With the Firefox 10, Opera 12 and Internet Explorer 10 releases just around the corner, guys from TomsHardware have decided to test the latest stable builds of the top 5 web browsers on both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion.

How did your favorite web browser perform? Let’s find out.

Tested versions

Internet Explorer 9
Firefox 9
Google Chrome 16
Opera 11.60
Safari 5.1.2
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Startup Time Performance Benchmarks

Happy New Year!

It’s that time of the month again when we look at the market share results for the last month. How your favorite browser did finish the 2011 race? Let’s find out.

Already broken through the 50% barrier, Internet Explorer share continues the downtrend, this time it has decreased by 1.19 point, from 48.95% to 47.76%.

It looks like more releases did not really help Mozilla as Firefox is going in the same direction as IE, down from 20.58% to 20.09% (0.49 point decrease).

With every month passing by, Google Chrome is gearing towards the #2 spot in the market and has now increased its share by 0.68 point, up from 16.90% to 17.58%.

Thanks to Apple device sales, the happy days continue for the Safari web browser as its share has grown from 8.35% to 8.67% (0.32 point increase).

Despite overall downtrend, Opera has managed to rebound some of its losses and is now up by 0.11 point, all the way from 1.55% to 1.66%.

Opera Mini on the other hand has been doing well for quite some time and saw a generous 0.36 point increase, up from 1.53% to 1.89%.

That’s all for now, folks. What are your predictions for 2012?

A new Google-funded study of browser security by security research firm Accuvant Labs crowned Chrome the champion of security features, and ranked Firefox below Internet Explorer in terms of protection available from web-borne threats. Predictably, Microsoft and Mozilla have different opinions on what makes a browser secure, and why Accuvant's findings are off base. All of this got us thinking about which browser is the most secure, and whether the security features listed in studies like this even matter to the rest of us. More »

Google funded study confirms.

Accuvant, the US based research, firm has published a new study, which compared security features of the three most popular web browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox.

As it turns out, the search giant funded study has made a conclusion that Google Chrome is the most secure browser out there, followed by Internet Explorer and Firefox.

After such claims, Mozilla has decided to respond with the following statement:

“Firefox includes a broad array of technologies to eliminate or reduce security threats, from platform level features like address space randomization to internal systems like our layout frame poisoning system. Sandboxing is a useful addition to that toolbox that we are investigating, but no technology is a silver bullet. We invest in security throughout the development process with internal and external code reviews, constant testing and analysis of running code, and rapid response to security issues when they emerge. We’re proud of our reputation on security, and it remains a central priority for Firefox.”

So here you have it folks. Despite continuous IE bashing in various communities, it still managed to beat Firefox in a non-biased study.

What do you think?

With just one month left before the end of 2011, it’s time to check the latest stats for the browsers market share.

Falling below 50% last time, Internet Explorer is now down from 49.58% to 48.95% (0.63 point decrease).

Despite regaining some of its market share on October, Firefox is nearing towards 20% level, down from 21.20% to 20.58% (0.62 point decrease).

Soon to cross paths with Firefox, Google Chrome continues its dominant uptrend, up from 16.59% to 16.90% (0.31 point increase).

Gaining market share for many months, this time Safari has lost some of it, climbing down from 8.54% to 8.35% (0.19 point decrease).

Just like Firefox, it looks like Opera is stuck in the never ending downtrend as its share has also decreased from 1.49% to 1.45% (0.04 point decrease).

This is a guest post by Mark Subel.

It’s that time of year where the ghosts and goblins come out and we get ready for Halloween night. Kids are making last minute changes to their costume and parents haven’t yet figured out what they’re wearing to the Halloween party. Whatever the case, you won’t run out of options for dressing up your browser this Halloween season. Firefox, IE and Chrome users have a wealth of options for decorating their browsers this year with several amazing Halloween themes available online. Here are our favorite Halloween themes for your browser:

Firefox

Animated Lightning Theme

This creepy theme found in the Firefox personas gallery showcases a spooky haunted house with streaks of animated lightning bolts lighting up the sky. The imagery in this theme is just amazing with a dark sky and full moon to further accentuate the Halloween theme.

Halloween Watching Hour – Animated

Another theme in the Firefox Personas gallery, this Halloween theme displays brilliant imagery of Halloween with black cats, haunted houses, bats, a full moon and cemetery. This theme is animated and you’ll see lights flickering on and off in the house, bats flying and a surprise from a spider right in your browser. We’ll let you try it out to see where the spider appears.

