Today Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the new Web browser that offers the best solution for how people use the Web today. It can be downloaded in 25 languages at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at noon EDT on March 19. Internet Explorer 8 is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety. A new study commissioned by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. shows that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online threats in the current economic climate, and 78 percent are more likely to choose a Web browser with built-in security than they were two years ago.

“Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

In response to extensive customer research and input from tens of millions of customer sessions, Microsoft developed Internet Explorer 8 to focus on what matters most to people. The security enhancements offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online. It blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services they use daily and the browser used to access the Internet.

Helps Protect People From Online Threats

The new study released today reinforces the importance of safety in browsing, indicating that 78 percent of people are more likely than they were two years ago to choose a browser that includes built-in protection against security threats without them having to go online to download additional programs or browser add-ons. It also showed that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online fraud and identity theft in today’s economic climate, and 37 percent are less likely to shop online because they would have to give their personal information.

Internet Explorer 8 offers the best security protections among leading browsers: a study released today by NSS Labs indicates that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious sites as other browsers on the market today.

Makes Common Online Tasks Faster and Easier

In addition to offering improved security and privacy protections, Internet Explorer 8 is one of the fastest browsers on the market today, beating other top browsers in page load time on almost 50 percent of the 25 top comScore Inc. Web sites.* It also helps people save time while using the Web with easy-to-use new features, including the following:

“We are excited about Internet Explorer 8 for several reasons, including its ability to provide our customers with updates to eBay products using Web Slices so they can keep track of their buying activity while surfing the web,” said Matt Ackley, vice president of Internet Marketing and Advertising at eBay.

“The new ESPN Web Slices on Internet Explorer 8 make it easy for sports fans to check on the latest news and sports videos in a new and exciting way,” said Jason Guenther, vice president of technology and product development at ESPN Digital Media. “We have a heritage of leveraging technology to deliver the best sports content to fans, and this is another example of our dedication to that.”

Available for Download

Internet Explorer 8 will be available for download at noon EDT in 25 languages, including Arabic, Chinese (Traditional, Simplified and Hong Kong), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish. More information and a download of Internet Explorer 8 (as of noon EDT on March 19) can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8.

Microsoft will showcase the final browser and outline benefits and opportunities for a variety of audiences on March 19 at Microsoft’s MIX09 conference for web designers and developers in Las Vegas.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

*comScore data based on December 2008

For more information about the research studies:

National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive study: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/newsroom/windows/factsheets/BrowserSecurityFS.mspx

NSS Labs study: http://nsslabs.com

For more information about Internet Explorer 8 performance:

See the Internet Explorer 8 white paper

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx

A single check box deep in the guts of the next version of Windows is giving Microsoft Corp. watchers a peek at how the software maker plans to keep European antitrust regulators from marring a crucial software launch.

Windows 7, the successor to the much-maligned Vista, isn’t expected to reach consumers until next year, but more than a million people are already testing early versions. A pair of bloggers tinkering with settings stumbled upon one they hadn’t seen before: The ability to “turn off” Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser.

Microsoft lost a long-running battle with EU antitrust regulators in 2007 over the way it bundled media player software into the Windows operating system. The dust had barely settled when a similar claim was filed, this time over Internet Explorer’s place inside Windows. Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian competitor, claimed the practice gives Microsoft’s browser an unfair advantage.

In a preliminary decision in January, the EU agreed. Since then, makers of the open-source browser Firefox and Google Inc., which entered the browser market six months ago, have offered to provide more evidence that Microsoft is stifling competition.

In the media player dispute, the EU heavily fined Microsoft and forced it to sell a version of Windows without the offending program installed. This time, Microsoft appears to be offering the check-box solution as a way to head off a similar ending.

The company declined to comment Friday on the connection between the check boxes and the EU’s preliminary decision. But in a recent quarterly filing, it said the European Commission may order PC makers to install multiple browsers on new PCs and force Microsoft to disable parts of its own Internet Explorer if people chose a competing browser.

The check boxes, which were described on Microsoft enthusiast blogs http://www.aeroxp.org and http://www.chris123nt.com, also give Windows 7 users a way to disable the media player and hard-drive search programs, among other components, both of which have drawn scrutiny from regulators.

After Windows Vista landed with a thud, Microsoft needs a hit, said Michael Cherry, an analyst for the research group Directions on Microsoft. Beyond appeasing the EU, he said he didn’t see much use for the Internet Explorer check box.

“Windows 7 is becoming more and more important for Microsoft,” he said in an interview. “You don’t want anything that gives anyone even a doubt as to whether or not they should upgrade.”

