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. Originally, Microsoft wanted 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 a very reasonable solution: 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 "unfortunately does not provide users with any information about what browsers are preferred" (according to who, Jenny? Maybe user would prefer Safari over Firefox—I know I do. Or maybe they would prefer Chrome if they could try it, as it seems to be a lot faster than Firefox).

Then she shows her true colors, 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% 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]

The Chrome Frame allows IE to use HTML5 and other open source technologies, including high performance JavaScript enhancements, that Internet Explorer's Trident Engine is unable to render. One of the largest barriers to the mass utilization of HTML5 was IE's lack of support for the standard. When people install the plug-in, and developers add a X-UA compatible tag, websites can have HTML5 elements without sacrificing losing a large segment of the potential user base. Without the X-UA tag, pages render normally using the Trident engine instead of the WebKit Chrome renderer.

One of the major advantages for Google in issuing the plug-in is ensuring IE compatibility for Google Wave. Users with the plug-in will also have the benefits of offline storage and utilization of the canvas tag. It's no secret that Google believes that the traditional desktop base is going the way of the dinosaur—making HTML5 and enhanced JavaScript a ubiquitous standard is the first step to emulating desktop environment via the web.

OK, great. Now let's see how many of the IT departments that refuse to upgrade from IE6 allow their users to install some crazy Google plug-in. [Ars Technica and Google Chrome Blog]

We got a few minutes with the Zune HD all the way back at its announcement, and everything felt and looked like something to get excited about, but that was just a taste; now we know that the Zune's relative stagnancy over the last few years hasn't been for nothing. The hardware feels "expensive, solid, and sexy" and the 3.3-inch OLED screen looks "outstanding," while the software—particularly the music playback screen and music recommendation features—sounds miles ahead of the Zune's already decent interface. It's great to hear that our hopes were warranted, but there's a bombshell buried in here, a few paragraphs down.

Speaking of Wi-Fi, the Zune's new Web browser smokes. Not since first using the iPhone have I been this impressed with a mobile web browser. There's no branding on the browser, but I was told it was cooked up by Microsoft's Internet Explorer team (makes sense). [Ed. note: It does?] Page load was snappy, and pinching and reorienting pages work just like the iPhone and iPod Touch.

As anyone who has used Windows Mobile in the last—well, ever, including the much-improved-but-still-only-tolerable-Mobile IE 6, this is a comeback for the ages. I just hope Bell wasn't swept away in the moment; if these observations hold, the Zune HD could be a certifiable Very Big Deal. Or possibly, if Microsoft wakes up and drops a cellular antenna into this thing, a Very Very Very Big Deal. [CNET]

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]

Internet Explorer isn't mandated in every governmental department, and Firefox has been vetted and cleared as just as secure as IE (duh), so it's a legitimate question: Why not use the faster, safer, more customizable and more reliable browser? Clinton has no idea why Firefox is barred, which is totally fine with us—we really are happy she's spending her time on other things.

But Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy chimes in that it's "an expense question," at which point he is promptly and rightfully shouted down that Firefox is free, for god's sake. He goes into a lot of nonsense about "patches" and how even things that are free aren't really free, which sounds to us like a lame attempt to explain away his first answer—he probably didn't know Firefox was free when he cited expense in the first place. If Firefox has already been implemented in other sectors of government, it stands to reason that it could be adopted by the State Department fairly easily and quickly, and with minimal expense.

The rest of both his and Secretary Clinton's answer is mostly impenetrable, metaphor-laden government-speak about cutting costs that, sorry guys, isn't going to make us forget that you just claimed a free and vastly superior program, one that's already in wide use in other sectors of government, is too expensive to implement.

Pat Kennedy, you're officially on my bad side. [State Department via Switched]

The hole, apparently caused by the interaction of IE and ActiveX, has been used for about a week to install viruses on users who click certain links in spam emails. Microsoft's stopgap solution, available here, is to disable that video software, and the company is hard at work to fix the problem. Doesn't bode well for Microsoft's push into antivirus software, does it? [via AP]

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]

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]

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 (which you can download at noon today) fell within a few hours to Nils, a master's student who busted all three browsers wide open. They each won $5000. Day 2 will offer more $5000 prizes for discovering new bugs in Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Mobile phone OS's will also be part of the event, with $10,000 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 color-coded, so you can see where your trains of thought spring from—all of my Giz-originating tabs are one color, while all of the links I opened up in tabs from Fark are a different color, 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.

Oh yeah, you can grab it at noon eastern in the morning. [Microsoft]

Below is a (lengthy) screenshot of everything you'll be able to turn off in one of the future releases of Windows 7—you can turn off IE8 for sure in the next test release, build 7048, though most of us won't get a chance until release candidate 1. If you turn off a feature off "it is not available for use. This means the files (binaries and data) are not loaded by the operating system (for security-conscious customers) and not available to users on the computer."

But you can turn features back on without popping in that pesky Window disc you're always losing. One of the obvious reasons for the more modular nature of Windows features are all the antitrust suits rippling throughout the land. What feature do you wanna turn off?

[Engineering Windows 7 via ZDNet]

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 compatability 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]

The most obvious new feature is the inclusion of Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate, a step up from the previous build's beta edition. But it also includes a bunch of new icons and animations, and apparently the start menu's search option is faster than before. Despite a few flaws, we're pretty much in love with Windows 7 over here and it's good to know that it'll get even better before the final release. [Computer World]

This IE 8 release candidate is said to be feauture 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]

Back when Microsoft snuck up behind Netscape and stole its crown, hardly anyone knew that there was even a playing field, let alone a game. Following all that anti-trust business, Microsoft's only major competitor was the product of a non-profit organization. Firefox is popular, it's what I'm using now, but it doesn't have what it takes to be a superpower in a browser war.

What does it take? Cash money. Many of you know that Google is the reason Firefox did so well in the first place: As far back as 2005, Google was paying major dollars to those who referred Firefox downloads that included the Google Toolbar. But Firefox never seems to have had the cash to buy its way to the PC makers' desktops. The kind of payola that puts heinous crapware on Dells, HPs and other PCs will soon be put to work in the new browser war, one where Microsoft will for the first time have a serious threat on its home turf.

As Electronista puts it, though Microsoft was long ago forced to allow other default browsers...

...these have typically been limited to Firefox and the now-defunct Netscape but will now potentially have a more commercially supported alternative that also emphasizes universal web standards, the historical weaknesses of Microsoft's browser.

TechCrunch adds:

The Google’s open source browser has a number of eager customers, including OEMs who can’t offer the browser until it is in full release.

Rules is rules, so you can see why, at least in this one Google product, the beta label is a major hindrance. To recap:

Browser gold status + web standards + sick payola = hot Chrome takeover strategy

All the plan lacks is a Mac-friendly version to impress all those ivory-tower newsmedia people (and MacBook totin' bloggers), and that's due sometime very soon. Stay tuned for one fierce freakin' browser war, is all I'm saying. [TechCrunch via Electronista]

Ballmer not trashing open source? Or anything at all? In the span of several sentence? Whoooa. It sounds like something between a throwaway line and a more significant proclamation. In other words, don't expect Internet Explorer 9 to use WebKit, but it sounds like Ballmer's looking at open source at least a little bit differently than he used to. And hell, maybe one day we will see WebKit in Internet Explorer. [Cnet]