Microsoft has deemed the hole to be a “critical” security threat, as it gives webmasters the ability to quietly install software on your PC. Last May, Microsoft released an update that made it possible to uninstall the .NET framework. They also released a patch earlier this week that supposedly fixes the problem. The vulnerability can also be exploited on users running any version of Internet Explorer. Needless to say, Firefox and IE users should employ one of those solutions ASAP. [Computer World Image via rootshell.be]

No, it’s not Explorer. Microsoft wanted first to order browsers from left to right, in order of market share. That meant Explorer was going to go first, then Firefox, then Safari, Opera and Google’s Chrome. The EU objected, so Microsoft complied and offered the only possible option: Alphabetical order.

That puts Apple Safari in the number one position, followed by Google Chrome, Microsoft Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Looks good enough to me, but Jenny Boriss—a Firefox user experience designer—disagrees:

This ordering is about the worst option possible. Microsoft wrote in their proposal that ‘nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser’, but this is exactly what the current design does. Windows users presented with the current design will tend to make only two choices: IE because they are familiar with it, or Safari because it is the first item.

“The disproportionate advantage to Safari is what really makes this design poor,” she said, citing several studies that claim first position in a ballot gives an advantage, in part because Western voters scan from upper left to lower right when they read.

She goes on and on and on about this, but her basic message is: If Firefox is not first, this design is BAD. She timidly proposes a random order every time the selection screen opens, but she argues that this is bad because it “unfortunately does not provide users with any information about what browsers are preferred”.

Then she shows her true colours, proposing the order according to market share—what Microsoft proposed—but excluding Explorer from that ordering and leaving it to the last position. Wouldn’t that be unfairly helping Firefox and putting Safari, Chrome and Opera in a bad position? And why discriminate Microsoft Explorer too?

Finally, she also proposes probability ordering by market share excluding Internet Explorer, which again gives Firefox the advantage over the rest 50 per cent of the time.

In other words, Microsoft and the EU should help Firefox to become the new monopolistic browser, no matter what. Jenny, please: Stop. Saying. Words. [Boriss' Blog via Computer World]

It was decided that Microsoft’s “Hey! We’ll just leave all browsers out completely!” would result in headaches for some consumers who would struggle to download any browser without being able to use Internet Explorer to do so. The new approach is to sell Windows PCs with Internet Explorer as the default browser, but to present users with a “ballot screen” which allows them to select and “easily install competing browsers from the Web.” That’s not all though:

In addition, (computer makers) would be able to install competing Web browsers, set those as default and disable Internet Explorer should they so wish. The Commission welcomes this proposal, and will now investigate its practical effectiveness in terms of ensuring genuine consumer choice.

There’s a catch of sorts in that there aren’t any specifics on how competing browsers will be selected for the “ballot”, so the jury’s still out on just how accommodating Microsoft is really being. [CNET]

Indeed, Microsoft has stated before that it would be impossible to remove the browser from Windows 7, due to the fact that “the browser is closely connected with the operating system.” However, thanks to EU pressure and a multi-billion dollar fine hanging over its head, Microsoft has miraculously discovered a way to make it so.

As a refresher, the EU demanded that MS remove IE (or include competitor’s browsers) in Windows because of its dominant 90% market penetration across the continent. According to an article at Swedish news site e24, the EU has also proposed that Microsoft include competitor’s browsers, including those from Opera, Mozilla and Google, as part of a settlement. [e24 (Swedish) - Thanks, Andreas]

What is best in life? To crush other browsers, see their worm-ridden code driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their fanboys.

And if the whole thing is depicted in a chalk drawing, so be it.

And it was, so here’s the details. The chalk drawing was delivered to us fresh from the annual SideWalk Arts Festival, which is held by the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

According to the artists, students are given a set of chalk and are assigned a tile on the cement sidewalk surrounding a local park. They can draw whatever comes to mind. In the case of Michael and Ferhan, “whatever comes to mind” meant an epic battle between Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (Conan served as a reference for the illustration).

