For years Microsoft has been rolling out Windows updates to ensure that software is up-to-date and secure, however the process of download and installing new versions of Internet Explorer has sometimes seemed long-winded and clunky, especially when you can install an alternative browser within a couple of minutes.

Even those who despise Microsoft Internet Explorer will admit that IE9 closed the gap massively with Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome when it comes to browsing speed and layout, according to the Windows Team Blog Microsoft’s web browser will soon update itself automatically just like its major rivals. This means that people using IE will be able to rest assured that they are running the most up-to-date and secure version of the software.

Microsoft claim that the automatic updating procedure will be as fast and simple as possible, apparently now you wont see notifications telling you exactly what is happening, instead the upgrade will take place and no changes will be made to a user’s home page, default browser or search provider. This will in-turn benefit developers as more consumer’s will be using the most recent browser build, that said a user can choose to block automatic upgrades if they wish.

We think that this is a huge step in the right direction for Microsoft and it should further ensure that Windows users are safe from malicious software. Apparently Microsoft will take a measured approach and begin the automatic upgrades in Australia and Brazil in January, it will affect Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 users. You can find out more about this news here.

Are you happy with this planned change?

Firstly if you are running Internet Explorer 6 you should seriously consider downloading a newer version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as more web standards are supported and newer versions are more secure, if you understand all of this but want to stick with IE6 this fix guide will still work, however you have to be aware that you are more susceptible to malware and viruses.

You can download IE7 here and IE8 here, alternatively you can download the IE9 beta here.

There are hundreds if not 1000s of toolbars out there, and some people end up with multiple installed on one computer, this dramatically reduces the size of the viewable browsing area (you can see what I mean here), dramatically affect your overall browsing experience and even make you more susceptible to infections, therefore I strongly recommend getting rid of some (if not all) toolbars.

Most toolbars can be uninstalled via your computer’s control panel, to access the control panel simply click start and then click control panel, you now want to find “add / remove programs” or if you are running Vista or Windows 7 you need to find “uninstall a program” (which may be under the “Programs” sub-category), once here your computer should show you a list of all of the installed programs, if there are programs with the word “toolbar” in their names you should uninstall it, however read the next paragraph before doing so.

In my opinion there are four great toolbars which are popular, these are Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, Windows Live Toolbar and MSN Toobar, I tend to have just one of these install and generally choose Google’s option as it is not too intrusive and features a pop-up blocker, autofill and much more, I would strongly recommend choosing one of the afformentioned toolbars and scrapping the rest.

If you had lots of toolbars installed you should instantly notice that Internet Explorer starts up quicker, also you will probably notice that pages load quicker and more can be seen without having to scroll down so much, tomorrow we will post another Internet Explorer fix guide, I hope this simple guide helped.

Obviously as IE9 is in its beta stages it isn’t going to be perfect, therefore Microsoft are probably sifting through the commonly reported problems as we speak, below we will talk about the problems which we feel are common problems.

At the moment there is no Google Docs compatibility, however this is not really an IE9 problem, instead it seems as if Google Docs has not yet been made compatible for this new browser version.

Most of the problems seem to be related to Adobe Flash, this can result in Flash content not displaying correctly, which sometimes means videos show a black screen whilst the audio playback is fine. Apparently installing this version of Flash resolves all problems.

There also seems to be a bug with the way that IE 9 imports bookmarks/favorites and the favorites bar, when I tried to do this there was no option to import Google Chrome favorites and feeds etc, as I do not use a Firefox, IE8 or Safari I couldn’t see if IE9′s import feature worked.

Did you have problems importing your favorites etc when configuring IE9?

According to Softpedia the download will become live at 10.30am Pacific Time, which means it is roughly 4 hours and 10 minutes away (at the time of this post).

This time means converts to 1.30pm Eastern Time and 6.30pm in the UK, obviously this time is a guideline, therefore don’t worry if 10.30am Pacific time comes and the beta is not available.

When the download does become live we will keep you posted, I think I will download it just to see if it really is as good as experts are suggesting, but I won’t be too hopeful.

Source: Softpedia

IE9 has already proved that interest in the browser is still rife, with more than 16 million visitors and two million unique downloads since it’s release.

HTML5 Canvas, and HTML5 audio and video tags are some of the new functions included in the update, which will bring Flash-like interactive content without the use of third party applications and plugins such as Adobe Flash.

One feature that users also like to hear, is that IE9 also boasts considerable speed and performance improvements. One benchmark test even shows that it outperforms Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers.

No idea on when the full release of IE9 will be made available yet, but as soon it it does, be sure that we will be covering the story right here.

Microsoft have also released a video, demonstrating what the browser can do. If you prefer, you can download the IE9 PP3 to check it out yourself.

You can also find out IE9’s other features by checking out the source below.

Source: PC World

IE’s market share slumbered to an all time low last month (April), and now has under 60% of the market slipping .5% to 59.95%. This is quite astonishing, considering that IE had an 80% market share just two years ago.

The statistics come from NetApplications, and show that Mozilla’s browser has almost a 25% market share, compared to Google Chrome who have 6.7%, just ahead of Apple’s Safari browser with 4.7%. Chrome, is undoubtedly the biggest climber, as it had zero percent share before 2009.

For more information about the rest of the browsers, and their market share check out the source link below.

What browser do you consider to be the best, and why?

Source: PCWorld