Internet Explorer 10 and the Windows 7 ascend

Didn’t IE9 just come out? It most definitely did.

Didn’t Microsoft boast about it? Yes they did

A weird turn of events but businesses don’t run themselves; IE10 beta is now live for you to embed your buttery fingers into and as for it’s improvements, I’m unsure of any at this time but I’ll get around to it. Oh did I forgot to mention that it’s only for Windows 7, looks like your $200 – $300 Windows Vista investment is starting to get Windows XP treatment.

Firefox 4 dominates IE9 with 4.7m downloads

Firefox 4 has doubled Internet Explorer 9’s 24 hour download total after it’s release on March 24th.

According to the W3C’s browser statistics, Firefox being the #1 used browser today is definitely living up to it’s name as 24 hours after it’s launch it has been downloaded 4.7 million times. This statistic was available via Mozilla’s Glow site. Microsoft also made their statistics available via the Windows Team Blog with some 2.3 million downloads in 24 hours (last week) and with clear justification, boasted about it.

Though this 4.7 million is double that of IE, it still hasn’t surpassed Mozilla’s Firefox 3 debut of 8 million within 24 hours.

Firefox 4 is now at 20,000,000 downloads.

Have your copy of Firefox 4 or Internet Explorer 9 yet? Check the links below:

Bing now 2nd most used search engine

Not too long ago Microsoft had offered $44 Billion to acquire Yahoo; since then, slowly but surely Bing has gained the edge by drafting a 0.5% of the search share.

As it were, the global share of search as of February:

Bing (Microsoft): 4.4%

Yahoo: 3.9%

Google: app 89%


via Statcounter

Opera on Apple’s App Store (17+ Rating)

The first alien web browser to appear on Apple’s App store; Opera, is given a traditional 17+ rating.

Opera is taking a humorous approach to this as it’s vice president Jan Standal said, “Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It’s very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18.”

Apple’s rating system for an application with a 17+ rating states that it “may also contain frequent and intense mature, horror, and suggestive themes; plus strong sexual content, nudity, strong language, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs which may not be suitable for children under the age of 17.”

Over at the App Store, user comments suggest that the application is not operating properly with many complaining of issues with it on their 4th Gen iPhones and iPod Touches, rendering issues, slow loading times and choppy text and images.


Give the Opera browser a try, whether it be on your mobile or PC – it may or may not be the browser for you.

Internet Explorer 9 RC

This week and next week things are going to get hot again as Mozilla and Microsoft are going to be rolling out their shiny new toys; Google has already released Chrome 9.0 on the 3rd of this month, Opera is believed to be working on theirs.


Internet Explorer has opted for a clean, modern design with integration for the Windows 7 and Vista platform. IE9 has come packed with a few new features such as Tracking Protection, ActiveX Filtering, a download manager and a tab page; to name a few. There has been slight controversy with regards to the operations of the Tracking protection and ActiveX Filtering operations as the former crumbles the online ad industry and the latter blocks flash-enabled websites and ActiveX controls. Along with these new features IE9 supports HTML5, CSS3, ECMAScript, WebGL and other standards.


Performance improvements also comes in the basket as Microsoft has implemented a new ‘JavaScript Timer Frequency’ to the Power Options of Windows 7 and Windows Vista which effectively gives the user more battery control for JavaScript events; A near 50% reduction in RAM consumption from its predecessor IE8 with regards to additional opened tabs and web page loading times as well as installation times being on-par with that of Google Chrome.


Microsoft has outdone themselves by promising a user experience to topple that of its competitors, you yourself can find out if IE9 is a reinvention of the Internets’ web browsing experience or IE is just as it has always been.


My personal opinion
IE is an epic fail and it has always been but honestly after using IE9 they have made drastic improvements and I WILL dig into my archives and pull out a few beta websites I’ve designed before IE support was added and I WILL find out if they’ve fixed their design standards since they submitted to the W3C.