Microsoft has revealed the preview-only/test version of its all new Internet Explorer 9 far better than any of its earlier versions and especially because the standards IE used to follow are way back than any modern browser.  At MIX 10, a interactive gathering event of Microsoft and  innovative web professionals, Dean Hachamovitch presented the insight depth of “early look” phase of IE9.

This preview of IE9 is more targeted towards web developers/ designers to let them know and take advantage of new things they can do while developing web apps or websites.  Developers can have early look at IE 9 development here.

The prominent development and new things of Internet Explorer 9 are :

• A new JavaScript engine for IE9 which is designed to make Internet Explorer faster (faster than Firefox 3.6).
• Support for HTML5.
• IE9 now extensively support DOM, CSS3, SVG standards and XHTML.
  Able to render box-shadow, text-shadow and border-radius like CSS3 properties
• IE9 is the first browser designed to hardware accelerated graphics

Interestingly, the new JavaScript engine of IE9 is said to be faster than shipping version of Firefox today as per Webkit.org’s SunSpider benchmark test.

However, the available Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is not be used as regular browse and it doesn’t even have a “back” button. But it released to run along with regular browser and is simply a preview and more specifically for developers/ designers so as to help them developing their web apps.

Along with Firefox upcoming update 3.5 version, Mozilla is doing an important update in its Logo and Icon,  we all recognize Firefox logo/ icon as a orange color Fox enclosing blue earth like globe which is actually a mozilla planet.

The Mozilla team along with its Ux (User Experience) team member, Alex Faaborg has released few of its iterative drafts of new concept logo which will be updated and changes will be made continuously until the final one is achieved.

Update - Latest Iteration 18th May

The design is partially based on a conceptual sketch by Jon Hicks and rendered by Anthony Piraino. The icon/ logo design is more of improvisation to the fox’s fur, and the flames starting to wrap around planet mozilla which significantly modernizes and streamlines the appearance of the icon.

FireScope is a Firefox add-on that integrates with Firebug and provide HTML and CSS reference information with your Firefox browser. Firebug is a revolutionary plug-in and famous add-on among web developer/ designer and FIreScope extend it with reference material for HTML and CSS.

The add-on is being developed by SitePoint an online resource for Web professional market, specifically Web Developers and Designers.

The extension’s core functionality is centered around a new Reference panel, which contains a search tool for looking up HTML elements, HTML attributes, or CSS properties (or any combination). The search happens live as one type i.e. auto suggest to get the reference results.

The extension also hooks into context-menus in the HTML and CSS panels, the DOM crumbtrail, and the Inspector, adding options to look up a selected item (ie. search for it in the Reference panel) or to view a code example.

The add-on comes worthy for designers/ developer when one wants to learn CSS/ HTML while developing some app/ website using same on the go. As right-click in the search results give two options, one of which is for more information online, and the other is to show a code example for the selected item it provide pretty good reference material on the fly.

Mozilla’s Chief Executive John Lilly has revealed in an interview that much awaited mobile version of Firefox is set to launch within a time of coming few weeks though it will be launched in alpha release mode.

The mobile version of Firefox will be full-featured mobile browser including support for add-ons that similar to what we already using as web version of it. Moreover it will also allow developers to develop, debug and deploy web applications for its mobile version along.

This open-source browser engine, optimized for mobile, can also be embedded by mobile manufacturers giving a tough competition to Opera mini, a mobile browser engine by Opera. Noticeably, Mozilla was working on mobile version of Firefox since one year.

Mozilla has already released mobile browser ‘Fennec‘ for Linux-based devices (Nokia N800 and N810) and Windows Mobile 6 based HTCS730 but it has been shipped in few places only, by Nokia with name of MicroB browser.

TechCrunch a well known Weblog and now more than a weblog, a network cum organization of people obsessed with technology and start-ups led by Michael Arrington are visualizing a Tablet PC that will cost $200 and run nothing more than just Firefox – people’s very own browser which just ended up making world record in number of downloads.

The ultra slim Tabloid PC device would totally be based on Open Source i.e. free technologies right from OS (BSD/Linux), Desktop/ OnScreen keywboard (Gnome, again open source) and Google Gears for widgets / plugins.

Techcrunch in its blog post says about its idea of the device:

The idea is to turn it on, bypass any desktop interface, and go directly to Firefox running in a modified Kiosk mode that effectively turns the browser into the operating system for the device. Add Gears for offline syncing of Google docs, email, etc., and Skype for communication and you have a machine that will be almost as useful as a desktop but cheaper and more portable than any laptop or tablet PC.

Though the concept is not very new and in words of one of a comments in TechcrunchIT its like reinventing the wheels. The famous $100 Laptop is in existence and the tablet PC with such idea of nothing more than a browser do already made their presence such as Cherrypal and is available for $249 in market and other similar one is from India called Simputer that too cost near about $200 (more info) but available in India only.

The TechCrunch Web Tablet project is convincing enough as when made, it would custom designed for bloggers, people obsessed with social networking, watching just videos on their PCs/laptops and putting other software/ hardware in their respective devices waiting for their chance to do some work for what these has been made for.

The TechcrunchIT web tablet project in other way can be taken as first of a kind where the efforts is to make a product by working in collaborative manner asking people to help in any means of their expertise (via a blog), ideas and then putting these inputs as base of product, taking shape in real world. The TechCrunch is asking people to be a part of project and once they are made part of this, they will get first prototype of this Web tablet device.

One can see whooping comments the blog has got in just single day and offering help in project, in form of developer, tester, PCB designer, some as electrical engineer and some as just consumers.

RoamAbout is a plugin that delivers information on the web contextually. Users would not need to leave the site they are browsing in order to search for videos, music, pictures or share the things they come across with. This Firefox & IE plugin bring all these to the user by just highlighting the text any user want without leaving the web page they are viewing.

