Now that Internet Explorer is rapidly losing market share to tFirefox Browser, Safari, Opera and now the blisteringly fast Google Chrome, it has decided to play nice again and come back to W3C web standards.

This makes it better for web developers/cheaper for clients because not as much work is needed to make web pages render in all browsers, previously, hours and sometimes days were spent just getting the latest websites to work in IE6 and there are all sorts of workarounds needed for this. Put simply IE6 was and still is a complete and utter pain in the X%&#!

So does IE8 change anything? Herein lies the problem, IE8 may be a huge step in the right direction for Microsoft, but it still hasn’t even caught up with the other browsers, even with all of these features. And it is still slower to render pages than all of its competitors.

So, check it out for yourself, I would suggest an upgrade as it is so much better than IE7, and if you are still using IE6 (Go to Help/About in your browser) , well then you MUST upgrade as IE6 is a death trap for people snooping in on your PC.

Check it out:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8

Check out other browsers:
Firefox 3
Apple Safari
Opera
Google Chrome

Rumours of a Google Browser have been around as long as a Google Phone and a Google Operating System.Recently the Google Phone rumours got some substance with the announcement of Android which is a mobile phone operating system that will part of a new generation of phones.

Now overnight Google Chrome was launched which is Google’s new web browser to take on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.Chrome is a very fast, very simple and very powerful web browser. It is very powerful in the new technology under the skin.

With no legacy code to hold it back the designers could write it for today’s applications for instance, its processing of JavaScript is lightening fast and JavaScript is the foundation of Ajax….. more commonly known as Web 2.In typical google style the browser is simple and functional to use and the features it does have it does very very well.

For instance their tab browsing is brilliant. Tabs are now run in unique processes which means when a page breaks it does not take down your whole browser.Drag and drop tabs between windows, duplicate a tab, all is done by the browser not by add-ons. Open a new and it fills it with information like your 9 most visited pages, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs. Very nice.

Chrome has not got every feature known to man like like Firefox and probably never will have. Firefox is the browser of choice amongst power users because its seemingly endless customisation ability with so many themes and add-ons available. Chrome does not have this, at least at the moment and probably wont have.

Google just re-signed there agreement to 2011 with Firefox which seems at odds with releasing their own browser but it is in typical google style and they seem to be putting their eggs in two baskets, not just one . Google makes money from ads… which are displayed when people use their search and other products. Chrome is just another way for them to segment the market and to decrease the market share of Internet Explorer with its default installation of “Live” search.It is an interesting move by them to leverage an audience no matter what IE does in the future.

There are plenty of Google Chrome reviews out there already so I wont try and join them but if you are looking for a fast and efficient browser it is well worth checking out. I will continue to use it for a while at least, but I am already missing some of my Firefox add-ons…

A quick check of all the major portals and real estate sites and everything looks as though it is working without issues and it will be interesting to watch the web stats to see the sort of traction it can get.Google has come up with an interesting concept to explain the many technical advances and features behind Chrome and that is through a comic book.