It’s been over several months since I last used Internet Explorer. Perhaps it could be the same case with you as well. Over the last two years, Internet Explorer has not only lost momentum, but the number of IE users have drastically dropped. Right from the first day of Chrome’s release, it has been a serious threat to the future of Internet Explorer, and today we see the fate of once-upon-a-time popular browser — Internet Explorer, going down the drain.

According to the latest figures from StatCounter, for the first time ever, Google Chrome has become one of the most popular Web browsers worldwide, surpassing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Chrome has taken an overall lead with 32.76 percent share, while IE has drastically dipped to 31.94 percent.

Back in March this year, Chrome had surpassed IE, however, that was just for one single day over the weekend. The browser reached 32.7 percent of the global rankings on March 18. Chrome was pushed back behind, as IE continued to dominate in the market.

Exactly a year back, IE dominated the Web browser market with a 43 percent share, which was followed by Mozilla Firefox with 29 percent share. Chrome, which was picking its pace slowly, was at the third position with just 19 percent share. Today, IE has lost almost 12 percent market share while Google’s Chrome has grown by 13 percent to the dominate IE and Firefox.

StatCounter’s data is based on over 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US; 850 million from the UK) to the StatCounter network of more than three million websites. StatCounter’s statistics are prominently considered to be reliable, however, stats shared by NetMarketShare are quite radical and differ widely. NetMarketShare’s stats show that Internet Explorer had 54.09 percent share this month followed by Firefox with 20 percent share, and Chrome placed in the third position with 18.85 percent.

It is known that most of Chrome’s traffic share is from Asia and South America, however, IE and Firefox are still dominating in North America and Europe. In India, Chrome has already achieved the number one spot with 8 percent lead over Firefox. On the other hand, IE continues to rule in Japan, China and South Korea with nearly 50 percent of traffic share.

After the neat refresh of Bing Bar 7.0 with useful app buttons, the Bing team has released Bing Bar 7.1 with a slew of new features that provides richer access to your social network, more entertainment options, and updates to the popular Bing Bar apps.

Apart from several improvement under the hood regarding notifications, configurability, and performance, following are the benefits that the latest update offers you:

• Facebook Chat: Bing Bar now allows you to chat with your Facebook friends without having Facebook opened in your browser.
• Slacker Radio: The latest update brings Slacker Radio to the bar. It allows you to listen to music, sports, news, comedy and more without interrupting your web browsing.
• Updated News App: The existing Bing Bar news app has been updated to be more visual now and includes more sources. While you can focus on the topics that interest you, the app notifies you in case of a breaking news within the Bing Bar.
• Search Suggestions: The Bing Bar provides suggested search terms as you browse. The Bing team has been working on expanding the sites and the methods to suggest searches making it more effective and easier for you.

Download and install manually, or if you’re already a user of Bing Bar 7.0, you’ll get the upgrade automatically delivered to you over the next few months. While the Bing Bar is available in different languages and for different geographies, some of the features of the latest version are not yet available in all markets. The Bing Bar is available for Internet Explorer 7 or later on Windows XP with Service Pack 3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

The term “private browsing” far exceeds taking precautions. It entails ensuring that computer users can hide their activity while traveling the information highway. There are different motives for private browsing with security and privacy being the front runners. No matter the inspiration for using private browsing, the bottom line remains that people do not want to leave tracks on the Internet.

Activating Private Browsing
There are various methods that can be used to activate private browsing. The methods can vary across operating systems, variety of devices used and browsers.

The following are ways to privately browse the Internet:

Internet Explorer 9 (Microsoft)
IE9 offers “InPrivate Browsing which can easily be activated from the Safety menu or through a shortcut. This feature does not save cache or cookies. When logging out of the InPrivate mode, the search and browsing history is erased. “
Method for private browsing – Go to the “Tools” menu and select “InPrivate Browsing”.

Firefox 3.6
The Private Browsing Window is an extension Firefox offers that allows you to “privately browse” during a session. You can browse using the new incognito window in conjunction with your existing session. In the past, Firefox would automatically close windows and tabs in working sessions when you switched to “private browsing” mode.
Click on “Tools”.
Click on “Private Browsing Window”.
Important fact – “Private Browsing Window” is still under testing, and it might not be as smooth as expected. This feature only comes with Firefox 3.6.

Google Chrome
Google Chrome has what is called “Incognito Mode”. This feature allows you to surf the web incognito with your personal information and history not being saved on the hard drive. Do not worry, while in this mode, if you make changes to your general settings or bookmarks the changes will be automatically saved.
Important tip – If using Chrome OS, you have an alternative feature called “guest browsing”. If you browse as a “guest”, you can download files and browse the web in a normal-fashion. All the information from your sessions will be erased.
To open “incognito mode”
Click located in the browser toolbar.
Click on “New incognito window”.
You will see a new window opening with the  icon located at the corner. You can browse normally in the other window.