One can get related information by selecting text and clicking the RoamAbout Icon in status bar also users can post to their twitter account, the selected text of a web page and post it directly their, without even leaving the web page actually.

Similarly users can browse flickr photos, Google news, info from Wikipedia, maps from MapQuest and videos from YouTube and by just selecting the text in web page you are viewing and hitting the plugin’s icons bar. User can customize the the plugin bar so as to limit the no. of Icons for different Web services or websites such as stock quotes, weather or games.

Moreover, the company behind RoamAround Vysr do have the open platform that provides developers with any easy way to add and integrate services and networks that users can tap into as they travel the Web.

PicLens is a powerful application that turn your browser into full screen 3D experience to view images and videos. Piclens transform your browser into cinematic visual presentation with images and videos put on wall and make you assume like you are seeing them on wall of a dark room.

The application indeed a rich experiencing tool with media player like controls where you can fast forward, rewind, view full screen or scroll thumbnails to view images and videos.

Piclens has recently make the application compatible to view YouTube videos along previous compatibility to view Google image search results into 3D visualization as well as that of Yahoo, AOL, Ask.com and Live image searches, thats too with just one single click. Moreover, PicLens allow to view photos on Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa and Smugmug into same 3D visualization along with social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and Friendster.

For other sites/ blogs to be compatible with PicLens application, one has to create a media RSS along with its auto-discovery link for same and other addition in HTML to match those tags in media RSS with images and videos under webpage. However, WordPress users can use the plugin to create a mini slide shows, see an example WordPress blog.

PicLens from Cooliris Inc, is available for Firefox(Windows/Mac), IE and Safari for users to turn their traditional browsers into 3D transformed app. The application to some extent quite resembles that of Pogo Browser of AT&T which too have such kind of rich media experience, difference being its a browser itself and display everything from images, videos to bookmarks, history into 3D view. Nevertheless, the Pogo browser is yet to be released till then one can have spaceship’s cockpit like screen on their computers with PicLens.

India along with nations across the globe is high on internet vulnerabilities through various medium, highest being malicious codes, phishing and unauthorized scanning. Recent trend is that hackers now turning to websites, servers from their previous choice of emails, cheap apps etc.

Recently India’s premier technology institute IIT’s website has been hacked (source), although this is not single case in India, a total of 612 Indian websites were defaced during March 2008 as reported by CERT-In (Computer Emergency Report Team India), which has increased by more than 50% in India, comparing to just previous month.

Social networking is also a victim of hackers in a recent study, as per CERT-In, a worm called Scrapkut is spreading like a cold (human virus) among Orkut users, how it works?, well, a malicious scrap message is posted to victim’s scrapbook containing a fake link to YouTube video purporting to be from a known member of its friend list. When the victim clicks on the link, it redirected to some malicious website which prompts to download the file flash executable file (.exe) disguised as a Flash upgrade. The execution of which results in malicious scrapbook entry in all victims’ friends. So… DO NOT CLICK on any YouTube link on your Orkut scrapbook. For more details and preventions see – Here.

Mozilla and Microsoft Office products isn’t untouched by this, Mozilla products like Firefox, Thunderbird & SeaMonkey are among high vulnerability threat list, according to which this could be exploited by remote attacker to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the current user.

In Firefox, a borderless XUL pop-up is created in front of the active tab in the user’s browser from a background tab to misguide/ mislead the form elements such as a login prompt for a site opened in a different tab and steal the user’s login credentials for that site (phishing attack). and poke into your security fences. for this one solution (unavoidable though) is to disable javascript. For more Details and solutions for Mozilla products see – Here and for Fireofox – Here

The list of vulnerabilities threats are as -

High vulnerabilities – MS Office, Excel, Outlook, Mozilla Products, Real Player, Sun Java

Medium vulnerabilities – PHP, GNOME, OpenSSH

Malicious Code Threat – ScrapKut (Orkut)

]]> http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/india-high-on-internet-vulnerabilities-orkut-mozilla-on-list/feed/ 3 http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/att-to-release-its-own-3d-browser-named-pogo/ http://www.indianweb2.com/2008/04/att-to-release-its-own-3d-browser-named-pogo/#comments Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:26:56 +0000 Vardaan http://www.indianweb2.com/?p=215

AT&T, a Communication, Internet and wireless major company entered into war of ‘Browsers’, AT&T has tied up with Vizible to create a new browser of other kind called Pogo Browser, the browser will be giving users the new internt browsing experience rather than the traditional browsers that over a decade managed to evolve just by inculcating handfull of features like plugins, extensions etc.

The new Browser Pogo will be 3D environment & visualizaton browser along with rich graphics, content handling to engage user nicely with what he is browsing, the browser will be having tabbed browsing but far different from traditional tabbed browsing unlike to Firefox or IE7 as tabs will be small screenshots of pages to chose from, tag them and drag/ drop them around, to put in archives or bookmarks.

At present the browser is in closed beta invites which will be released under open public beta soon within a month or two.

The 3D rendering engine of browser with its more user engageable features to experience from Vizible’s visual-based technology. the Pogo would prove, the next geaneration of browsers to compete hard with itself unless it is assumed that this browser doesn’t demand to much computer memory (as goes with all rich media apps), and presumed that it can be run on most common system requirements of these days.

This is an image captured Hubble Space Telescope and of the variable star V838 Monocerotis which lies near the edge of our own Milky Way Galaxy, though photo was taken way back in March 2004, it almost resemble that of Firefox logo.

This is just an example how the space out there changes it shape and looks so much so that it can randomly resemble any shape of our physical world (and now it web world), wander if it we could find all such kind of images that resemble IE, Safari and Opera logos as well :)

Via – Newlaunches