Hello Kitty Halloween Theme

Not all Halloween themes have to be scary. This Hello Kitty theme features your favorite characters in a beautifully designed Halloween scene with happy pumpkins, a bright orange and yellow background, and your favorite Halloween characters like bats, spiders, and witches.

Firefox and Internet Explorer

Halloween 2011 Interactive Personas

This unique Halloween theme developed by Brand Thunder, features Jack-o-Lanterns dipped in a fiery orange molten substance, black and orange background and “Trick or Treat” imagery. Perfect for Halloween lovers. Taking it a step further, this theme is “interactive”, as it provides quick links to Halloween costume websites, Halloween safety tips and a video sidebar showing the spookiest Halloween related videos.

Please note: Brand Thunder themes come with a WebSearch+ toolbar.

Google Chrome

Happy Halloween Chrome Theme

Chrome users will enjoy this “Happy Halloween” theme made specifically for them. A beautifully designed pumpkin graphic with a dark black background and “Happy Halloween” saying displayed underneath. The tabs and bookmarks tab are tinted with light and dark orange to complete this slick theme.

It is October already and there’s no time to waste. So, let’s dive into the latest browsers market share results and explore those changes.

Just a couple more months and Internet Explorer will break the 50% market share barrier, this time it lost 0.62 point, down from 51.59% to 50.97%.

With more and more Firefox releases hitting the Internet, Mozilla’s browser has managed to secure 0.03 point of the market share, up from 21.03% to 21.06%.

Google Chrome does not have any plans to stop and has now broken though 15% barrier, up from 14.46% to 15.17% (0.71 point increase).

Continuous sales of Apple devices have helped Safari to increase its market share by another 0.32 point, up from 7.71% to 8.03%.

After 6 months of losses, Opera’s market share stayed flat at 1.58%.

Firefox 7 is set to be released today, and with a big focus on performance, we thought it time for another round of browser speed test. We pitted the four most popular Windows browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab-loading times, JavaScript powers, and memory usage, with some surprising results. More »

Web browser benchmarks on Windows and Mac OS X.

With the recent Firefox and Google Chrome releases, TomsHardware has decided to test all the competitors in both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

There’s no time to waste, so let’s dive into the results.

Startup Time

Page Load Times

It’s Friday, Friday…

Another month passes by as we look at the August market share stats to find out, how web browsers competed at the end of summer.

Internet Explorer is approaching the 50% market share mark, as it’s now down another 1.13 point, from 52.72% to 51.59%.

Firefox is the new IE and it continues to show, this time its market share has decreased by 0.4 point, down from 21.47% to 21.03%.

Another month and another gain for Google Chrome, in August Google’s web browser market share grew by another 0.97 point, from 13.49% to 14.46%.

Combining both desktop and mobile versions of Safari, its market share continues to climb as well, up from 7.37% to 7.71% (0.34 point increase).

Despite reporting growth in the latest financial report, all major trackers show Opera’s market share contraction, this time it went down from 1.62% to 1.58% (0.04 point decrease).

The battle for best browser on Windows is especially close, but we have to pick Google Chrome for its speed, extensibility, and awesome syncing features. More »

It’s August already as we look at the July’s web browser market share numbers. As you will see form the stats below, this month was awful for everyone but WebKit.

Internet Explorer is first in our list and there are no surprises here. It has lost some of its market share again, down from 53.68% to 52.71% (0.97 point decrease).

Firefox 5 did not change the situation for Mozilla as its browser market share continues to grind lower, down from 21.67% to 21.47% (0.2 point decrease).

Google’s Chrome growth is in a steady uptrend, nothing new here, up from 13.11% to 13.49% (0.38 point increase).

Ever wanted to create a simple theme for the web browser of your choice? Then BT Engage, an interactive skin creator by Brand Thunder is a tool you’ve been waiting for.

The process is pretty straight forward. Upon starting, user is presented with a web browser screen that can be customized according to your individual needs, from backgrounds and logos to widgets.

However, if you are not keen on trying such activity, feel free to check ThunderThemes, which includes over 40,000 already created skins.

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.

Recently, I was checking the browser market share for Techie Buzz and found that Chrome has overtaken Firefox by a small margin. 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 browsers? 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.