Safari 5
With Safari 5’s Private Browsing feature you can rest assured that your files, and cookies will not be saved to your hard drive. Your entire search history and browsing history will be automatically erased upon logging out of privacy mode.
How to activate “Privacy Browsing”
Click on the “Gear” icon (The Action Menu) found in the upper-right corner of the browser.
From the menu, select the option “Private Browsing”.
You will see a pop-up dialog displayed explaining the “Private Browsing” mode
Click the “OK” button to enable “Private Browsing”.

iPad
You can now turn on “Private Browsing” in iOS 5.0 in Safari. This allows you to browse the Internet via your iPad without having to worry about a record of your activities being stored.
Instructions to Enable “Private Browsing”
Press the “Home” button to return to the iPad’s home application screen.
Click on the “Settings” application icon
Click on “Safari” located in the left-hand menu and enter iPad’s Safari settings.
Switch the “Private Browsing” switch under the Privacy section to “On” which will allow private browsing on the iPad.
When turning off “Private Browsing”, reverse the above directions.

iPhone
“Private Browsing allows you to surf the Internet without saving any information from the websites you have visited. This proves helpful in not leaving digital footprints on your device.
To enable “Private Browsing”
Go to “Settings”
Switch on “Private Browsing”
If your status bar turns black, you will see that you activated “private browsing” properly.

Author Bio: This article is written by Alfred Richards, Alfred is a freelancer and a blogger, his areas of Interest are technology, web hosting and web marketing; visit his site VPN service and iVPN.net for more information.

Even though the nitty gritty of HTML5 and related technologies are still being hammered out, they are already mature enough to be used for more than just nifty tech demos. Last year, Google brought the massively popular Angry Birds to the web by leveraging the power of HTML5, and now, Microsoft has followed suit. Microsoft has partnered with ZeptoLabs to release a browser version of the mobile game Cut the Rope.

Cut the Rope has already proven to be a big hit in mobile app stores thanks to its addictive gameplay, fluid graphics, and satisfying physics. However, the sophistication that helped it become a raging success also made it challenging to port it to the standard web stack. Cut the Rope for iOS was originally written in Objective C and consisted of about 15 kilo lines of code. JavaScript, which is often criticized for being heavy and slow, lacks many of the advanced programming constructs available in the object oriented programming languages used on mobile platforms. Microsoft’s stance on WebGL added further complexity to the project, as in order to be compatible with Internet Explorer, Cut the Ropes had to be rendered using Canvas. Even ZeptoLabs was not sure if web technologies had what it takes to pull off the physics computations demanded by the game in real-time. However, when the devs started building the basic framework, the common preconceptions about the “slowness” of JavaScript were quickly disproved. Modern browsers were found to have sufficiently optimised JavaScript engines to be able to do heavy number crunching with relative ease.

The end result of Microsoft’s collaboration with ZeptoLabs and Pixel Lab is pure gold. Cut the Rope for the web is as fun as the mobile version, and unlike Google’s Angry Birds, Cut the Rope is truly cross-browser compliant. It is designed to run on Internet Explorer 9 and above, but I played the game at length without experiencing any difficulty on Opera 12. Firefox and Chrome might have intermittent audio issues, but are otherwise capable of providing the desired experience. It’s inspiring to see that Microsoft not only resisted the urge to use browser sniffing to block other browsers, but also put in the effort to ensure that it was playable on all major browsers. Perhaps there is a bit of lesson in here for Google, which loves to trumpet openness whenever it’s convenient.

To begin feeding candies to Om nom, head over to cuttherope.ie.

Internet Explorer users have proved to be extremely stubborn when it comes to updating their browsers. Internet Explorer 6, which was released more than 10 years ago, still commands 8.3% of the market share. Millions of users have clung on to outdated releases in spite of the fact that many modern websites don’t even work on them. One of the main culprits behind the slow adoption rate of newer versions of Internet Explorer has been the update system.

Google automatically and seamlessly updates Chrome whenever a new version is available. Mozilla Firefox and Opera also does the same. However, updating Internet Explorer requires manual intervention. Now, this is finally going to change.

“With automatic updates enabled through Windows Update, customers can receive IE9 and future versions of Internet Explorer seamlessly without any update fatigueissues”, wrote Ryan Gavin, General Manager of Internet Explorer Business and Marketing.

