Since most tech security threats come from the Internet, a user’s web browser is often the first line of defense when it comes to keeping viruses and other malware off a computer or corporate network.

So which browser does the best job at blocking attacks from malicious websites? That depends on who you ask. All major browsers include features designed to warn users before they go to sites that may harm their computers and to isolate the threats before they can do any harm.

The question, “which one has the most effective security features?” is often the subject of debate. For example, a recent study released by security firm Accuvant claimed Google’s Chrome to be the most secure browser, followed by Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. That ranking was based on factors such as the quality of the browsers’ URL blacklisting, how often updates and patches are released, and how well the software “sandboxes” threats, or keeps them from affecting the rest of the user’s system.

But there is one catch. Though Accuvant published the details of its analysis to show there was no bias, the study was commissioned by Google, so many observers don’t trust the results. Shortly after the study was released, Microsoft launched its own website, yourbrowsermatters.com, to test browser security. Not surprisingly, the company’s own Internet Explorer 9 gets a perfect score, while the most recent releases of Chrome and Firefox come in second and third place, respectively.

So which web browser is the most secure? The real answer is that each piece of software has its own advantages and disadvantages when it comes to security. But whichever browser a person or organization chooses to use, one thing is clear: They must make sure the browser is kept fully patched and updated.

One study conducted in 2011 found that 40% of all web traffic came from outdated browsers – including 10% from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6, which is ten years old. That’s a problem, because those old browsers likely contain many security vulnerabilities that put a computer at risk.

More important than the individual browser a user chooses, experts say, is keeping the browser and all of its plug-ins up-to-date.

About the Author: Sam Narisi writes about the latest business technology news as editor in chief of IT Manager Daily and recently authored the Business VOIP Resources Guide.

Today, Mozilla announced the release of Firefox 11, the next version of the popular web browser. The new version brings in quite a lot of new features for end users and web developers alike.

For the end user, Firefox 11 introduces add-on sync. Add-on sync uses Firefox’s built-in sync feature to ensure that all your Firefox installations are in sync with the installed Firefox add-ons, in addition to the bookmarks, open tabs, history and passwords.

Add-on sync has been a much-requested feature and personally, I’ve been resisting from moving away from Chrome to Firefox for the sole reason that sync is such a seamless and painless experience in Chrome, as compared to Firefox. Another feature Mozilla’s brought in, no doubt targeting Chrome users, is the the ability to import browsing data – including Cookies, Bookmarks and Browsing History from Chrome. Till this release, such an import was possible only from Internet Explorer.

For web developers, Firefox 11 brings in a new Style Editor allowing for on-the-fly-editing of stylesheets. The Style Editor features a two-pane UI, with the file listing on the left and the plain-text editor on the right. The plain-text editor also features syntax highlighting to make it easier.

Firefox 11 also features a new 3D vizualization of the webpage’s DOM tree. Initially introduced as an add-on called Tilt, the 3d visualizer makes use of WebGL to build a multi-layer representation of the webapge’s DOM tree. While it looks gimmicky, it might help few people who’ve been trying to analyze and fix the annoying layout bugs.

For Enterprise users, Mozilla will backport security fixes in the current version of Firefox to a separate point patch, as part of Mozilla’s Extended Support Release proposal.

What’s in the future?

The current version of Firefox brings in preliminary support for SPDY, Google’s alternative for the HTTP protocol. Future releases will undoubtedly improve upon SPDY support. Upcoming releases of Firefox will make addon compatibility less of a hassle. Previously, add-on authors would have to manually update their add-ons when a new version of Firefox was released. Mozilla’s proposal to move to a rapid release schedule caused a lot of anguish to developers and end users alike. Going forward, Mozilla will make all-ons compatible with Firefox 4 and higher, automatically enabled.

Firefox 13 is expected to bring in silent updates – all updates will be automatically & silently downloaded in background and will not be interrupted if the browser is shutdown.

From the Gecko platform point of view, Mozilla will bring in support for a whole lot of new web technologies, including

• WebRTC for real time audio & video conferencing
• Web Sockets will be completed to match the W3C specs. Incidentally, Mozilla has dropped prefixes for Websockets starting from this release of Firefox
• SPDY, HTTP Pipe lining and HTTP Pre-connections
• DASH and WebM support
• Support for key input in fullscreen mode
• Possible support for H.264 & MP3 decoding using codecs present on the OS

Download links

Firefox should automatically update your Firefox to the newest version soon. You can also download the latest version from Mozilla’s website.

