If everything goes according to the plan, Rust, Mozilla’s experimental programming language that has been in development since 2006, could slowly replace C++, which is currently used by the open source organization.

Just like Google’s Go programming language, Rust syntax is similar to that of C and C++ and destined to provide memory safety, greater security and good concurrency support.

Although Mozilla still has a long way to go, if you are curious enough, feel free to download the alpha version of Rust 0.1 compiler, which has been just released.

With Google, Mozilla and Microsoft developing their own programming languages, it looks like the future of web browsers will be very exciting.

If you’ve missed Microsoft’s final presentation at the CES 2012, here a full video for you to check out, which covers pretty much everything.

In case you don’t feel like watching the full video, here is the best part:

Just a year ago, Microsoft would only release a new version of IE during the launch of Windows “Next”. However, since then it has increased the frequency of Internet Explorer releases as the upcoming Windows 8 OS will now IE10 instead of IE9.

Well, if recent rumors are to be believed, then the current Microsoft strategy will remain like this for a while. According to the “leaked” roadmap, the software giant plans to introduce Internet Explorer 11 sometime in 2013, followed by Internet Explorer 12 in 2014.

MIX 2013
HTML platform (IE11)
Win8 PU RC
Beta
Apollo+1 SDK

Build 2014
Win9 RTM (IE12)
Win9M RTM
CTP
Xbox PU preview

Who knows, maybe after Windows 9, Microsoft will increase the frequency of its browser releases again.

What do you think?

[Via: MSNerd]

With Christmas approaching at a rapid rate, Microsoft has decided to launch a HTML5 powered web site “Let It Snow”, which showcases the benefits of GPU accelerated graphics.

If your are up for a challenge, set the number of snowflakes to 4,000 and enjoy the show. There is even a hidden message for you to “uncover”.

However, in case your web browser can’t handle that much snow, there is always another option: IE9 or IE10.

Happy Holidays!

Google denies the charges.

Remember the study by Accuvant, which concluded that Google Chrome is the most secure web browser?

NSS Labs, a California based company that publishes web browser security results of its own, has issued a statement, which claims that Google is pretty much on its own now and has already done some dirty things to undermine Firefox’s and other web browsers growth.

As their own study revealed, Google Chrome had an incredible effectiveness increase against the malware in an 11 day period, which jumped from 8% to 40%. However, both Firefox and Safari has declined to less than 2%

What does it mean? According to NSS Labs: Google is keeping some blocking protection from the Safe Browsing API (application programming interface) tapped by Firefox and Safari.

Vikram Phatak, the CTO of NSS Labs said: “It appears Google has purposefully withheld important malware protection from its Safe Browsing feed coinciding with its break from Firefox and release of the Google-funded report by Accuvant,”

According to Mr. Phatak, the company who funds various studies will always drive their own methodology, resulting in a flawed study.

When asked about their own special relationships with Microsoft, where they funded NSS Labs studies to demonstrate Internet Explorer’s superiority, he said: “There’s a reason why we don’t do that anymore.”

Whether or not this was before or after last study, remains to be seen.

[Via: ComputerWorld]
[Picture Source: Gizmodo]

Turns out, things might have taken slightly different turn. According to Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript language, Microsoft tried to acquire Netscape back in 1994, just before the Netscape Navigator release.

Thankfully, it did not happen and a monopoly was avoided, at least for some time.

Here’s what he had to say:

Getting JavaScript out early was important, because Microsoft was “coming after Netscape,” Eich notes. The relationship with Microsoft nearly turned out rather differently: “they’d made an offer to acquire Netscape late 1994 before I joined,” Eich explains; “it was not enough money so they were turned away.”

Can you imagine what would’ve happened if Microsoft had actually offered more cash? No browser wars and no motivation to continue improving a web browser.

Sounds like a worse version of IE6 era.

Source: ComputerWorld

Recently, Microsoft has created a new web site, designed to highlight the advantages of the Internet Explorer web browser. As it turns out, Mozilla did not like the idea of such page at all and has responded to the software giant claims.

According to Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla’s director of Firefox engineering, such marketing tricks are notable for the things they fail to include. Following such statement, Johnathan has proceeded to name three features that should have been listed, those include: HSTS, Do Not Track and patch response time.

As you might imagine, Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers already support the HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) standard, while Internet Explorer does not. However, in Microsoft’s defense, the mentioned feature is only a draft spec and hasn’t been finalized yet.

Via: ComputerWorld

[Thanks, Ichann]

From Microsoft’s BUILD Conference.

As BUILD conference continues, here are some of the screenshots we took during the Internet Explorer 10 mini preview running the Immersive UI.

Multi Touch IE10 Test Drive

Furthermore, Microsoft has revealed a new feature which allows users to quickly share the content across the web.

During the presentation, one of the company’s representatives did select a part of the text via Internet Explorer 10 and with the help of a simple gesture, accessed the following sidebar:

Pretty cool, eh?