There must be some latent value in version number. Close to 3 years old, Google Chrome is already at version 14 in its developer channel. The grand old man of web-browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), which has a much slower release cycle, is at version 9. The second oldest browser in production, Opera, is at version 11. That leaves Mozilla Firefox, which is relatively newer to the market, but crawled its way past generations by versions 1.0x or 0.5x, with 0.0.1x in near-monthly minor updates. With the browser-wars hotting up as Google Chrome maintains its breakneck development cycle and MSIE regained competitiveness with version 9, Mozilla Firefox is ceding market-share. Perhaps this is pushing Mozilla to speed up its update cycle.

In Mozilla's case, this seems more like an version number inflation, because Firefox 4 was released just this March, and has only had one minor update since (4.0.1). The group is already looking to release the next "big release", Firefox 5, on 21 June, 2011. Its file locations on Mozilla's FTP are already leaked. Unlike with older major releases where each comes with a changed user interface, layout, or at least new icons; Firefox 5 user interface is identical to that of Firefox 4. The changes here are a faster webpage rendering engine, improved HTML5 support, the ability to pin bookmarked webpages to the Windows Taskbar a-là MSIE 9, and a built-in Adobe PDF reader a-là Chrome.

DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 5 (Win32)

Released to the web, Mozilla Firefox 4 has been downloaded over 6 million times in 24 hours since its launch. The figure is three times greater than that of Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, which clocked about 2 million downloads in its first 24 hours since launch. Firefox 4 is the latest version of the popular open-source web-browser software, it introduced radical design changes to its user interface, and embraced a faster GPU-accelerated rendering engine. Firefox 4 can be downloaded from here.

Mozilla Corporation unveiled the "latest and greatest" version of its popular web-browser, Mozilla Firefox 4. With this release, the open-source browser achieves all essential features common with the latest generation of web-browsers that include Google Chrome 10+ and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, which are: HTML5 support, and GPU-accelerated webpage drawing. Apart from being a lot faster than Firefox 3.6, the new browser sports a completely new user interface that shifts tabs to the titlebar, shifts menus to a "Firefox" button, and consolidates the address bar, search bar, and navigation buttons into a single line, which it refers to as the "Awesome Bar". Apart from a new bookmark manager, Firefox lets you group tabs to streamline multitasking on the browser. Mozilla Firefox 4 will be available to a variety of platforms.DOWNLOAD: Mozilla Firefox 4

After the much hyped Internet Explorer 9 launch, it's time for the open-source Firefox to get its facelift. Mozilla has decided to launch the stable version of Mozilla Firefox 4 on the 22nd of March. Firefox 4 is a single-process web-browser that runs plugins in separate container processes. It will be up to date with the latest in web standards, including HTML5, will feature a much faster Javascript engine, and will use GPU hardware acceleration to speed up rendering. March 22 is turning out to be quite a day for the tech sphere, with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 590 graphics accelerator, and EA/Crytek's self-proclaimed blockbuster game release, Crysis 2, also releasing on the same day.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9, in its stable RTM form, nearly an year after it first released "Platform Previews", followed by Betas and Release Candidates. With its latest release, Microsoft's still popular web-browser underwent a major overhaul in terms of features and browser-engine. The new browser is backed by a faster Javascript engine, a faster rendering engine that makes use of GPU hardware acceleration for drawing, and redesigned user interface elements that make day to day web browsing experience snappier.

