newVideoPlayer("/win8privatemode_gizmodo.flv", 506, 305,""); Microsoft’s latest History of the Internet promotion is a pretty lame, VH1esque mashup of various b-list comedians cracking jokes—until those comedians talk about Internet Explorer 8′s new In Private Mode.
At the annual Pwn2Own competition, where hackers compete to crack software as fast as possible so you don’t sleep at night, browsers were on the first day’s menu. And Safari went down in seconds.
Microsoft seems like the last one to the new browser party that’s dragged out over the last month, but they are the first to make their entrance final with Internet Explorer 8.
Microsoft’s “compatibility list” of sites that don’t render correctly in Internet Exploder 8 RC1—requiring some non-standards mojo from the browser to look right—numbers some 2,400. They’re off-the-beaten-path sites like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and YouTube.
IE 8 has been marinating for some time, and press info and betas had provided a solid picture of its features. Now TGDaily has taken a good look at a near-complete version of the browser.
There’s a completely BS article by Fran Foo over at Australian IT today about Google Chrome’s “failure to shine in its first 100 days”. Apparently, according to Nielsen Online statistics, less than one per cent of visitors to Fairfax and News Ltd websites in Australia use Google Chrome. For a start, since when is News.com.au or The Age a reliable metric for how a browser “shines”? I might just go out on a limb and say that the reason 70% of their audience still uses IE is because in many cases they’re completely ignorant about the superior alternatives, while many workplaces also restrict which browser can be used.
Then there’s the line, “Some argue Chrome’s languishing figures could be bolstered if it were pre-installed in computers.” Now, I don’t pretend to speak for Google at all, but considering they have 10 million active users worldwide after just 100 days, I don’t think they’d be describing Chrome as languishing. Seriously, I thought The Australian was meant to be objective.
TechCrunch reports that the Google Chrome browser will soon graduate from beta status into a final release. Even if you’ve tried Chrome and passed, rest assured you haven’t seen the last of it.
Google’s vice president, Sundar Pichai, noted to The Times that after Chrome exits beta in January 2009, Google will begin an aggressive push to boost the browser’s marketshare. More interestingly, he said that Google is exploring new ways to make Chrome more ubiquitous, and that they’ll “probably do distribution deals” with OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers. This might mean that Internet Explorer finally has some competition out of the gate.
The Windows Mobile team has confirmed that the upcoming IE Mobile 6 browser or “IE 6 on 6″ will not be made available as a separate download for current WinMo 6.1 smartphones. Instead, the update will only show up on devices released starting at the end of this year or in early 2009. The reason, according to Microsoft, is that “the rich media experiences that IE Mobile 6 enables require more powerful, advanced devices.” IE doesn’t have a whole lot of fans, but if you already have a WinMo smartphone it would suck to miss out on what appears to be a huuuge improvement. [Mobile Burn]
Not content to sit still while Opera and Skyfire kick its ass in the Windows Mobile browser space, Microsoft is previewing Internet Explorer Mobile 6, the next version of the notoriously rendering-impaired mobile browser, through a downloadable emulator. The addition of a “desktop” mode is promising, as is the fact that it appears to correctly render MSNBC’s javascript-rich homepage, something with Mobile IE5 couldn’t dream of doing. It’s probably reasonable to expect IE6 to make an appearance in Windows Mobile 6.5, but XP and Vista users can test it now, right here. UPDATE: Impressions and feature list after the jump.
