Posts Tagged: browser

Firefox 11 Released!

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March 10, 2012

Firefox 11
In what’s been an almost monthly event now since August last year, Mozilla team have released another major increment to the version number of their Firefox web browser! Firefox 11 is now available for download. Once again, we’re bringing you this news before Mozilla have even updated their own Release Notes for Firefox 11!

Mozilla have also confirmed this past week that development work has now begun on a version of Firefox specifically for the new “Metro” interface of Windows 8.

One interesting point that Mozilla programmer Brian Bondy notes about this version of Firefox for the Windows 8 Metro interface, is that Microsoft have imposed restrictions. These restrictions mean that the “Metro” version of Firefox will only work if Firefox has been selected as the default web browser within Windows 8.

Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8We’ll be keeping a close eye on Windows 8 as it draws ever closer to a full release later this year. It’s currently in “Beta” – or as Microsoft are now calling it “Consumer Preview”. We have already tested our online room scheduling software, MIDAS, on Windows 8 Consumer Preview in the brand new Internet Explorer 10 (which is not currently available for earlier versions of Windows). We can confirm that the latest version of MIDAS is fully compatible with this new release of Internet Explorer!

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Firefox hits double figures – v10.0 now available!

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January 31, 2012

Firefox 10
Following Mozilla’s recent trend of releasing a major browser update just about every month, Firefox 10.0 has just been released!

Once again, we’re bringing you this news before Mozilla have even updated their Release Notes for Firefox 10.0 to reflect that 10.0 is no longer in beta!

Our browser-based room booking app, MIDAS, is fully compatible with the very latest versions of ALL 5 main browsers, including Firefox 10.0.

We continue to work hard to ensure that whatever new browser versions the five main vendors put out, MIDAS will function correctly in all of them!

In other recent Firefox news…

Mozilla announced earlier this month it’s plans to introduce an “Extended Support Release” edition of Firefox.

According to their blog:

“The ESR version of Firefox is for use by enterprises, public institutions, universities and other organizations that centrally manage their Firefox deployments. Releases of the ESR will occur once a year, providing these organizations with a version of Firefox that receives security updates but does not make changes to the Web or Firefox Add-ons platform”

Source: Mozilla Blog

This idea is still just a proposal, and we here at MIDAS HQ personally hope that this doesn’t happen.

Why? Well, it will create more work for developers and really hold back their creativity and ability to take advantage of new and emerging web technologies. Developers would have to support an additional version of Firefox that could be up to a year out of date!

But let’s wait and see whether Mozilla move forward with their ESR proposals.

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2012: The year IE7 is banished to the history books?

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December 31, 2011

Internet Explorer 7 to retire In 2011, we reported that many well known sites like Google, YouTube, Hotmail, WordPress, had taken the decision to drop support for the Microsoft’s decade old browser, Internet Explorer 6.

We also dropped IE6 support for our own web based room booking system, MIDAS in 2010.

But now it looks like major sites are starting to phase out support for Internet Explorer 7 too! …starting this week with Facebook.

Now, if you’re an avid Facebook user, you’ll probably have noticed their new “Timeline” feature. That is, unless you’re using Internet Explorer 7!

While more recent browsers can now access Facebook’s new Timeline profile feature, IE7 users are prevented from using this by Facebook! Instead, IE7 users can only see the old-style profile pages.

It’s likely, therefore, that in the near future, Facebook may drop support for IE7 entirely. You can be sure that other websites will be following suit during the course of 2012.

We here at MIDAS HQ think this will be a good thing!

Since IE7 was released, there have been two major updates (IE8 and IE9).

Keeping Updated

With Internet Explorer 10 being available around the time that the Windows 8 operating system will be launched, we always encourage our users to use the most recent version of their favorite browser available to them.

Keeping your browser up-to-date is essential. It helps ensure you’re protected from the latest security vulnerabilities. It also allows you to view websites (and web-based software, such as MIDAS) as the developers intended!

Many modern browsers keep themselves up-to-date with minimal user intervention required. As such, we were encouraged to learn earlier this month that in 2012 Internet Explorer will also begin automatically updating itself!

Although we strongly encourage our users to use IE9, at time of writing, we continue to provide support for MIDAS running under IE7. However, globally, IE7 users currently make up just 4% of PC web browser users. That’s according to StatCounter, and it’s a number that is ever declining.

Consequently, we are very likely to phase out support for MIDAS running in IE7 too before too long!

So if you’re still stuck on Internet Explorer 7… isn’t it about time you updated your browser!?

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Firefox 9 Released …and Chrome now the number one browser?

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December 19, 2011

Firefox 9In what’s now becoming an almost monthly event, the Mozilla team have released yet another major version of their web browser, Firefox 9! Once again, we’re able to bring you this news “hot off the press”. In fact, so fresh is this news that Mozilla have yet to update their Release Notes for Firefox 9 yet!

It’s looks like the browser war between Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome is really hotting up now too! Less than a week ago, Google also released a major update Google Chrome 16. In the same week, Microsoft also announced that in 2012, Internet Explorer will keep itself up-to-date. This follows in the footsteps of Firefox and Chrome which already do this.

…and if that wasn’t enough web browser news, if the reports over the numbers over at StatCounter are to be believed, Google Chrome 15 is now the “world’s number one browser”!

Google Chrome 15StatCounter claims that in the last two weeks of November and the first week of December, Chrome 15 was used by 24 percent of web browser users worldwide. This compares to only 22.9 percent for IE8. It’s the first time in StatCounter’s history that a non-Microsoft browser has reached the top spot on its statistics.

These results show that Google’s Chrome web browser is definitely gaining more and more users worldwide. Just a couple of weeks ago, StatCounter claimed that Chrome overtook Mozilla’s Firefox to become the world’s number two web browser in terms of cumulative web browsers rather than specific versions.

So it looks like there’s going to be some fierce competition between the 5 main browsers in 2012. We can can expect version numbers to continue incrementing at an ever increasing rate as that all important market share is hotly contended for!

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully compatible with the very latest versions of ALL 5 main browsers. We will continue to work hard during 2012 to make sure that whatever new browser versions the 5 main vendors put out, MIDAS will run in all of them!

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