Source: AP

With Windows 7, Microsoft is trying not to make the same mistakes it did with Windows Vista. That much is clear.

One of the biggest things Microsoft is trying to do different this time is be a more dependable software vendor. The company knows it lost some credibility with businesses by changing its Vista plans midstream and also having several delays.

“We know the stop and start nature of Vista created big challenges for our customers and partners,” Microsoft senior director Gavriella Schuster said in an interview this week.

Microsoft is aiming to get Windows 7, currently in beta, ready to go in time to be included on PCs sold during the 2009 holiday shopping season.

Although Microsoft has been criticized by some enthusiasts worried that their voices weren’t being heard early enough to affect the design of Windows 7, Schuster notes that businesses have had an early say in Windows 7, through efforts such as a desktop advisory council.

“We brought them in periodically at each development milestone including the planning phase,” Schuster said.

As an example of the kinds of changes Microsoft made in response to the business feedback, Schuster points to the way Microsoft handled DVD playback.

With Vista, Microsoft offered the DVD decoding software only in its consumer and Ultimate versions. When some businesses complained that they needed DVD-playing abilities too, Microsoft added that feature to the business versions. However, some businesses said they actually didn’t want workers to be able to play DVD movies on their machines. So in the end, Schuster said, the feature will be there in all the business versions, but companies will be able to elect whether it is on or not based on the image they select.

Another change came when the company showed customers its BitLocker-to-go feature, which brings the file encryption to portable devices like USB flash drivers. Businesses like the feature, Schuster said, but were concerned that the encryption would prevent the devices from being used later with Windows XP and Vista machines. As a result, Schuster said, Microsoft decided to engineer some measure of support in earlier operating systems for BitLocker-to-go. Now, when protected devices are inserted in an XP or Vista machine, users can enter their credentials and then use the device in a read-only manner.

In addition to listening to business customers, Microsoft is also watching how they work. The company says many of the changes that it decided to make in Windows 7 were based on the hard data it collects on how customers are using the product and where they are getting tripped up. (Microsoft has a number of opt-in programs that allow the company to get data on Windows use and problems.)

In some cases, the company found that a little change can make a big difference. By studying Vista, Microsoft learned that often when a program wouldn’t install in Vista, it was because the application’s designers had hard-coded the program to work with only a certain version of the operating system. That’s why Microsoft decided to make Windows 7 officially version 6.1 rather than 7.0.

Source: CNET News – by Ina Fried

Welcome to the future, Safari fans, because the Safari 4 beta just hit the download shelves and it’s ready to tear some things up in Tiger and Leopard and even Windows. The download requires the latest security patch (2009-01) but other than that you’re ready to ride. Guess what? Javascript is 4X faster!

UPDATE – Now with video.

And that’s not all. The press release appears below but here are the major updates. I’ll install it and give you the details as soon as everything reboots:

• Top Sites – a visual representation of all of your frequently visited pages (warning: could be NSFW for some)
• Full History Search – an index of every single page you’ve visited including titles, URLs, and text
• Cover Flow – iTunes like browsing for your bookmarks and history
• Tabs on Top – A more intelligent method for tabbed browsing.

Apple Announces Safari 4—The World’s Fastest & Most Innovative Browser
New Nitro Engine Runs JavaScript More Than Four Times Faster

CUPERTINO, California—February 24, 2009—Apple® today announced the public beta of Safari® 4, the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac® and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.* Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow®, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”

Safari 4 is built on the world’s most advanced browser technologies including the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.*

Apple is leading the industry in defining and implementing innovative web standards such as HTML 5 and CSS 3 for an entirely new class of web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone™ and iPod® touch are all built on Apple’s WebKit, the world’s fastest and most advanced browser engine. Apple developed WebKit as an open source project to create the world’s best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry’s newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.

• Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:
• Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
• Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they’ve seen before;
• Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes®;
• Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
• Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;
• Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
• Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text;
• built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and
• a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.

Pricing & Availability
Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS® X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.

Safari 4 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® version 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001 or Mac OS X Tiger® version 10.4.11, a minimum 256MB of memory, and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire®. Safari 4 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 4 can be found at www.apple.com/safari.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. All testing conducted on an iMac® 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows Vista, with 2GB of RAM. JavaScript benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test. HTML benchmark based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Source: CrunchGear

The malicious code, which Trend Micro named “XML_DLOADR.A,” is hidden in a Word document. On unpatched systems, when the file is opened an ActiveX object automatically accesses a Web site to open a backdoor that installs a .DLL (dynamic link library) file that can steal information, according to a Trend Micro blog entry. The code sends stolen data to another Web address via port 443, Trend Micro said.

