Browser Security News

Unsuspecting users who happen to launch the executable attachment carried by the Storm Worm can inadvertantly open a Pandora’s Box of problems. The Storm Worm can completely take over a PC, allowing the worm writers to control the compromised machine remotely for the purpose of sending out spam, stealing data, or blasting out denial-of-service attacks. […]

A store owner in a bad neighborhood must balance safety against commerce. Too many locks and bars will keep away customers with the crooks. Based on Microsoft Watch reader feedback, Internet Explorer 7 sacrifices too much usability in the interest of safety. I asked for reader response on Tuesday after observing an anomaly among Microsoft […]

Below are the answers to the questions some of you submitted a little while ago for Blake Ross, the founder and creator of Mozilla Firefox. As Opera users we owe a lot of credit to Firefox for successfully bringing more awareness to alternative browsers. We benefited a great deal from iby having less compatibility issues […]

What does Microsoft know that we simple users of Internet Explorer don’t? With Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft made some hefty changes to ActiveX controls, turning off a bunch by default and flipping on the security warning switch for many others. If timing means anything, the ActiveX changes are possibly quite important. Today, over at Symantec’s […]

Last Friday, over at the IE Weblog, Tony Chor rightly boasted about 100 million Internet Explorer 7 downloads. How many of those downloaders are dissatisfied, though? Judging from the e-mail coming into the Microsoft Watch Tips in-box or comments to IE 7 posts, there are many upgraders looking to turn back to Internet Explorer 6. […]

When I mentioned in a post yesterday that I had heard there was an alpha build of Internet Explorer (IE) 8.0 circulating inside Microsoft, some were skeptical. But over on Microsoft’s Channel 9 site, Bruce Morgan, a software development manager on the IE team, who describes his job as "lead(ing) the Vista RSS platform, IE […]

I’m pleased to report that on January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation. However, even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to websites in the US were using IE7, making IE7 the second […]

Will Apple release a version of its Safari browser for Windows? The Mozilla Foundation seems to believe such a move is a distinct possibility. Buried in the wiki information the Mozilla Foundation posted this week about its future plans for Firefox is a statement under the "Observations & Assumptions" section that reads: "Apple may have […]

Mozilla has published a wiki page detailing its plans for the next version of Firefox, codenamed "Gran Paradiso". The target release date is sometime in the third quarter this year and it hopes to release a major version of Firefox every year. While Firefox is still aiming for a broad mainstream audience, Mozilla recognizes that […]

Mozilla developers plan to update Firefox on Feb. 1 with bug fixes to make the browser work better under Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system, which will have been rolled out to consumers two days earlier. According to notes from the weekly status meeting held Monday, the first of next month is the tentative release […]