Tizen claims to be more open than Android. Unlike it’s peers Ubuntu Touch and Firefox, Tizen 2.0 was designed for high end phones. Versatile, high performanc…
Category Archives: Firefox
New Firefox for Android update overview
Get a quick overview of what’s new in the latest Firefox for Android Firefox for Android is available in the Google Play Store play.google.com
IE slides, Chrome gains in browser wars
Once again, when it comes to the month of December in terms of web browsers, there was one clear winner and one clear loser.
According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer slid 0.8% last month down to a market share of 51.9%. It’ll likely only be a few months before it slips below the 50% mark.
Chrome on the other hand continued to chomp up market share, putting on 0.9% to reach 19.1% of the market.
That means Google’s browser is now breathing down Firefox’s neck, with Mozilla falling by 0.3% in December to 21.8%. Again, in a few months time Chrome will almost certainly overtake Firefox.
That’s already happened, mind you, according to StatCounter which said that Chrome had passed Firefox in worldwide usage in November.
Safari held at a 5% market share in fourth place, followed by Opera which put on 0.1% to rise slightly to 1.7%.
Microsoft, however, is rather ignoring these figures, and instead pointing to the considerable growth which the latest version of Internet Explorer, IE9, is experiencing under its latest OS.
In fact IE9 is poised to overtake IE8 as the dominant browser under Windows 7, but that doesn’t change the bigger picture of a continued and sustained decline in Internet Explorer’s overall market share.
92% of web surfing was performed on a desktop browser, Net Applications found, with 8% on mobile devices (including tablets).
The top mobile browser was Safari on 53%, then Opera Mini on 22%. The Android browser claimed 16% of the market, with Symbian on 3.3%.
Google renews Firefox search deal
You might recall at the start of the month, we wrote an article about the fact that Firefox’s search deal with Google was up for renewal.
This is the agreement whereby Google is the default search engine in Mozilla’s browser, a privilege which the big G pays handsomely for.
While this is naturally a whole lot of surfers which are directed to Google, it’s a far more important deal to Mozilla, as the money the search engine stumps up represents the majority of Firefox’s income. 85% of it, in fact.
So the theory was put forward by some that if Google wanted to sink Firefox in order to push its Chrome browser higher still, it could turn Mozilla down and devastate Firefox’s income.
This hasn’t happened though, as we guessed it wouldn’t, with the news today that a renewal has been agreed. The deal will run over the next three years, although no specific details were revealed.
There are a number of reasons why Google didn’t exercise the option to try and capsize Firefox in 2012. Firstly, because it makes money from this agreement too, albeit not a critical sum like Mozilla.
Secondly, spurning Firefox could have led to Mozilla striking deals with Bing and Yahoo, strengthening its search rivals over the coming year. Granted, they’re not exactly breathing down Google’s neck (ankle, more like), but even so…
And then there’s the fact that Google’s Chrome is gaining market share rapidly anyway, with Firefox drifting downwards as it is. This situation seems likely to continue – it’s been the story of 2011 – so there’s no real need to force Chrome’s advance anyway.
Mozilla, however, will doubtless be breathing a sigh of relief at having signed up for another three years of cashflow from the Google coffers.
At the close of 2014, the browser world is likely to be very different. Some already see Chrome as the primary challenger to Internet Explorer, with one analyst firm, StatCounter, estimating Chrome now has a bigger market share than Firefox.
Net Applications, however, doesn’t agree and still has Firefox in second place, 4% ahead of Chrome.
How to remove Win 7 Home Security 2012
Win 7 Home Security 2012 is a piece of malware doing the rounds at the moment, being distributed via infected ads across a number of high traffic sites.
Win 7 Home Security 2012 is a piece of malware that hijacks a user’s PC, issues false alerts, and insists it won’t go away unless you pay via a registration that aims to look like it’s coming from Microsoft.
And a nasty piece of work it is, as it attempts to take control of the user’s PC – every time you try and click on a program, Win 7 Home Security 2012 activates itself, displaying a bogus warning.
And it also hijacks popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, providing false firewalls warnings.
All in all, the malware attempts to panic the user by locking down normal PC functions so that the user pays up.
While distressing if infected, luckily it’s relatively easy to remove.
BleepingComputer posts an invaluable tutorial on how to do this here: Remove Win 7 Home Security 2012 (Uninstall Guide)
The key steps to remove an infection of Win 7 Home Security 2012 are:
- From an uninfected computer, download the file FIXNCR.reg and save to a USB stick, CD, or similar removable media
- Insert media into the affected computer and double click on FIXNCR.reg
This should help clear your registry enough to allow relatively normal operation of your PC – enough at least to get the Win 7 Home Security 2012 malware removed.
- Download RKill to your infected computer’s desktop
- Now double-click the desktop icon for RKill – this should stop the malware from running.
But do not restart your PC yet!
- Now download the latest version of MalwareBytes and run it on the infected machine – do a full scan
This should allow you to quarrantine the source program for the malware, and remove it.
And now your PC should be clear.
Should you continue to have any problems, ask in the BleepingComputer forums.
In the meantime, should you have actually paid for Win 7 Home Security 2012, contact your credit card provider to have the charges reversed – simply tell them it was a piece of malware that had infected your PC, demanding a payment until you paid up, and the credit card company should be able to reverse the payment.
New Firefox Record
Firefox set another new record last month. No, not the 8-million-plus downloads on Download Day – that’s nice, but since this is the first time the Guiness people have ever certified a record in that category, it’s pretty meaningless. Much more important in the grand scheme of things is the browser’s continued market penetration. Net Applications has the data: a 5.5% increase in browser share in the last year, paralleling a 6% drop in IE use and leaving Firefox poised to hit 20% of the browser market this month.
With 1 out of 5 browser hits being from Firefox, we’re at the point where web designers can no longer afford to build “IE only” sites. For web workers in the design and development universe, this is good news; high Firefox market numbers act as a natural push towards standards-based design. I wouldn’t want to see IE vanish completely – an ecosystem with just one browser is bad no matter whose browser it is. But with the current trend continuing, those of us who are committed Firefox users (and the 8% or so who use other alternatives) stand to benefit in cross-browser releases of new technology on any number of fronts.