Avencius

Mozilla released the fifth maintenance and security release of their popular Firefox web browser. As with all security releases, this one is recommended for all users, and will be downloaded automatically if you already have a previous version installed.

The core of this release is addressing several security issues, of which 3 are deemed critical, 1 high, 1 moderate and 3 low. The critical and high issues are related to: XSS vulnerabilities in SessionStore, XSS and JavaScript privilege escalation, Crashes with evidence of memory corruption, and Cross-domain data theft via script redirect error message.

Other changes include support for the Bengali, Esperanto, Galician, Hindi, and Latvian languages; multiple accessibility fixes; a fix related to multiple signed XPI installations; and more.

You can manually download the release from Mozilla's web site, or force an update using Help -> Check for Updates...

Continuing a new, but unfortunate, tradition a third security release in just a little more than two months has been made of the fourth or fifth browser (depending on who'd you ask) in the world. As this is a Kestrel release you'll need to manually download and install it, but with Opera 10 things will be nicer in the future.

In this release 7 security fixes are included ranging from extremely severe to highly severe and include: manipulating text input contents can allow execution of arbitrary code, HTML parsing flaw can cause Opera to execute arbitrary code, long host names in file: URLs can cause execution of arbitrary code, script injection in feed preview can reveal contents of unrelated news feeds, and built-in XSLT templates can allow cross-site scripting.

It shouldn't be a surprise that this release is recommended for all Opera users. Whether this affects Opera 10 Alpha 1 is unknown. You can find the full details on the changes for each platform in the change logs provided by the Opera Desktop Team.

Everybody loves robots, especially those from Japan (Gundam!). Credits go to Mozilla Links for pointing out to Hiroshi Shimoda's artwork, which is a revision of the Firefox 3.1 robot.

In a rather surprise move Google released Chrome 1.0, deeming it stable for daily usage. Google has chosen to make Chrome final, because it has met their standards for stability and performance. However in the end it's up to you to decide if it's truly worthy.

So for those who haven't tried out Chrome yet, what makes it so special, especially compared to the competition? Well, Chrome uses a unique approach of using multiple Chrome processes for tabs from different domains (configurable), as well as plug-ins. This allows for greater stability (only a tab crashes), less freezes (only a tab freezes), as well as better memory management (each process killed releases memory). With the use of WebKit of Safari fame and a home brew V8 JavaScript engine Chrome's focus is also on performance.

Picking up and extending features from the competition Chrome features an incognito mode where you anonymously browse the web without leaving traces on the PC (cache, history, ...). Another feature is that each tab collects your most visited sites in thumbnails, looking a little bit like Opera's Speed Dial. Web sites can now have a shortcut in Windows, allowing you to open a web site as a solo window, without browser controls. This approach looks a lot like Mozilla Prism. Of course their are still "standard" features such as tabs, in-line spell check, one click bookmarks, and a smart location bar that searches browsing history.

In the future Google will work on an extensions API, similar to Firefox, but is currently lacking. Other new features in the planning are RSS, Linux and Mac support. No doubt when those features are required it will accumulate a much larger market, though it's competing with Opera already.

If you don't have Chrome yet you can download it from their web site. Users of previous releases will get the update automatically (except for those using the dev channel, they have a slightly different build).

Strong as ever topping the 20% market share, Mozilla has released the second (of three) beta builds of Firefox 3.1. Don't dismiss this second beta as yet another one, as it contains not only lots of features compared with 3.0, but even compared with the previous beta.

First of all, all the changes from beta 1 are available here as well. Color management is enabled by default, which offers richer color experiences for our photographers. TraceMonkey, the new JavaScript Just-In-Time compiler is now enabled by default and deemed stable enough for this beta. Why this is exciting? Well, because currently TraceMonkey is in fierce competition with Google's V8 and Safari's SquirrelFish Extreme. These three JavaScript engines are top notch in execution of code, and are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Good job Mozilla for staying in the race!

So what's truly new about this beta? Well, something Safari, Chrome and IE8 users have seen for months, a proper privacy mode. It's now possible to switch to privacy mode (discretely, unlike Chrome), which means you can browse without leaving any traces in the cache or history. Firefox 3.1 even pushes it further by restoring your browser session before you switched, making it much easier to browse for pr0n, erm... a present for your loved ones that they should not yet know of.

