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Opera Software has exacted revenge on Microsoft for allegedly making anyone who visits the MSN home page using Opera get the impression that something is wrong with the browser. Opera's answer was to produce a version of its browser that it calls the Opera 7 "Bork" version, after the Swedish chef Bork from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork! Opera's Bork version renders all pages fine - except the MSN home page. This page loads as normal and then immediately gets translated into Borkspeak. (A screenshot is here; those on slow connections be warned, the image is 102k.) In a...

DUBLIN--A computer web browser that is said to least quadruple surfing speeds on the Internet has won the top prize at an Irish exhibition for young scientists, it was announced on Saturday. Adnan Osmani, 16, a student at Saint Finian's College in Mullingar, central Ireland spent 18 months writing 780,000 lines of computer code to develop the browser. Known as "XWEBS", the system works with an ordinary Internet connection using a 56K modem on a normal telephone line. The software was tested by scientists at University College, Dublin last week and they found it boosted surfing speeds by between 100...

Hordes of Apple faithful were on hand Tuesday for another of CEO Steve Jobs’ revival meetings, again disguised as the keynote address at the Macworld exposition in San Francisco. And Jobs didn’t disappoint, telling his flock of a new Web browser, an open-source presentation program plus a pair of new notebook computers, including the first one ever to have a 17-inch screen. THE BIGGEST NEWS on the software front was the announcement of two new programs which will directly compete with Microsoft software that handle similar tasks. Safari is Apple’s new turbo-charged Web browser for OS X (the current version...

Tech doesn't buoy Netscape browser Despite new technology, Netscape continues to lose ground to Internet Explorer, which now has well over 90 percent of the market. A twice-yearly study from StatMarket, a division of WebSideStory, showed that despite recent technological advances, AOL Time Warner's Netscape Communications browsers, which use technology from the open-source Mozilla project, have ceded more ground to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. According to the study, Netscape browsers are losing market share at a steady clip, falling to a new low of 3.4 percent as of this week. A year ago, Netscape' market share stood at 13 percent, but...

The Mozilla.org open-source project introduced the latest version of its Web browser this week, aimed at improving speed and performance, but the software still has a ways to go, some consumers say. The group, sponsored by AOL Time Warner-owned Netscape Communications, launched Mozilla 1.1, free Web browser software that is the product of collaborative efforts of open-source developers. The latest full release makes improvements to the browser's stability, Web site compatibility, and standards support. The software's introduction comes only months after the debut of Mozilla 1.0, the group’s first completed browser, which was in the works for several years. Netscape...

For the last week I have had problems with how slow FR main pages (News/General/etc) are loading, and loading with NO side-bar. Additionally, when I use the refresh feature with any of the main pages, over 50% of the time the software freezes and I have to close the site using Control/Alt/Delete function as it is unresponsive to normal exiting. I have Windows 98SE, IE v.6.0.26. My system is defragged, Temp files deleted, and cookies deleted. I have uninstalled Pop-Ad Stopper recently installed (thinking that might be the problem) but am still using a recent installation of Ad-Aware. Has anyone...

My pride and joy browser (Opera 6.0 - Linux) has just been canned in favor of Mozilla. In the last week I have seen two offensive ads in the advertisements window, the first being "20 Condoms Free" and the second being "Hot Skins for your Browser". Both were accompanied by semi-lurid graphics. These R-rated ads are being delivered although I am signed up only for "automotive" as a preferred category. There is a paid version of Opera without the ads but I'm not interested at this point. I would expect that the hot skins ad becomes X-rated real quick if...

Just because Opera users (like me) use as little M$ software as we can, does not mean the exploit gang aren't looking at us too. If you are using Opera 6.01 or 02, look at the source URL or at GreyMagic Security Advisory GM#001-OP

We've waited more than four years for Mozilla, the Netscape-backed open-source browser--and we're still waiting for the completed version. But Mozilla has finally posted its official Release Candidate 1 (RC 1) and plans to release the final soon. In our unofficial tests, RC 1 ran nearly as fast as Internet Explorer 6. Plus, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which no other browser does, and it promises a greater ability to customize than competing browsers do. Best of all, Mozilla is completely free: no fees and no strings attached. Sure, we found some flies in the ointment, but we're...