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On the information highway that is the Internet, browsers could be likened to your preferred mode of transport How fast they run and how stable they are makes a significant difference to your daily online experience. The main players recognize the importance of the browser market, and all are competing to become your preferred means of accessing and experiencing the Internet. Therefore, it is well worth periodically revisiting each of the main competitors, exploring what the latest version of each browser has to offer and comparing them to one another. Google's Chrome As would be expected from the online search...

Features in Internet Explorer and Firefox run neck and neck. Will a victor emerge? It may come down to convenience.Every day I sit at my computer and open two browsers: Firefox and Internet Explorer (first 6, then 7 and, as of late, 8). ... Firefox opens my Yahoo and Gmail mail accounts. Internet Explorer is aimed at my banking and stock trading accounts. ... ... I made up my mind to drop Firefox altogether. [Then] Yesterday morning, I found out that Firefox released the 3.5 beta (4), and many features are the same as in IE8. IE8 has a feature...

OverviewThe first beta release of IE8, which was demonstrated at the MIX08 conference, contained many new features, including WebSlices and Activities. In the second beta release, Activities were renamed to Accelerators. Added featuresSome of the features and changes for the Beta 2 compared to Beta 1InPrivateDelete Browsing HistorySearch SuggestionsUser Preference ProtectionCaret BrowsingAccelerators (previously known as Activities)Web Slices (previously known as WebSlices)Suggested SitesTab Color GroupingAutomatic Crash RecoverySmartScreen Filter (Known as Safety Filter in Beta 1)Tab isolation (tabs spread over separate operating system processes) Removed featuresInline AutoCompleteThe option to delete files and settings stored by addons or ActiveX controls.CSS Expressions are no...

Microsoft Corp. is taking the unusual step of issuing an emergency fix for a security hole in its Internet Explorer software that has exposed millions of users to having their computers taken over by hackers. The "zero-day" vulnerability, which came to light last week, allows criminals to take over victims' machines simply by steering them to infected Web sites; users don't have to download anything for their computers to get infected, which makes the flaw in Internet Explorer's programming code so dangerous. Internet Explorer is the world's most widely used Web browser. Sponsored Links (Ads by Google) Security for Your...

Microsoft will issue an emergency security patch Wednesday for all versions of Internet Explorer. The patch is considered a critical fix for the security flaw currently plaguing the IE browser. So far, more than 2 million computers are believed to have been infected.

How did this happen? Today I downloaded and installed Mozilla Firefox 3.0. Mozilla had been nagging me for some time to do this, so I finally figured that today I had time, and I went ahead with it. I have been a Firefox user for a few years and have had zero trouble with it. As I was messing around with it late this evening I found that the homepage icon on the toolbar was connected to "My Barack Obama.com". Imagine my disgust. I have NEVER visited this site in my life, and I certainly did not choose this as...

Excerpt - Google have announced plans to take on Microsoft and Firefox with their own open-source browser, codenamed Chrome, by releasing a specially drawn comic by Scott McCloud explaining the app. Based on the existing Webkit rendering engine, Chrome will integrate not only tab-based browsing but Google Gears and a newly integrated search and address system called Omnibox. ~ snip ~

Microsoft released a web browser on Wednesday that includes a feature that could affect the advertising model of internet rivals such as Google.

In his free time, 'Rick752' helps millions skip banners and pop-ups. Should a $40 billion industry be scared?Jumpy, blinking Internet ads really bug "Rick752". But he doesn't merely avert his gaze. A machinist and self-described "blue-collar guy" in his mid-50s from upstate New York, Rick752, as he's known online, spends most nights upstairs in his den assembling a list of Internet ad sites and related data. That work, dubbed EasyList, enables millions of Web surfers to filter and freeze out nearly all advertising that would otherwise appear on their screens. Yet the effort to block millions of Internet ads, while...

Yesterday all was fine, today, on FreeRepublic and only on FreeRepublic. The text doesn't fit in my browser window, I have to keep scrooling back and forth to read it. Any suggestions?

