safari. It’s not even close. → Read More
Microsoft’s oft-lamented browser, Internet Explorer 6, may finally be put to rest. This will make many a Web developer happy – but also Microsoft itself.
Web analytics company StatCounter claims its latest global data set shows IE6 usage in the US and Europe has fallen to 4.7 percent of the market from 11.5 percent a year ago. That said, IE8 usage in the US increased to 30.5 percent in May (up from 8.5 percent a year ago) while IE7 is currently at 16.6%, so it’s not all bad news for Redmond. → Read More
Quora is a great place to find answers about products from prominent people involved with them. It’s also a great place for those prominent people to disagree, publicly. That’s what’s happening right now in a thread about the future of Firefox.
Someone posted the following question to Quora recently: Will Firefox have double-digit market share in 3 to 5 years? Straightforward enough. Yes, says (outgoing) Mozilla CEO John Lilly. No, says Firefox co-founder Blake Ross. So far, Ross is winning the argument, according to the votes from Quora users. → Read More
