Browser

The H-Online: The German Federal Office of Information Security (BSI (German), BSI English) has compiled security recommendations for Windows PCs that will probably sound familiar to regular readers of The H: Anti-virus software – including free solutions –, backups, security updates, an alternative browser such as Google Chrome and “a healthy level of mistrust” are the main components of its proposal for a secure Windows PC. As the UK lacks a governmental organization that makes such recommendations, as usually such organizations recommend policy for public projects, it is worth seeing what Germany’s BSI suggests. ...

H-Security: Version 17 of Chrome has been released into the WebKit-based browser’s Beta channel. Its developers say that the new Chrome beta, version 17.0.963.26, is focused on improving two of the browser’s core principles: speed and security. To make Chrome “go even faster”, some web pages will start loading in the background before a user has even finished typing a URL into the Omnibox address and search bar. To reduce the time between a user pressing enter and the page being fully loaded, Chrome will pre-render some pages if the URL auto-completes to a site a user is likely to visit. According to Google Software Engineer Dominic Hamon, this will, in some cases, cause pages to appear “instantly”. ...

SophosLabs: Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin announced a new strategy to keep the web safe… Keep your Internet Explorer up to date. It is great news for Windows users who don’t appreciate the importance of staying up to date. Microsoft has been struggling with browser stragglers for years. They even ran their own campaign comparing IE 6 to spoiled milk including shameful infopr0n. ...

mozillalinks.org: Do you need the forward button? Most likely yes, but it is rarely used compared to the back button, which is the single most used widget in any browser user interface. So it doesn’t make sense to keep it present at all times, stealing focus from its helpful neighbor. To address this, current Firefox nightlies feature the forward button as optional. If there is nowhere to go further, the button is hidden instead of just disabled as shown in the screenshot below. ...

Mashable: Internet Explorer can no longer claim more than half of the web’s traffic, as of October, ending more than a decade of the default Microsoft browser’s reign. Safari’s hold on 62.17% of mobile traffic has reduced IE’s overall share of web browsing, despite still claiming 52.63% of desktop traffic, according to Netmarketshare.com. The Microsoft browser’s diminishing share (49.6%) reflects its near absence from the realms of mobile and tablet, which now make up 6% of web traffic. However, chances are, you gave up on IE long enough ago that this milestone makes you more curious as to who actually still uses the browser. ...

Google Chrome Blog: It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been three years since we launched our open source web browser, Chrome. In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers: ...

H-Online: The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) is warning of online shops which infect users with malicious software by exploiting security vulnerabilities in the user’s browser, operating system or applications. The affected shops have themselves been hacked by attackers exploiting security vulnerabilities in outdated versions of open source online shop software osCommerce. ...

Mashable: Firefox 6 isn’t scheduled to be released until Tuesday, but Mozilla has uploaded installation files to a FTP server for those who want to get their hands on the upgraded browser early. Although the new version doesn’t sport any major UI changes, the browser is reportedly 20% faster than Firefox 5. Startup time has been improved, especially for those with lots of tabs and groups. Users can now determine whether they want to load their tab groups when launching the browser, or load them within the Panorama grouping tool. ...

SOFTPEDIA: According to statistics gathered by cloud security provider Zscaler, 56.4% of enterprise users have out of date Adobe Reader plug-in versions inside their browsers. The company gathered statistics about browser plug-ins and presented the results in its “State of the Web” report [pdf] for the second quarter of 2011. “Nearly every browser is running some combination of plug-ins, add-ons or extensions. As with most software, older versions of plug-ins typically have more security vulnerabilities. This adds up to a tempting target for hackers,” the company warns. ...

H-Online: In a post on their home page, the Flock developers have announced that support for their Chromium-based social web browser will officially be discontinued on 26 April 2011. Thanking their “loyal users” for their support, the developers encourage the Flock community to migrate to another browser. Flock began life as a cross-platform browser start-up in April 2005. Distinguishing itself from other browsers, Flock automatically managed updates and media from several popular social services, including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Digg, YouTube and Twitter. ...