The initial batch of Tracking Protection Lists have received public criticism as they did not necessarily had the best user intent in mind. Analysis of the available lists revealed for instance that one did not block a single domain name, but made sure that almost 4000 different domains were allowed.

Internet Explorer users who installed that particular TPL in their browser were not able to benefit from the new technology at all.

Microsoft yesterday revealed that a privacy initiative will release three new tracking lists in the coming days.

This week two leading privacy advocates – Simon Davies and Alexander Hanff of Privacy International – are releasing three new Tracking Protection Lists for Europe, including one focused on protecting children.

The lists will be made available on the Privacy Online from where they can then be installed directly into the Internet Explorer browser.

• Child Protection: The child protection list has been designed to block all third party technologies embedded into any web site. Exceptions are added for third party technologies that are not used for tracking purposes
• Web Analytics: Blocks web analytic software such as Google Analytics from tracking a user’s movement on the Internet or individual websites.
• Behavioural Tracking: The third and final list blocks scripts that are used for behavioral tracking on the Internet.

It is not clear when those lists become available. Users who are interested in installing those lists should first analyze them to make sure they are indeed benefiting from them.

The initiative in addition plans to release the Custom TPL Engine tool that allows users to create their own Tracking Protection Lists for use in Internet Explorer.

We have developed three different tracking protection lists covering three segments which through comprehensive research, have been highlighted as significant concerns. These include Child Protection, Analytics and general Behavioural Profiling, but our tools also allow you to build a custom list depending on your own requirements. For example, you may be happy to have companies use third party tools (like Google Analytics) to generate data on how their web site is used, but might not want advertising companies to track you across multiple web sites to build a behavioural profile. Similarly, you might be happy to allow companies to track you but might want more protection for your children. Or you may be happy for certain companies that you trust, to track your activities but not companies you have not developed a trust relationship with or companies where you do not receive direct value from such tracking.

Please note that Privacy Online is a project of the London School of Economics that is funded with a research grant from Microsoft.

Technology today can be used to track users across domains. A study in 2009 saw Google on 92 of the top 100 sites followed by DoubleClick with 70 presences (which are now also Google owned) and Microsoft’s Atlas with 60 occurrences.

Cookies, regular or Flash, are usually used to track users. These cookies can be accessed on all domains a company script is loaded on, which in the case of Google would mean the ability to track user movement on 92 of the top 100 domains in the world. While this percentage is surely going down a bit if the sample size increases, it is still common to be tracked across many web properties.

There are options available to not be tracked online. This includes clearing all cookies after or even during a browsing session, using private browsing modes, or installing extensions like the excellent NoScript to block third party scripts from running on a site.

TrackerBlock, available for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome offers another option. The program can make sure that you are not tracked across the web. It does so in a number of ways:

• Do Not Track Me Header – Whenever you make a request to a website, you submit a signal that tells the website that you do not want your activities tracked. Websites and companies are not obligated though. Option to delete Flash cookies.
• Opt-Out Cookies – So called opt-out cookies tell websites, services and agencies that the user does not want to be tracked. This turns off data collection and tracking off more than one hundred companies.
• Tracker Blocking – Blocks advertising agencies and companies from reading or writing cookies on your system. The extension does that for more than 550 different companies.
• HTML5 Storage – Visualizes which companies are using HTML5 to store data on your system, with options to delete the data manually.

Click on an image to see how the settings and preferences look like in the Firefox web browser.

The program combines several anti-tracking options in one interface. Especially useful is the ability to write the opt-out cookies on the system, to clear Flash and HTML5 data storage that are often used for tracking, and to block advertising companies from reading or writing cookies on the system.

TrackerBlock can best be installed at the Privacy Choice website, as it is available there for all supported browsers. It is not really clear if the extension is available for other browsers as well. It is definitely available for Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Other browsers offer automatic updates regularly to keep their user base on the latest version. And while that works well for some (Chrome), others browser developers are also experiencing a divided user base. The reason for not updating is usually different though. Most Firefox users know for instance that a new version is available (as it is displayed to them). They choose to stay with an earlier version of the browser because of design, compatibility or performance reasons.

