Google threatened to withdraw from the Chinese market following the “sophisticated and targeted” attacks, which it said originated in China. Hackers used a flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser to target the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Following Google’s revelations, the French and German governments advised their citizens to switch to a different browser until the hole had been closed. Microsoft reacted by quickly updating the browser, nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update. However, Google has now said it is going to phase out support for the browser “starting with Google Docs and Google Sites”.

It said that as a result, some “key functionality” of the applications would not work when used with IE6. Google Docs is the firm’s answer to products such as Microsoft Office, whilst Google Sites allows people to create web pages.

Google’s Rajen Sheth wrote in an official blog post:

“The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively.”

Threat downplayed

Around 20% of web users still use the nine-year old browser, including many UK government departments. But many developers want to see the browser phased out as soon as possible. The online campaign ie6nomore, supported by more than 70 web firms, says that because the browser does not support modern web standards it restricts what developers can do and is “holding the web back”.

Microsoft has said that it will support the browser until 2014. Microsoft has released a fix for Internet Explorer and recommended that customers install the update as soon as possible or update to the latest version of the web browser for “improved security”. Microsoft normally issues patches monthly but the high-profile nature of the attacks led it to act more quickly.

Market share

The UK government played down the threat and said there was “no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure”.

However, Microsoft took the unusual step of patching the hole nearly three weeks ahead of its regular security update. The new patch is available via the Microsoft Update site and will also be fed out to those who have their machines set to update automatically. All versions of Internet Explorer will receive the update.

Microsoft has admitted that it has known about the vulnerability “since early September” 2009 and had planned to patch it in February. The bad publicity has allowed rivals such as Firefox to gain market share.

According to web analytics company StatCounter, Firefox is now a close second to Internet Explorer (IE) in Europe, with 40% of the market compared to Microsoft’s 45% share. In some markets, including Germany and Austria, Firefox has overtaken IE, the firm said. Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, has just released the latest version (3.6) of the open-source browser.

Opera Turbo is the feature most prominently listed in promotional materials. Turned on with the flick of a switch, it will compress websites to maintain browsing speeds even in bandwith constrained situations like a slow WiFi connection or a choppy 3G connection. According to Opera’s own tests, Opera Turbo can speed up the web up to about 8 times.

The interface has also been completely redesigned, and is now “streamlined and elegant” according to Opera. Tabs are on top, but in true Opera fashion, can be placed anywhere else too. Tabs can now also be displayed as website thumbnails, which could be useful on widescreen configurations.

One feature which should have been included a long time ago, has now also finally arrived to Opera: automatic updates. No longer will an update require a re-installation, which should bring Opera up to par with the rest of the pack when it comes to up-to-date installations.

Built through Mozilla’s global, open source development process, Firefox 3.5 is said to be more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and ten times faster than Firefox 2 on complex websites thanks to a new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine. The new version arrives roughly one year after the release of Firefox 3.0, which was also billed as “two to three times faster” than its predecessor.

Firefox 3.5 has undergone “extensive under-the-hood work to support new technologies” that will allow Web developers to create the next generation of Web content, Mozilla says. It also packs a handful of user-oriented features such as:

Open Video and Audio: Supports playback of video and audio content from within the browser, without the need for plugins. Web developers can use these technologies to design pages that interact with video content in new and interesting ways, offering richer interactive experiences beyond controlling playback and volume.

Privacy Controls: Like the “Private Browsing” feature of Apple’s Safari web browser, an identically-named addition to Firefox 3.5 similarly prevents the browser from storing anything related to a browser session once it’s been activated.

Unique to Firefox 3.5, however, is a new Forget this Site feature that removes every trace of a site from a user’s browser. Users who want to remove all private data or activity from the past few hours can also use a Clear Recent History function, which is another Firefox-only feature that offers users more control “over what stays and what goes.”

Location Aware Browsing: Location Aware Browsing is an optional feature that, when enabled, lets websites tap into a user’s location information to find nearby points of interest and return additional, data-like maps of their particular area.