Other new features include support for web worker threads (allowing multi-threaded web applications), speculative parsing for faster content rendering for Gecko, and last but not least a new restore session dialog, which tells you which tabs (in what window) where open.

As this is still a beta, it may break extensions and is not intended for normal end users. However when you're a true fan or web developer it's at a good quality to try it out. You can find the download, in 54 different languages, at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Fulfilling their promise, Opera Software released the first preview of their new web browser, Opera 10. This first alpha release sports several key improvements that will certainly help those who use Opera regularly.

Often it was pointed out that many subsequent releases focused too much on new stuff, while not finishing or polishing existing features. With Kestrel (Opera 9.5, 9.6) picking up Peregrine's (Opera 10) changes to address the large gap with Merlin (9.0, 9.1, 9.2) some of the goodies are already in our hands.

So what are the key improvements in Peregrine? Well, first of all their is finally an auto-update system! This way it's much easier for new and old to simply upgrade, making it much better in moving the entire "population" to a new, more secure and feature rich version.

Another big improvement is the inline spell check. In the old days their is a spell check available, but you had to activate it yourself. Now, just like in Word, you'll see red thingies under misspelled words. You can install multiple languages, though you'll need to choose one of them before the spell check will know how to look at your mambo jumbo.

Opera Mail, or M2 in the old days, has seen significant changes in this release. With Kestrel we already got some nice goodies, but this time we have rich content formatting for the first time. Yeah, you can now different font styles and families, colors. Another nice improvement is the ability to remove mail from the POP server after X days, a very standard feature which has been missing in action for a long time. So it's good to see this old friend back.

Of course their are lots of other improvements, such as the new rendering engine (Presto 2.2), and performance boosts. Do note when trying out this release that it's an alpha, meaning it could create little black holes when the particles collide.

Read everything about it on the Opera Desktop Team's blog, and don't forget to comment your findings.

It was already promised during the launch of the first test build of Chrome, but now issue 18 has been updated with more information. What is issue 18? That's the plan to add extensions support to Chrome!

Although nothing is yet released, the plan does detail some of the proposed ideas to implement in a later Chrome release. Hopefully this will happen before Chrome 1.0 is released, as in my opinion it's a vital part of a browser such as Chrome, which relies on simplicity, but needs extensions to alter beyond the basics.

Some of the requirements are: based as much as possible on existing web standards (and not proprietary APIs), easy installation, rich experience (as if it was part of Chrome quality), auto-update, NNAPI plug-ins as extensions, compatibility with many releases (no breakage each x.1+ release), and much much more.

Hopefully Google will also keep their focus on Linux and Mac builds, as with extensions support Chrome could finally become a true Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer or Safari killer app.

Google has released a new beta of their, almost as popular as Opera, web browser which is know for its simplicity and awesome speed. This new beta, following a complete release number of 0.4.154.25, adds new features, but not yet an extension API similar to Firefox.

Some sites have already reported that Google is planning for a final release of Chrome early next year, as well as OEM deals to bundle with computers. Current quality, in my opinion feels good. Stability has improved even further in this release, while performance is similar in JavaScript to Firefox 3.1's TraceMonkey as well as WebKit's SquirrelFish Extreme. Adding the promised extension API should really help in building a bigger market share, and equaling Firefox in features.

In this release the most noteworthy feature is the bookmarks manager. Previously there was none, so it's now much easier to manage bookmarks, as well as import and export them. In the beginning options were limited, but Google seems to be working on finding a good balance and has added several options now under a new privacy header, allowing the more paranoid to disable anything that Google might eavesdrop on you. Also the pop-up blocking behavior has changed in notifying you, a moderate security issue got fixed regarding your downloads as well as updates to Gears and V8.

Those who have Google Chrome installed will be automatically updated (though you can force it through the about dialog). New users can download it from Chrome's site.

Only a few weeks in beta but already a final, Opera Mini 4.2 is here to improve your mobile internet experience even further.

As previously reported Opera Mini 4.2 adds more features (of which some were lost in the transition to the rewrite of 3 to 4), which all in all are most welcome. One of the new features is support for themes, allowing you to customize it to fit your needs or simply feel appropriate for your mobile OS theme. Another nice feature, though limited to new Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, is support for video. With a new server park in the US people on the other side of the world will experience faster browsing as Opera Mini 4.2 will now connect to a more local server. Last, but not least, is support for syncing of Notes, making Opera Link even better.

You can get Opera Mini 4.2 from the official web site.