A new announcement on the Windows Team Blog details that Microsoft is going to change the way the browser is updated from next year on.

Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users will receive automatic upgrades to update their version of Internet Explorer to the latest one. Depending on the operating system, they are either updated to Internet Explorer 8 (in the case of XP), or Internet Explorer 9 when they are running Vista or 7.

Australian and Brazilian users will receive the first batch of updates in January, followed by users from other countries soon thereafter.

It needs to be noted though that that customers and organizations still have options to avoid the automatic deployment of the new Internet Explorer version on their PC systems. Customers who have previously declined the installation of IE8 or IE9 will not be asked again to install it. Organizations who want to make sure that the browser is not updated automatically can install blocker kits to prevent this from happening.

Available for download and deployment are Blocker Toolkits for Internet Explorer 8 and IE9.

It is likely that the majority of organizations will use the blockers to avoid the automatic installation of a newer version of Internet Explorer on their systems. Most end users on the other hand are likely to accept the browser update, which may improve security on their PC system significantly.

Only the most recent versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer (9), Google Chrome (12 and 13) and Mozilla Firefox (5) were analyzed. Other browsers, like Opera or Safari, were not included in the research.

The results and areas that have been analyzed in the study are displayed in the table below.

All three browsers have implemented industry standard data execution prevention, address space layout randomization and stack cookies anti-exploitation technologies. The researchers found Firefox’s sandboxing, plug-in security and JIT hardening to be either unimplemented or ineffective. They also concluded that Chrome had the edge over Internet Explorer as the browser’s implementation of sandboxing and plug-in security was industry standard, while Internet Explorer’s was not.

Here is the conclusion of the research paper.

The URL blacklisting services offered by all three browsers will stop fewer attacks than will go undetected. Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement state-of-the-art anti-exploitation technologies, but Mozilla Firefox lags behind without JIT hardening. While both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement the same set of anti-exploitation technologies,Google Chrome’s plug-in security and sandboxing architectures are implemented in a more thorough and comprehensive manner. Therefore, we believe Google Chrome is the browser that is most secured against attack

Neither the fact that the research was sponsored by Google, nor the missing definition of industry standard disqualifies the research paper immediately. It is however something that needs to be addressed and looked at.

It needs to be noted that core browser security plays just a part in a user’s threat protection. Other factors include the operating system, up-do-date plugins and browser versions, browser extensions or security software.

What’s your take on the research paper?

Internet Explorer 9 users click on the Tools icon in the upper right corner of their browser and select Manage Add-ons from the context menu. This opens the add-on manager that displays all toolbars, extensions and search providers installed in the browser. Switch to search providers to see a list of search engines currently available in the browser.

One of the search providers is listed as the default search engine under Status. If you are lucky enough, the new search provider that you want to use is already in the list. If that is the case select the new provider and click on the Set as default button afterwards to switch the default search engine in Internet Explorer.

It is furthermore possible to select a specific search provider manually for a search query that you enter into Internet Explorer’s address bar.

But what can you do if the search provider is not in the list? Easy; You visit the Internet Explorer add-ons gallery and use the available categories, like travel, search or news, or the built-in search to find the provider you are looking for. Please note that everything is mixed up in the beginning. You can use the pulldown menu at the bottom right to filter for search providers so that all other add-on types are not displayed anymore.

You add a new search provider with a click on the add-ons icon on the add-ons website and the selection of Add to Internet Explorer on the next page.

This opens a small confirmation window. You need to click on Add to install the new search provider. Options are available to make that provider the default search provider of the browser.

The new search provider is available right after it has been added to the web browser.

The new version adds support for additional HTML5 technologies including File API improvements, Web Worker Thread Pooling and HTML5 video improvements. Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 offers support for new CSS3 and DOM technologies as well.

Users interested in the browser’s revision history can look at the history page here for a list of all modifications and changes to the web browser.

• Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) for safe use of XMLHttpRequest across domains.
• File API Writer support for blobBuilder allowing manipulation of large binary objects in script in the browser.
• Support for JavaScript typed arrays for efficient storage and manipulation of typed data.
• CSS user-select property to control how end-users select elements in a Web page or application.
• Support for HTML5 video text captioning, including time-code, placement, and captioning file formats.

Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 scores 299 points and 6 bonus points on the HTML5 Test website.

That’s an increase of 68 points over the second platform preview released earlier this year. In comparison, Firefox 10 Aurora scores 314+9, Google Chrome 17 Dev 344+13 and Opera 11.60 325+9 points. Compare that to Internet Explorer’s 9 score of 141+5 and you will realize that Microsoft made a huge jump in HTML5 compatibility.

Take a look at the following video to see some of the browser’s HTML5 technologies in action.

The Internet Explorer blog post offers additional information for web developers who want to take a closer look at the technologies that are now supported by the browser.

Windows 8 users can download the latest Internet Explorer Preview from the official test drive site.

Https encrypts the traffic between the user’s computer and the server. The core benefit here is that it protects the data from network snooping. That’s handy if you are using a public computer, are in a computer network or do not want your ISP or your boss to find out what you are doing on a particular site that has https enabled.

Yesterday Google announced that they have enabled forward secrecy by default.

Most major sites supporting HTTPS operate in a non-forward secret fashion, which runs the risk of retrospective decryption. In other words, an encrypted, unreadable email could be recorded while being delivered to your computer today. In ten years time, when computers are much faster, an adversary could break the server private key and retrospectively decrypt today’s email traffic.

Forward secrecy requires that the private keys for a connection are not kept in persistent storage. An adversary that breaks a single key will no longer be able to decrypt months’ worth of connections; in fact, not even the server operator will be able to retroactively decrypt HTTPS sessions.

Perfect forward secrecy basically makes sure that attackers cannot use private keys that they have obtained in the future can not be used to compromise data that has been recorded in the past.

Forward secrecy has been enabled for Google Mail (Gmail) and other Google services that use the https including SSL search, Google Docs and Google+.

The only browsers currently supported are Google Chrome and Firefox on all platforms and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on Vista or later.

Google has also made available the work that they did on the open source OpenSSL library that made the implementation of forward secrecy possible. You can read the original announcement over at the Google Online Security blog.

Expired cookies are not only useless to the site though. Internet users cannot use the cookies as well anymore and they may even leak privacy related information to third parties should they get access to the computer.

It makes therefor sense to delete expired cookies on the computer. And while that is possible in most web browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer does not seem to be doing it.

The free portable software Expired Cookies Cleaner comes to the rescue of Internet Explorer users who want to get rid of out of date cookies on their system. All it takes is to run the application, click the Process button and wait until the application has processed all of the cookies that Internet Explorer has stored on the system.

The program displays all cleaned cookies in a log in the application window. A summary is displayed in the end that lists information about the overall cookie count on the system and the number of expired cookies.

The program deletes expired cookies from the system or individual cookie files if more than one cookie is saved in a file. It happens that only some of the cookies stored in the file are expired while others are still valid. The program removes the expired cookie information from the file and keeps the remaining cookie information on the system.

You can run the software without graphical user interface from the command line. This can be handy if you want to run the program on a regular basis, for instance as part of a batch file.

The command C:\>ExpiredCookiesCleaner.exe a FileName runs the program and saves the output in filename. You can replace the file name parameter with nul if you do not want a log file written.

Expired Cookies Cleaner is compatible with all version of the Microsoft Windows system and all versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Interested users can download the tiny portable program from the developer website. (via)

Users who are interested in finding out how spell checking will work in Internet Explorer 10 can head over to the test drive website to find out right now. Microsoft has created a test page where users can test Internet Explorer 10′s spell checking capabilities. The page works only if you run Internet Explorer 10 on the Windows 8 Platform Preview. It won’t work in other web browsers or on other operating systems.