With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft also took a bold step in not supporting Windows XP, which still holds a large chunk of the operating system market share, the new browser only supports Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows 2008/2008-R2 series operating systems. The user interface is far more minimalistic, uses simple icons, the status and menu bars are hidden by default, with tooltips doing the job of a status bar, and the browser continues to support a large number of ActiveX components. The browser also underwent a security overhaul. For 64-bit versions of Windows, the installer also packs a 64-bit version of the browser. Oracle already has a stable 64-bit Java ActiveX plugin, while Adobe Labs has a beta 64-bit Flash player for Windows, two big steps in porting the web-browser to x86-64.DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 9

Acer made the PC monitor a little smarter by giving it PC functionality, without being a PC. The new DX241H "Web Surf Station" is a 24-inch full-HD monitor that has an in-built web-browser based on Google Chrome, and DLNA-based media player, that give users the ability to surf the web and access their media collection, without needing a PC. The monitor comes with a "Web Surf Station" remote that gives media controls, and a slide-out QWERTY keypad. The monitor can connect to the internet over wired Ethernet, a wireless network adapter can also be plugged in to the monitor's USB 2.0 ports. The monitor uses these USB 2.0 ports to access USB flash drives, external hard drives, and drive enclosures, or pretty much any media that uses the USB Mass Storage framework. A multi-format card reader is also included.

As a monitor, the DX241H is full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution), and uses a TN panel. It features 80,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 300 cd/m² brightness, fast 2 ms response time, and display inputs that include D-Sub and HDMI. It is available for pre-order in Europe, priced at €299.

After subjecting itself to the dark ages as Mozilla Firefox, and later Google Chrome started eating into its market-share, Microsoft's Internet Explorer team released version 9 of its [then] iconic browser, which actually kept up with current standards in terms of speed, features, and functionality. Internet Explorer 9 stable will be released to web on March 14, 2011.

MSIE 9 made its first public release in September 2010, in the form of a functional beta, and was fed by the occasional stability updates. It later assumed the form of the first Release Candidate in early February 2011, with a slightly tweaked user-interface. Once it achieves a stable build status, it will be updated regularly under Microsoft's cumulative security updates. Internet Explorer 9 is an "omnibox"-styled, tabbed, multi-process web-browser. Each tab and running ActiveX plugin runs in its own process. The browser is up to date in terms of standards including HTML5, packs a fast Javascript engine, and uses GPU hardware acceleration to draw web-page contents.

Microsoft released the first public beta of its sceptically-anticipated web-browser, the Windows Internet Explorer 9 (or IE9). Sceptical, because the previous two versions did not really shine compared to other web-browsers in performance, and anticipated, because it promised revolutionary changes in the rendering engine and the way it works. IE9 is one of the first browsers that uses GPU (graphics processors) for rendering almost every page element, including text and layout. It features a new Javascript engine codenamed "Chakra" that has higher JS performance, and supports HTML5 web standards. The UI itself looks very lean and modelled along the lines of Google Chrome, with just the bare-essential controls, and menus. The address bar doubles up as a search bar. There are loads of functionality improvements, including detachable tabs, Windows Aero Snap tabs, and the ability to pin favourite websites to the Windows 7 taskbar. A performance manager monitors plugins and advices you to disable those which are slowing down the browser.DOWNLOAD: Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer 9 beta

Please note, the software works only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Everyone who is more than familiar with the term 'the Internet', may have come across, or has even been affected by Mozilla Firefox, one of the most popular web-browser software. The cross-platform, open-source web-browser was born out of the Mozilla project, after practical, and minimalist simplification of the user interface. This, coupled with good performance for the stature of an Internet Explorer alternative, being safer against spyware, popups, and malicious addon software, quickly became popular, and part of the web-centric pop-culture.

Firefox has also helped shape several things in the connected IT industry. It replenished the credibility of open-source model of software development, and forced content providers to adhere to open-standards. Firefox today turns five years old, which is 'a long time on the Internet', as its team puts it. The SpreadFirefox community have rolled out a portal celebrating the event, it can be found here.