Twenty years ago today, the World Wide Web, also known as “the web”, was born at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This event should not be confused with the Internet’s birth. According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s website, the World Wide Web is “an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing”. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the invention of the web, along with scientist  Robert Cailliau.

Berners-Lee envisioned the concept of using hypertext to help researchers share information over the internet. According to Wikipedia, he proposed ”  to build a hypertext  project” called “WorldWideWeb” (one word, also “W3″) as a ‘web’ of ‘hypertext documents’ to be viewed by browsers,  using a  clientserver  architecture.” Berners-Lee used a computer called NeXT as the world’s first web server. On August 6, 1991, “the web” made its public debut.

Today, the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, as it is often called, sets the standards for “web” development. Tim Berners-Lee is still very active in the development of “the web” and is the Director of W3C. He was Knighted in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth. He also directs the Web Science Trust and The World Wide Web Foundation.

“The web” has transformed into a medium for the endless sharing of ideas, entertainment, and commerce. Could the men who set this idea in motion ever have envisioned the powerful influence it has become today? So today, when you check up on friends half-way around the globe on Facebook, or catch the latest gossip on some news website, take a moment to wish “the web” a very happy twentieth birthday!

Less Chrome HD Firefox addon is another awesome addon from the Mozilla labs team which autohides the URL bar and other toolbars and shows it only when necessary.

This feature is same as that of Google Chrome whose Canary version has this feature by default.  Less Chrome addon has advantages over it, because in Google Chrome, when the URL bar is hidden, it will be displayed only when the user activates it. The Less Chrome addon activates the URL bar when the new tab is activated. (Thanks geek).

If you want to permanently hide the location bar, it is possible without even installing this add on.  Just go to options in the Menu button and uncheck Navigation Toolbar’.

Limitations:

So far I have talked about the positive side of this addon. However, it also has limitations.  It will not hide the URL bar and other toolbars completely if you have your menu bar enabled. Also, you cannot use that red x’ button at the top right of the window to close it when the window is in maximized state.  We can expect fixes for this in future releases.

Though there are some limitations in using this add on, it’s worth a try

This is a restartless addon and you can install it from the Mozilla add on site. This addon supports Firefox 4 to Firefox 6. So even if you use latest nightly build, you can try this addon. Do you like when the URL bar hides automatically? Is this a boon to you or not? Try this addon and share your opinion in the comments.

==== About the Author ====

This Guest Post is by Girish Mony, a crazy Firefox user, who blogs about the latest Firefox news, features & addons. You can check his blog at Firefox OS.

The original Kingof social browsers is as good as dead. The Flock web browser will dieon April 26th. Back in January, we told you that Zynga Acquires Flock; May Take Social Gaming To A New Level. As you probably know, Zynga is the social gaming power-house behind Farmville, Mafia Wars and a dozen other popular social games.

What wasn’t expected by many Flock users, was that they’d be abandoned so quickly, without anything to take Flock’s place. I just received my End of Supportletter today. Apparently they made the announcement on April 13th.

Flock said the following it their FAQ:

Flock will no longer be actively maintained, which means you can keep using the product, but key features will stop working after 4/26/11 and over time the browser will no longer be secure as software updates and upgrades will no longer be provided.

Here was one of the immediate responses from the Flock faithful.

David S: This sucks big time! Zynga’s decision to shut down this fabulous browser is an outrage and should be condemned. I have officially boycotted all other Zynga products and encourage others to do so as well. … I curse the day they purchased the property …

Since Zynga has decided to kill the Flock browser, what do they recommend that their users do now? Here’s what they said:

There are many browser choices. We recommend either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

I think most people expected that Zynga/Flock would work on a new browser that is designed to work with social gaming. All bets are off now, but if you still want to use a good social web browser, I’d recommend Rockmelt, which gives you built-in access to Facebook and Twitter.

Microsoft has just made the final release of Internet Explorer 9 available for download. The beta of IE 9 has been downloaded over 40 million times already. The final version was supposed to launch on March 14, at 9 am PM PST, and it has.

Internet Explorer has been one of the most abused browsers of all time, especially IE 6. With IE 9, Microsoft has promised to make good with web developers and has embraced most open web standards.

Internet Explorer 8 was quite well received, and even though I use Opera as my primary browser, I still use IE 8 for sites which just don’t work with Opera. I will now be upgrading that with Internet Explorer 9.