It looks like it didn’t well for the browser from Redmond. Then again, it rarely does. [Thanks, Michael and Ferhan]

In this short excerpt, Microsoft endorses their product with a firm nudge and a wink. I mean, Steve Ballmer didn’t go so far as to drop trou on screen, but kudos to the company for not being total prudes about what their software is clearly designed to facilitate.

Just keep those innocent little girls on a different set than your pervy comedians, Microsoft. Seriously, I don’t even want to see them at the same lunch table. [Microsoft via Crunchgear]

Security researcher Charlie Miller hacked Safari in just 10 seconds, then used a remote-execution exploit to take over the up-to-date MacBook and make it do his dirty bidding. Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 fell within a few hours to Nils, a master’s student who busted all three browsers wide open. They each won $US5000. Day 2 will offer more $US5000 prizes for discovering new bugs in Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Mobile phone OS’s will also be part of the event, with $US10,000 for cracking any of the five majors: iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android. Care to take bets on which one will go down first? [Pocket Lint]

If you’ve used the release candidate, or even the beta right before it, it’ll be a mostly familiar experience, with nothing that seriously warps your fragile little mind. Microsoft does want you to forget about all of the Javascript benchmarks you’ve been seeing—they insist it’s not about the Javascript performance touted by Apple or Google with their Webkit-based browsers. It’s all about how fast pages actually open they say, and they claim IE8 is now “as fast or faster a majority of the time” than Firefox or Chrome (before the most recent beta). We’ll see!

One cool UI bit, which you can see in the screencap, is that tabs are colour-coded, so you can see where your trains of thought spring from—all of my Giz-originating tabs are one colour, while all of the links I opened up in tabs from Fark are a different colour, and so on. Pretty handy.

Accelerators are its version of add-ons in a way, or at least that’s how they tout in them. In practice, they let you quickly jump to web apps, like Google Maps (or their own Live Maps) or translate something from Japanese or whatever language via their own service, or one of your choosing, like Google Translate. So IE8 is way more open in how you use embedded services—you’re not stuck with Microsoft’s own, which is good since a majority of the browsing public will be using this one day (probably, anyway). But without features like Firefox’s add-ons and extensions, Chrome’s rawer minimalism, or Safari/Opera’s Top Sites, it still feels a few steps behind the rest of the pack.

[Microsoft]

Mary Jo Foley posted what looks like the entire list of broken sites, but here are some of the more ridiculous sites that don’t display properly in IE8, and require it to render them old school style (aka not web standards compliant). Here are some of the more laughable ones.

microsoft.com
google.com
yahoo.com
cctv.com
msn.com.cn
live.com (a Microsoft site)
wikipedia.org
flickr.com
wordpress.com
adobe.com
facebook.com
apple.com
youtube.com
imdb.com
thepiratebay.org
dell.com
netflix.com
nytimes.com
gizmodo.com (In case you’re wondering why you have problems in IE at Giz)
kotaku.com
sony.com

My eyes glazed over after a certain point, so if you see any other ridiculous entries, let us know in the comments.

Microsoft is going to constantly adjust the list, taking off sites that become compatible with its default “standards mode,” and adding sites that people complain about. Here’s the list for Vista users, and for XP people. Aside from this tragically amusing compatibility issue—which Microsoft totally brought on itself by making Internet Exploder completely ignore web standards for years—IE8 is actually much better than IE7, and worth taking a look. [ZD Net]

This IE 8 release candidate is said to be feature complete, which is to say that we should expect anything significant to be added before the final version ships. Most of what we were expecting is still present, and refined: the porn mo—err, InPrivate, a refreshed interface, stronger find functions, full keyboard navigation and adaptive zoom. Not present, however, are significant increases in Javascript rendering speed or CSS compatibility, areas in which even this mature version of IE 8 was handily beaten by current Firefox and Chrome builds.

Still, the browser looks to be a solid step forward, and despite the one-step-behind spec sheet, aging code base, and TGDaily’s convincing assertion that IE 8 won’t be able to slow the erosion of Microsoft’s browser market share, will provide welcome improvements for that giant, stubborn chunk of the population that just uses whatever their eMachine shipped with. [TGDaily]