As a result of the back door, “anybody can run commands on the affected system,” said Jamz Yaneza, a senior threat analyst and researcher at Trend Micro.

Microsoft released a security patch for the vulnerability, and others, a week ago. The vulnerability arises from the browser’s improper handling of errors when attempting to access deleted objects.

“It looks like a proof of concept or targeted attack,” Yaneza said. The exploit is similar to politically motivated attacks that were seen before the Olympics last year in which PDF files and Word documents contained exploit code and automatically connected computers to malicious Web sites, he said.

It appears that the site directed to is in China and there is Chinese terminology in the code, according to Yaneza. That and the fact that the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising is approaching, on March 10, suggests that this attack could be politically motivated as well, he said.

“People need to speed up how they patch their OSes, or turn on auto update in Windows,” Yaneza said.

Source: CNET – by Elinor Mills

Microsoft is harming competition by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, according to a new ruling by the European Commission.

“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” says a statement from the Commission.

The verdict comes at the end of a year-long investigation that was instigated at the behest of rival Opera software. The charges were officially delivered as a Statement of Objections to Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters last Thursday, and the company now has eight weeks to respond.

Microsoft says it is studying the commission’s preliminary findings, and may request a formal hearing.

The statement represents the latest stage in a long-running battle between the European Commission and Microsoft. Five-years ago, the company was fined over 1.6 billion euros for similiar offences. This was followed by an 899 million euro fine last year for late compliance.

Opear was jubliant on the verdict: “On behalf of all internet users, we commend the Commission for taking the next step towards restoring competition in a market that Microsoft has strangled for more than a decade,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software.

“The Commission’s Statement of Objections demonstrates that the Commission is serious about getting Microsoft to start competing on the merits in the browser market and letting consumers have a real choice of internet browsers,” he says.

Opera says it is still waiting to see if the Commission will pursue its second charge against Microsoft, that it is undermining open software standards on the internet.

Internet Explorer is still the world’s most dominant browser, despite its market share dipping below 70% in 2008 as Firefox gains ground. According to web analytics company Net Applications, Opera currently holds around 0.71% of the global market.

Taking advantage of the “downgrade rights” offered as part of the Windows Vista license agreement, Hewlett-Packard and Dell both plan to offer machines loaded with XP well beyond June.

Technically, the computers will be Vista Business or Vista Ultimate machines that have been factory downgraded to XP at the customer’s request. In practice, they are more like XP machines that come with an already paid-for upgrade to Vista when and if the customer chooses to do so.

HP said it plans to continue selling the “pre-downgraded” desktops, notebooks, and workstations to its business customers until July 30, 2009. Dell is already pitching the same option on its Web site and promising the models will stick around long after it stops taking standard XP orders on June 18. Other computer makers tell CNET News.com they are still exploring what to do but also want to sell XP beyond June 30.

There are limits to the approach being taken by HP and Dell. Only the Business and Ultimate flavors of Vista come with downgrade rights, meaning consumer machines can’t be sold in a similar fashion.

While companies can offer pre-downgraded machines via their Web site, things get a little more complicated when it comes to buying a PC at retail stores. It may be possible for customers to buy such a machine, but just how this will work–and if stores will offer such an option–is not totally clear. The tricky issue is that, to stay within Microsoft’s terms, the customer has to somehow “request” the XP downgrade.

All of this prompts the real question: Why won’t Microsoft just extend the deadline? The company’s rationale that customers and computer makers aren’t demanding a longer life for XP seems to be increasingly implausible.

Kevin Kutz, a director in Microsoft’s Windows unit, said that the downgrade-rights option meets customer needs.

“While (computer makers) continue to see large numbers of customers making the transition to Windows Vista, there are some pockets–like small business–that need a little more time,” Kutz said in a statement. “And from what we’ve heard from our partners, the downgrade rights option fulfills that need.”

The pre-downgraded PC option is just the latest way that PC makers have responded to stronger-than-expected demand. After shifting largely to Vista after its January 2007 mainstream launch, Dell and others quickly began adding more XP options in response to customer requests.

For some time now, computer makers have been selling machines with an XP recovery disc as a downgrade option.

Lenovo, for example, plans to keep offering an XP recovery disc with some Vista models through January 2009, according to InformationWeek.

The latest twist is the machines, like the ones HP and Dell will sell beyond June 30, that have Vista rights but contain XP pre-installed.

As for whether a broader reprieve might yet come for XP, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has left the door open a crack.

“XP will hit an end-of-life,” Ballmer said in Belgium recently, according to Reuters. “We have announced one. If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter, but right now, we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.”

CNET News.com