Archive for the ‘Browsers’ Category

Fresh out the door, users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 are complaining of glitches one day after the IE8 final build was made available at noon Eastern time on Thursday. Dozens of posters are complaining about printing from Web sites, search functions, and disappearing images.

The browser, which was supposed to make navigating a Web site easier and faster by adding a new favorites bar, address bar, and tabs bar, is instead making the user experience not so easy.

And this surprises who? Anyone, who’s anyone, especially anyone who enjoys the wine of the month knows that this is just another typical Microsoft release.

Developers just got used to all the quirks of IE7 and now they have IE8 on their hands. Wonderful.

Microsoft publicly launched Internet Explorer 8 on Thursday, the latest version of its market-dominating Web browser.

The application, an integral part of Microsoft’s eagerly awaited Windows 7 operating system, could be downloaded from Microsoft’s Web site beginning at 9 a.m. Pacific time, free for people using licensed Microsoft operating systems.

IE8, as it is commonly referred to, has been in public beta testing for about a year, but Thursday’s launch marks its full public rollout.

After the last beta release, I have been hesitant to try any Firefox beta for a while.

Mozilla on Thursday released the third beta version of Firefox 3.1, aka Shiretoko, one of the frontrunners in the current race to improve Web browsers.

According to the Firefox 3.1b3 release notes, the new version includes better “Web worker” multitasking abilities, a faster Gecko rendering engine for showing Web pages, and upgrades to the TraceMonkey engine for faster, more stable execution of Web sites’ JavaScript programs. (Follow these links to download Firefox 3.1b3 for Windows and Mac OS X.)

I’ll wait for the full release, and until then, I will keep testing Safari 4, so I can compare the two when the time comes.

Are you using the beta? If so, how is it working out for you?

I wondered why my installation of Firefox updated itself. Now I know.

The latest update to the open-source browser shores up a number of security risks, including some that Mozilla says could be exploited by an attacker to run commands on a vulnerable computer. But the flaws still affect the current Thunderbird release, 2.0.0.19.

One of the bugs involves a library used for PNG images, and could presumably be triggered by a poisoned image on a Web page. The second would be harder to exploit, as its description says you’d have to reload a page specially crafted to target a memory management flaw to get hit.

I hope Thunderbird updates itself soon.

Warning. Your Firefox will probably update sometime today.

Mozilla developers released the latest version of their Firefox browser Tuesday, version 3.0.6, which fixes several security bugs in the software.

The most critical issues are bugs in the browser’s JavaScript and layout engines that could be exploited by attackers to run unauthorized software on a victim’s PC, Mozilla said. The flaws also affect Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client and SeaMonkey Internet software suite.

So this explains why Firefox updated itself when I booted up the MacBook yesterday.

Mozilla has issued eight patches for its Firefox Web browser, three of which fix problems classified as critical.

The patches come after security experts have recommended using a browser other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 and older versions of IE due to a dangerous vulnerability. Microsoft is due to release an emergency patch for that problem Wednesday.

I haven’t used my Yahoo Mail account in so long, but then again, I might use it, if Yahoo would get off their high horse and let me back into my ’slobokan’ email address I had since day one, that I can no longer access.

Yahoo unveiled a new toolbar on Monday that will give Web users access to their e-mail as they surf the Web, the latest step in its strategy to make its products more open to users and third parties.

…

The Yahoo toolbar available later this week will allow users access to a selected group of programs from the toolbar without leaving the page they are on.

For example, users get notifications of new e-mails on the toolbar and can open them. The Internet company also showed off a newly styled in-box, which combines social networking functions and also allows users access to third party programs.

No toolbar in the world is going to help me get my email address back, and I refuse to send them a photo id and such when I never used one to obtain the email address in the first place.

Finally. One of the coolest features comes to Firefox.

The much-anticipated Firefox 3.1 beta 2 is out and about for Windows and Mac users, incorporating the faster JavaScript engine TraceMonkey as the default setting and introducing Private Browsing, which has been in development for years. There are other improvements, of course, but the big one is the ability to turn off the cache and other private data settings with a single click.

I’m not sure I will need to use it, but it’s nice to know I have the option.

I like the Chrome browser. It’s fast. It’s ridiculously fast. I don’t use it while finding items to blog about, or for anything else “productive”. But when I want to kick back and just surf the web, and look at promotional items, I have been testing Chrome.

Bach Khoa Internetwork Security, a security-research firm in Vietnam, claims to be the first to discover a critical vulnerability in Google’s Chrome browser.

“This is the first critical Chrome vulnerability permitting [a] hacker to perform a remote code-execution attack and take complete control of the affected system,” the firm wrote in its Sept. 5 advisory. While four Chrome vulnerabilities were discovered, Bach Khoa said the “Save As” flaw is the only one that can allow an attacker to launch remote attacks from a victim’s PC. Other vulnerabilities just crash the browser.

Thank goodness I don’t save anything while using Chrome, huh?

Brand new off the shelf and it already needs repairing. Welcome to the big time, Firefox.

The same day Firefox 3 was shipping, Tipping Point, a research organization for vulnerability analysis and discovery, released an upcoming advisory (ZDI-CAN-349) about a new security vulnerability that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, affecting Firefox 2 and 3 in their Zero Day Initiative site.

Following their own policies, Tipping Point has not disclosed any details about the vulnerability besides it would require user interaction, while Mozilla works on a patch. Mozilla Security reports that there is no known public exploit for this bug at this time.

Over 8 million people downloaded Firefox 3 on “download day”. Now, 8 million people will be anxiously awaiting Firefox 3.01. They’ll truly hit the big time if they need to send us security updates once a month like you know who.

After a rough week of Firefox crashes, I myself am looking for some massage therapy schools close by. I am sure there is someone out there willing to give me a full body massage at a nice low price.

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