Standards, standards, standards. That's the general theme of a video about the next version of Internet Explorer, which will unsurprisingly be called IE8. Details thus far have been scarce, but in a half-hour video with IE's GM Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson produced by Microsoft's Channel 9, the two discuss the importance of standards, compatibility and interoperability with the upcoming browser. We also get a (faraway) sneak peak at a development build of the new hush-hush browser. The key takeaway? IE will finally be able to render the Acid 2 test correctly, which has historically been one of the...

After seeing Mozilla recommended on FR over IE I decided to try it. My reason was dissatisfaction with IE7 in that I got many "Explorer has detected a problem and must close" messages. After installing Mozilla I noticed one thing that puzzles me. When visiting forums that have HTML tags in their menu bar on the posting page, I noticed that when using Mozilla this option is gone and the tags must be manually assigned as we do here on FR. Can any of you explain why this is happening and how to correct it, if it can be corrected.

A new version of the Firefox browser, now available for testing mainly by developers, offers improvements on finding frequently visited Web sites and tools for running Web applications without a live Internet connection. The Beta 1 version of Firefox 3 released this week still has problems, including the inability to run newer Web-mail programs from Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., and a final version for consumers isn't expected for several months. But it offers a window on what's to come. Many of its new features concern bookmarks, an area typically slow to change in the browsing world. You can...

In a public mea culpa, Mozilla Corp.'s chief security officer acknowledged today that Firefox includes the same flaw that the company called a "critical vulnerability" in Internet Explorer during a two-week ruckus over responsibility for a Windows zero-day bug. "Over the weekend, we learned about a new scenario that identifies ways that Firefox could also be used as the entry point," said Window Snyder of Mozilla. "While browsing with Firefox, a specially crafted URL could potentially be used to send bad data to another application. "We thought this was just a problem with IE," Snyder continued. "It turns out, it...

Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.5 has been released and is currently being distributed to Firefox 2 users via the application's built-in software update system. The browser upgrade fixes several security bugs, which are detailed in the Firefox 2.0.0.5 section of the Mozilla Foundation Security Advisories page. Firefox 2.0.0.5 includes a fix for the firefoxurl:// security exploit, which allows an attacker to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to trick Firefox into executing malicious code. Whether Firefox or IE is responsible for the flaw has been a matter of debate over the past week. The Mozilla Foundation security advisory about the firefoxurl:// issue maintains that...

Tech help needed, browsers will not open any site but google...

Firefox Popup Blocker Allows Reading Arbitrary Local Files There is an interesting vulnerability in the default behavior of Firefox built-in popup blocker. This vulnerability, coupled with an additional trick, allows the attacker to read arbitrary user-accessible files on the system, and thus steal some fairly sensitive information Vulnerable Systems:  * Firefox version 1.5.0.9 For security reasons, Firefox does not allow Internet-originating websites to access the file:// namespace. When the user chooses to manually allow a blocked popup however, normal URL permission checks are bypassed. The attacker may fool the browser to parse a chosen HTML document stored on the local...

Firefox fans will be facing 2007 with more tranquillity than they did 2006. A year ago, it was clear that Firefox's free ride was about to end: after an astonishing five years of inactivity, Microsoft was finally launching an updated version of Internet Explorer. There seems little doubt that much of Firefox's success is down to the fact that Internet Explorer was so bad, both in terms of the eternal round of security problems and its general technical tiredness (half a decade is a very long time in computing.) Potentially, them, the appearance of Internet Explorer 7 could have marked...

I was anticipating upgrading to Firefox Version 2.0 as there have been some good reviews out there. However, my version 1.5.0.7 does not show that an update is available. I did some checking on the Mozilla site and the update is out there. However, users are having a host of problems with the installation, lost bookmarks, freezes, slow operation, etc. I suggest that anyone who has not upgraded, wait a while or at least be aware that if you install it you may have problems like those shown at the Mozilla location.

The new version of the Firefox web browser has been released today. Firefox 2.0 contains 12 major enhancements, says its developers, including a built-in spelling checker. There are also cosmetic changes to the browser, which is produced by volunteers on an open-source basis.