Firefox is currently the world’s second-leading browser with a 22.5% share of the global web browser market. It trails only Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which maintains 65.5% of the market. Apple’s Safari is distant third with just under 8.5% market share.

Safari 4 is built on some of the most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3, according to Apple’s tests. The company also claims that Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.

Starting with the development of the open source WebKit browser engine, Apple has been an industry leader in defining and implementing innovative web standards. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, enabling an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts.

Safari 4 is also the first officially released browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Other new features in Safari 4 include:

• Top Sites, offering a visual preview of frequently visited and favorite pages
• Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages
• Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks.
• Smart Address Fields for automatically completing web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions
• Search Fields, to fine tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches
• Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.

Safari 4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download.

New Features

Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section.

Full Screen Mode: If you’ve ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu.

Form Autofill: Filling out your information in forms over and over again can be tedious. Form autofill helps by showing information you’ve previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that’s easy to do from the Tools menu.

Google has said that it will refer to the latest update as Chrome 2, but that’s mainly a metric to help them keep track of changes internally. In reality Google prefers to roll out new features as and when they can, irrespective of version numbering.

The critical flaw involves a failure to properly validate input from a renderer (tab) process. Successful exploitation of the flaw might allow the injection of hostile code onto vulnerable systems, hence the critical tag.

Both flaws are explained in more depth in an advisory by Google here. It’s the second time in two weeks that Google has updated its browser software in response to a security problem. A previous update – issued on 23 April – addressed an unrelated lower-risk security bug.

The two “high-risk” flaws involve same-origin violation security bugs. The other six moderate or low risk flaws are detailed in Mozilla’s release notes here.

Firefox 3.0.9 also addresses a number of stability issues, including a problem where a corrupt local database might cause Firefox to “lose” its stored cookies. Another flaw that means in-line images might not be displayed when using webmail accounts was also plugged. User systems are to be automatically updated to version 3.0.9 within 48 hours. The release can also be downloaded manually beforehand. Firefox version 2.0 is no longer supported.

The update to Firefox version 3.0.9 comes days before the expected delivery of an “almost ready” fourth beta of the next version of its browser, Firefox 3.5.

Users will be able to download IE8 in 25 languages at 5pm (GMT) from Microsoft’s IE Web site and its online download center.

Microsoft has been preparing users for IE8 for a good year now, stressing performance improvements, better support for Internet technology standards, the addition of new features to help people keep track of most visited sites and favorite sources of information, and of course, security, as highlights of the new browser.

According to the report Microsoft released Thursday, based on research conducted by NSS Labs, IE8’s Release Candidate 1 was 69% effective at catching malware before it did damage to a user’s system. Mozilla Firefox 3.07 came in second with a 30% effectiveness rate, with Apple Safari’s 3 in third place with a 24% rate and Google’s Chrome 1.0.154 in fourth place with 16% effectiveness rate.

NSS Labs said in the report that the data was collected from tests conducted in just over 12 days from Feb 26 to March 10 in its labs in Austin, Texas. During the course of the test, the company said it monitored connectivity to ensure the browsers could access the live malware sites being tested, and performed 141 discrete tests. The margin of error of the tests was 3.76 percent, according to NSS Labs.

Amy Barzdukas, a senior director at Microsoft, acknowledged that it might be a conflict of interest for Microsoft to sponsor a report in which IE8 came out on top in terms of security. However, she encouraged people to “look closely at the results” before making a judgment call on the validity of the report.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system.

This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.

Maximum PC explains the differences between the browsers, future and present, so that you can make a more informed decision about the primary tool you use to browse the web. From the rendering engines used to the features that set the different browsers apart, this is a comprehensive, blow-by-blow battle between Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10.

• 65.55% – Internet Explorer
• 21.53% – Firefox
• 8.29% – Safari
• 1.12% – Chrome
• 0.70% – Opera
• 0.57% – Netscape
• 0.22% – Other

The report highlights further gains in Firefox (+0.19%) and Safari (+0.36%) users along with the continued drop in Internet Explorer users (-0.6%) since December 2008.