Going forward, Microsoft will be automatically updating users to the latest version of Internet Explorer for their system. Enterprise users and others who don’t want to be automatically updated can use the Automatic Update Blocker toolkits. Users who have declined previous installations of IE8 or IE9 through Windows Update will also not be automatically updated. Browser settings including favorites and search preferences will be retained between updates.

Even this won’t solve the issue completely as Microsoft has refused to support older operating systems in the recent versions of Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer 9 ditched Windows XP, while Internet Explorer 10 will drop Vista compatibility. However, it should at the very least help us in getting rid of Internet Explorer 6 and 7. Microsoft plans to begin the Automatic Update procedure with Australia and Brazil in Janurary, and then move on to the rest of the world.

Ever since its launch, Google Chrome has been gaining market share at a steady rate. Now, StatsCounter is reporting that Google Chrome has finally managed to surpass Firefox globally. Chrome’s worldwide market share rose to 25.69%, while Firefox slipped to 25.23%. Microsoft Internet Explorer also continued its slide and fell to 40.63% at the end of November.

Google Chrome gained 21% over the past two years, while Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera lost 15.94%, 6.98, and 0.2% each. Safari also managed to gain 2.255 market share since November 2009. In India the figure are slightly different as Indian users have typically been more reactive to market changes than Americans. Only 26.9% Indians surf using Internet Explorer, while 34.29% and 34.75% rely on Firefox and Chrome respectively. Opera controls a shade above 2.5% of the market share in India.

Browser statistics tend to be wildly inaccurate and inconsistent. However, they are still good enough to gauge the market trend, and in this case the trend is clear. Google Chrome’s rise in popularity has been nothing short of spectacular. Introduced in late 2008, it has won the hearts of millions of web users with its focus on speed, security, and simplicity. Although Chrome is undoubtedly benefiting from Google’s deep pocket and wide reach, the Chrome team needs to be applauded for getting their priorities right. Within a short span of time Chrome has made its presence felt with its innovative drive and commitment to web standards.

Firefox on the other hand struggled to ship the ambitious Firefox 4 update, lost out in the browser speed wars, and seems to perennially lag behind Chrome. Many fans believe that Mozilla’s lack of vision is hurting Firefox, which was once the darling of the alternate browser crowd.

10 years ago a  browser was born.  Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards,  it’s time to say goodbye.

-http://www.ie6countdown.com/

IE6 countdown is one of many websites that has sprung up in recent times, which anxiously documents the point of time when IE 6 will be used no more (or negligibly). Once upon a time, IE 6 was one of the most popular browsers around, for better or for worse. This was when Microsoft commanded an awe-inspiring 95% of the browser’s market share. In those days, IE 6 was actually the standard by which  other  browsers were often judged by and most often found to be sorely lacking.

Users moved to IE 6 in droves then and many of them stayed put, even to this day.  I recently came across a friend in class using IE 6. Needless to say, I was shocked! And that is an understatement. Even in the world of HTML 5, this browser still holds its own in the youth  market.

There were a lot of tears shed, I am sure, over this  temperamental  browser. I remember the extra  tweaking that had to be done to allow a website to work on IE 6. It is, after all, the standard browser for the very popular MS Windows XP. However, this does not stop many web-based companies from cutting off their support for IE 6 as they felt that it hindered their progress to provide a rich UI experience to  their  users. Despite its terrible security and all, this browser has still not been isolated by its fans.

The loyalty to IE 6 may be caused by the familiarity of using the same web interface for the last 10 years; in addition, the lethargy on part of the corporations/users must be playing an important role too. I believe that most of us usually encounter IE 6 only at work.  The web is moving  on in spite  of IE 6, but one has to pity web developers world over for the extra efforts that they need to take to make  special  allowances  for IE 6.

The time has come to say…

Image from  elevatelocal.co.uk

According to a new report from Net Applications’s NetMarketShare data, Safari has exceeded 8 percent of web browser use across all devices due to the strong growth in iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad sales. Also, Apple’s WebKit, the second most widely used rendering engine, combined with Google Chrome makes it second to Internet Explorer and slightly ahead of Firefox.

In addition, the data shows that in the last two years, Internet Explorer’s marketshare has dropped from nearly 67 percent to 52.8 percent. Firefox has also seen a decrease in marketshare from almost 23 percent to 21.48 percent. However, Google’s Chrome has seen massive increase in marketshare. Chrome’s marketshare increased from 2.84 percent to 13.45 percent, while Safari’s nearly doubled from 4.07 percent to 8.05 percent.

Safari and Chrome’s marketshare combined now represent over 21.5 percent of web users, making it slightly ahead of Firefox even before counting the small number of WebKit browsers.