To download Internet Explorer 9, just go to this link – Internet Explorer 9 Download

Select the version of IE9 (32-bit or 64-bit) and click on Download Now.

IE 9 offers a much better browsing experience than previous versions, and is also much faster. Here’s a list of the new features IE 9 brings to the table.

Update: Here are some direct download links (Courtesy Win Rumors)

• Windows  7 32-Bit version
• Windows 7 64-Bit version
• Windows Vista  32-Bit version
• Windows Vista 64-Bit version

Based on the 2010 reports from Netmarketshare.com, the web browsers from Google and Apple have slowly been stealing users from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. In the chart below, we can see the trends over the last year. (chart by CNET)

This may be partly due to the new browser ballot in Windows 7 that is required in Europe. However, even if that’s true, Microsoft still has no excuse for it’s falling browser marketshare. When the beta version of IE9 was released in February, no affect was seen on the marketshare. We’ll have to wait to see what happens when the finished version is released.

The gains by Chrome and Safari came at the expense of Internet Explorer‘s dropping percentage, which ended the year at 57%, after starting above 60%. Google’s Chrome browser gained almost 5 points in 2010 and ended with 10% of the market. Safari gained about 1.5 points and ended at about 6%. Firefox and Opera remained about the same at 23% and 2%.

The question that we think most interesting is What browsers do Techie Buzz readers use?. Here’s a chart from Keith showing our data.

The Techie Buzz chart shows more readers using Firefox than Internet Explorer. Chrome users are in third place, followed by Safari and Opera. If we can assume that most technology sites have similar stats, this doesn’t look good for Microsoft.

It appears that the more people know, the less they use Internet Explorer. Many people feel that the crucial advantage to using Firefox and Chrome is that they are more easily customized by using Addons and Extensions. Do you think Opera’s adoption of extensions will help them steal share from Microsoft?

Have you opened all of your Christmas presents yet? Microsoft’s biggest present was a huge security headache that hit them just before Christmas. On December 22nd, Microsoft was forced to warn everyone that Windows users are now vulnerable to a flaw in all versions of Internet Explorer. This flaw, known to take advantage of specially formatted CSS (web page code), doesn’t have an easy fix.

So far, nobody has detected hackers using an exploit based on this zero-day CSS flaw. However, an exploit has been published and even included in the Metasploit security defense suite. That means that it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft’s problem becomes a problem for all users of Internet Explorer. Microsoft has promised that they are working in a fix for this flaw. Will it get here in time to save us from thousands of hacked home computers?

Here’s my suggestion to all of those using   Internet Explorer:

Download and install a different web browser such as Firefox, Chrome or Opera. Only use Internet Explorer if it’s absolutely needed. Once you’ve done that, you can patiently wait on Microsoft to fix this problem.

Affected Operating Systems: Windows XP, Vista, 7

Affected Browsers: IE6, 7, 8, 9

I have been using Opera 11 since it was released and I am fairly impressed. First, you should know about my taste in browsers. I want something that has my favorite extensions which is LastPass and an ad blocker. I want a browser that’s fast… very fast and it must have a minimalistic design. Let’s see how well it stands up to my requirements.

Opera 11 added support for extensions and it has the LastPass extension. The LastPass password manager worked just as well it worked on the other browsers. I tried the NoAds extension but it does not work exactly as I hoped. It blocks ads on very few sites. You also cannot add filters to block additional ads. I am really disappointed in the NoAds extension but hopefully the extension will improve by the stable version of Opera 11.

Opera 11 is fast but it is not as fast as my default browser, Google Chrome. Google Chrome is able load blazingly fast and Opera 11 is noticeably slower. However, Opera 11 speed is live able and I hope it becomes faster by the stable version. Opera has a minimalistic design and it makes good use of the screen size. There are even sidebars which can be turned on if you want.

There is an innovative feature in Opera 11 which I have fallen in love with. I love Opera’s feature of stacking browser tabs. It is simply amazing. Not only is it extremely useful but it also makes good space of the screen size.

When you click on the arrow beside the tab, it opens up all the tabs that you have stacked on that tab.

Opera 11 is already very customizable and extensions will only add to its features. For a long time, Opera said that they would never add extensions to their browser but I am really happy that they have changed their mind. Maybe Opera 11 will actually take a share from the major browser but it seems unlikely. Still, it’s a major leap from their previous version and I cannot wait till the stable version of Opera 11.

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Guest post by Ahmed Qadir author of the Windows Tuts blog.