There is a valid reason behind why Safari is growing in browser market-share, apart from the fact that iPhone carries it: it is arguably the fastest browser there is. The fourth beta version that surfaced earlier this week went a few notches ahead of Firefox (Minefield) 3.2a1 and Google Chrome in a review conducted by CNet, to take the top-sport for the fastest web-browser. Internet Explorer (IE) versions 7 and 8, Opera 9.6, Firefox 3, Chrome, Firefox(Minefield) 3.1 Alpha 1 and Safari 4 were put through JavaScript tests using the SunSpider suite. The PC was equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.10 GHz. Safari 4 beta gave IE 7 a sound thrashing at the test, emerging 42 times faster. The performance difference between the two were so vast that the reviewers had to prepare a seperate graph without IE 7 so there could be more resolution in the charts showing the differences between the rest of the contendors. Then again, one must take into account the fact that Chrome and Firefox (Minefield) 3.2 weren't all that behind Safari 4 beta, only a few notches. The scores are denoted by render time in terms of milliseconds. Lesser the better. The scores stand at:

• Safari 4 (Total time: 910 ms)
• Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136 ms)
• Google Chrome (1,177 ms)
• Firefox 3 (3,250 ms)
• Opera 9.6 (4,076 ms)
• Internet Explorer 8 (5,839 ms)
• Internet Explorer 7 (39,026 ms)

Mozilla added its regular incremental update to the Firefox web-browser. With this release, the group fixed many bugs found with its previous version 3.0.5, which don't necessarily translate into security flaws. As many as seven critical thru mild security vulnerabilities were fixed, that includes a crash with memory corruption issue, and extraction of data using SessionStore files. The list of security fixes addressed can be found here. The release also fixes several bugs as listed in the updated bug list. The release also improves the ability of scripted commands to work properly with plugins, one of the major bugs fixed. Fore more information, refer to the release notes page for version 3.0.6. Firefox can be downloaded from the server closest to you, from the Firefox homepage. Existing users would be updated automatically.

Firefox, Mozilla's most successful web browser based on the Gecko browser engine holds more than 20% of the web-browser market share, according to the latest figures by NetApplications placing it at 21.34%. Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari have been on a roll in the past 24 months, at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) which has been falling in market-share from the 90+ percent it once held.

Mozilla's CEO John Lilly calls this as a significant milestone for Mozilla, and gives credit to the global Mozilla community. NetApplications gets into the details of how Firefox gained a market share growth of 20%, by attributing it to the relatively high number of public holidays between November and December, when users accessed internet from home. This since the significant movers were noted to be home/domestic users rather than corporate users.

On September the 3rd, Google released a beta version of its upcoming Chrome web-browser software. The beta was released at 3:02 PM EDT and it captured 0.5% of the browser market share in just 2 hours of release. What's more, by the end of 9 hours since launch, the browser had already captured 1% of the market. Net Applications found that value to fluctuate but the browser currently is looking above the 1% mark. Data was collected studying the browser's ID:

Official Build 1583
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

The numbers are mind-boggling. Considering there are about 1.46 Billion internet users, 1% should take at least 14 million users to keep that value. In other terms, the number of times Chrome beta may have been downloaded looks threatening to Mozilla. It wouldn't be too far sighted to think Google Chrome could challenge Mozilla's world record when (or if) a stable release does come out (G-Mail is still beta). The browser has received a largely positive response albeit issues concerning its privacy policy, where irregularities were noted. All in all, Google did manage to make heads turn.

Google plans to launch its very own web-browser software in competition to Microsoft Internet Explorer called Google Chrome. The new browser according to entries at the official Google blog suggest the driving force behind the browser is to provide value-added features to its users, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web. It is claimed that the browser is tailored to give the most out of common tasks on the internet as a web-browser has become a very significant component of the connected PC.

The browser designed to be streamlined and simple for you to accomplish tasks quickly and easily by offering enhanced address-bar features and other elements that are very different from those on other browsers. The product will be open-source. Says the blog post "To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go."

Google released a comic book explaining its design approach towards the web-browser, it can be read here. Under the hood, Google claims the browser to have what it takes to run complex web-applications any by keeping each browser tab in its "sandbox", the probability of a web-application crash on one tab affecting other tabs is eradicated. A beta version of this browser software would be released in over 100 countries tomorrow, September the 2nd.