Clearly Safari’s growth isn’t going to stop here. Apple’s development of not just a desktop browser but also converting the desktop version of their browser to the first “fully usable” mobile version browser has not only tremendously changed the web browser market but also has affected the web-related development market as well.

Aptiquant, a Vancouver based Psychometric Consulting company, which specializes in helping organizations objectively assess applicants and employees, has released the results of its study in which it correlated the IQ (Intelligent Quotients) of users with the browser they were using. The results aren’t all that surprising.

On an average, Internet Explorer users were found to have the least IQ, while Opera users had the highest. Camino users and Internet Explorer users with Chrome Frame plugin were also found to have higher than average IQ. The results are pretty much what you would expect. The dominance of Internet Explorer has long been attributed to its bundling with Windows. A sizeable portion of users tend to just use what Windows ships with instead of looking for alternatives. Heck, many people don’t even know what is a web browser. On the other hand Opera, which has remained the niche browser, is often dubbed as the browser for geeks and power users.

In order to collect the data Aptiquant relied on the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (IV) test, which is available on its website. The gender, geographic location, and browser of netizens taking the test were recorded along with their test results. The scores of more than 101,326 individuals were analyzed.

Aptiquant also compared their recent dataset with the data they had collected in 2006. The older dataset paints a significantly different picture. The mean IQ of Opera users drops significantly, and Internet Explorer (6 and 7) gets a significant boost. Clearly, over the last five years, Internet Explorer has lost its share of intelligent users, as power users have migrated elsewhere.

Aptiquant also divided the users into IQ groups based on their percentile ranks. Once again, Internet Explorer users dominated the lower percentile groups, while Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari users dominated the higher percentile groups.

Aptiquant’s study reinforces that stereotype that Internet Explorer is a dumb user’s browser. It also demonstrates that Microsoft has simply not been able to stay abreast with its competitors. Even though Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users have a higher IQ score than Internet Explorer 6 users, Microsoft has failed to stop the flow of power users to third-party alternatives. Internet Explorer still has a healthy market share. However, masses often follow the early adopters and power users. Microsoft will need to come up with something pretty brilliant if it hopes to reverse Internet Explorer’s fortunes.

Hat tip: @Opera

There is something about Google Chrome which I have not seen in any other browser. It is one of the fastest growing browsers across the world and currently has around 20% usage world wide.

Many tech related websites around the world are seeing that Google Chrome has been overtaking Firefox. Last year both TechCrunch and Techmeme reported that Chrome was the most users on their site which prompted me to write the article; Why is Chrome Winning and Firefox Losing Market Share?. Back then, Chrome’s market share was around 10% was constantly growing on our site too.

Recently, I wrote an article on How Chrome is Growing in India and Hurting Microsoft and Mozilla. In that article, I delved upon how Chrome has been dominating Indian markets even though the internet usage there is around 15% of the population. This definitely showed how much impact Chrome has had on the browser market.

Today when I was checking the browser market share for Techie Buzz I saw that Chrome has overtaken Firefox as the most used browser. Last month, Chrome was behind Firefox by 2%, so the month over month growth is pretty impressive. This means that almost 1+ million out of the 3.5+ million users on the site were using Google Chrome to visit Techie Buzz.

One of the reasons for Google Chrome’s growth is the heavy advertising Google is doing for it. I see many ads which pitch users to play Angry Birds on Google Chrome and I can swear that those have converted many users to switch to Chrome including my own brother who is a big Angry Birds fan.

Google is also landing some punches on rival browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer by stopping development on certain products while providing plugins for them too. Recently, Google has decided to stop development of Google Toolbar for Firefox 5. This has sent Mozilla in a frenzy because lot of users are not upgrading to Firefox 5 from Firefox 4 because of the incompatibility of the add-on.

Google also provides Internet Explorer users with something called as Google Chrome Frame to bring Google Chrome’s technology to Internet Explorer. As you can see from our browser stats, we have around 0.13% IE users who have installed the Google Chrome Frame.

Additionally, Google has also been blocking several features in their products on Opera. Our in-house Opera guru Pallab has always been finding problems using Google’s features on Opera including the recently introduced Google Instant.

So is Google intentionally doing all these things to switch users to their own browser? It could very well be possible, however, they are also backing that up with an excellent browser and I for one have been using Google Chrome as my primary browser since it launched and yes some of the new features in it including the Multiple Chrome Profiles are definitely good.

What do you think about Chrome’s dominance? Is it good or bad? Do you use Google Chrome as your primary browser? If not which one do you prefer to use? Please let me know through your comments.