With the release of Firefox 5 and Opera 11.50, TomsHardware took 5 most popular web browsers and compared them against each other.

Internet Explorer 9
Google Chrome 12
Firefox 5
Opera 11.50
Safari 5

What are the results? Let’s check them out.

Startup Time

Page Load Times

JavaScript

Silverlight

JSGameBench

Psychedelic Browsing

Memory Usage

Battery Life

Conclusion

Conformance Testing

Standards Conformance

When it comes to summarizing all the results, Google Chrome 12 takes the crown and is followed by IE9, Firefox 5, Opera and Safari.

So here you have it folks. Whether or not Chrome will continue to be the king of the hill with the upcoming releases of Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 6 and Opera 12, remains to be seen.

Chrome/Firefox/Internet Explorer: If you're loving Google+ but finding it to be virtual ghost town while your friends slowly trickle in, the Google+Facebook browser extension incorporates your Facebook feed to your Google+ stream. You can also post status updates and replies directly within Google+.More »

India has had a history of being a tech savvy country for more than a decade now. The adaption rate of newer technology in India has been higher than many other countries, which is why there are around 840 million mobile users (TRAI data – PDF File). However, hardly 10-15% of the Indian population have access to internet.

According to public data available in Google, the total internet users in India was over 61 million in 2009. This should be more than 100 million now. However, this is a really small number considering a population of 1.2 billion. Nevertheless, this is still 1/3rd of the population of U.S. on which most of the metrics and measurements are made.

This definitely makes India a very lucrative market and considering the growing economy and purchasing power there it should definitely be. Consider this, when I bought my first mobile phone in 2002 or so (it was a Motorola), I parted with Rs. 4500 (~$115) with a heavy heart. This was a second hand phone with no contracts etc. Coming back to 2011, I see people splurging Rs. 20,000-30,000+ for a mobile phone without blinking an eye. This shows how the spending power has increased in India.

Looking at some of the public data available today, I was intrigued to look at who is dominating the market and guess what, it is none other than good old Google. I did some research and here are some facts on how Google is dominating the browser market which was once the forts of Microsoft and Mozilla.

Browser Growth in India

Recently, there were quite a few blog posts about Google Chrome overtaking 20% market share worldwide in the Internet browser market. In those cases, people were measuring Global traffic (U.S market share is still below 20%). However, one region where Google Chrome is really putting the pressure on Internet Explorer  and Firefox is India.

As Internet Explorer is heading towards the 49% market share mark and Firefox continues its downtrend, we see interesting times are approaching indeed, but as for now, let’s focus on what had happened over the course of June.

No surprises here, Internet Explorer has lost some of its market share again, down from 54.27% to 53.68% (0.59 point decrease).

After slightly increasing its share in the month of May, Firefox resumes its downtrend as it goes down again, down from 21.71% to 21.67% (0.04 point decrease).

In the expense of other web browsers, Google Chrome share continues to climb higher, up from 12.52% to 13.11% (0.59 point increase).

It looks like WebKit web browsers are on the roll, as Safari managed to increase its market share by another 0.2 point, up from 7.28% to 7.48%.

Opera took another big hit (-15% this time), losing 0.3 point of its market share, as it went down from 2.03% to 1.73%.

With the release of the Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 2, Microsoft has decided to post results of the JavaScript Standards Test, which scores are available below.

The following web browsers were tested:

Internet Explorer 10 (Platform Preview 2)
Internet Explorer 9
Firefox 5
Google Chrome 13 (13.0.782.41)
Google Chrome 12 (12.0.742.112)
Safari 5.0.5 (7533.21.1)
Opera 11.50

As you can see from the results, IE10 has scored 99%, followed by Firefox 5.0, IE9 and Google Chrome 13 Beta. Surprisingly or not, Opera 11.50 has scored only 65%, lowest of all the web browsers.

What is test262?

test262 is a test suite intended to check agreement between JavaScript implementations and the ECMA-262 Specification (currently 5th Edition). The test suite contains thousands of individual tests, each of which tests some specific requirements of the ECMAScript specification.

Surprised, excited or both?

If you're stuck on an office computer and forced to use Internet Explorer because your system is locked down, Google has your back. The new version of Chrome Frame brings the features of Google Chrome to IE and doesn't need administrative rights to your PC to install. More »