Internet Explorer 10 will not only support spell checking but also auto correction of text which works identical to that of Microsoft’s Office suite.

The test demonstrates the web browsers following capabilities:

Auto-Correction: When you enter a misspelled word in a text area form Internet Explorer 10 may auto-correct the entered word while you may continue to type in the form.

Spellcheck: Words that are not spelled correctly will be underlined in Internet Explorer 10 just like they are in other web browsers that are already supporting spell checking. A right-click on an underlined word displays the suggest correction in the context menu where it can be selected. A right-click on an auto-corrected word brings up the option to force the browser to ignore the word from now on to stop auto-correcting it.

The spelling correction uses Microsoft spellchecking engine and dictionaries. It is important to note that spell checking is by default only enabled for text area HTMl elements and not text boxes. Microsoft notes that web developers can override the defaults.

It is not clear if Internet Explorer 10 users will also be able to change the behavior of the web browser’s spell checking and auto-correction capabilities.

The integration of spell checking and auto-correction in Internet Explorer 10 is a step long overdue, especially when you consider that IE is used by many organizations as the primary browser.

Show Anchors makes use of page anchors to allow in-page linking to contents. It is necessary that the page supports and uses the HTML anchor tag. Most WordPress blogs and many other sites do that.

The program is available as a bookmarklet which should work in most modern web browsers and as a Firefox add-on.

Just drag and drop the Show Anchors bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar or the browser’s bookmarks. Click on the link when you are on a page where you want to create an in-page link for bookmarking or distribution. This displays all anchors available on that particular page giving you the option to right-click an anchor to copy the link or add the link to the browser’s bookmarks.

The copied links work in all modern browsers and do not require installation of the bookmarklet or Firefox add-on.

The firefox add-on Show Anchors works pretty much the same way. It adds an option to the Firefox right-click menu to show all anchors. Once selected all anchors on the page are displayed again. The program will display an on-mouse-over context menu with options to copy, bookmark or send the anchor or switch to the next anchor on the page.

The Firefox version of Show Anchors will display anchors on all pages of the domain once selected. Users who do not need the anchors anymore need to select the option again from the browser’s context menu to disable the showing of anchor tags.

Firefox users can download the Show Anchors add-on from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. The bookmarklet which is compatible with all modern browsers is available on this page.

If you have followed Windows 8 news you know that the operating system will ship with two different versions of Internet Explorer. Both use the same core but are different in many regards otherwise. Users can access the standard Internet Explorer 10 browser from the desktop, or the Metro Internet Explorer when they are in the Metro interface of the system. The core difference? Metro Internet Explorer has been optimized for touch based devices like tablets. The browser is started in fullscreen automatically and uses a minimalistic interface with barely any user interface elements.

MetroIE, available in an early beta version, ports that version of Internet Explorer to the Windows 7 operating system. It seems that users need to have the latest version of Internet Explorer 10 which is currently available as a developer preview. IE 10 final will ship with the Windows 8 operating system.

The web browser is only available for Windows 7 and Windows 8, which explains why MetroIE is also only compatible with Windows 7 and not Vista or XP.

MetroIE is a small portable file that Windows 7 users can run to get the metro style Internet Explorer 10 browser on their system. The browser starts in fullscreen and looks in many regards like the original available in Microsoft’s Windows 8 Developer Preview. Here is a fullscreen screenshot of the browser in action.

Users basically have access to the address bar and a few basic browser controls after the browser is started. It does away with the taskbar and other elements of the Windows desktop. Users who want to exit the fullscreen mode need to right-click the address bar and select exit from the context menu. Pressing the Windows button switches to the desktop where everything is available again.

It happened once that the address bar disappeared and that I had to kill the process using the Windows Task Manager. From a user’s perspective, it is safe to say that most Windows 7 users won’t like the slim web browser as it is time consuming to switch back to the standard desktop. It may have its uses on kiosk PCs or public PCs where users need to be limited though.

Windows 7 users can download the latest beta of MetroIE from the developer’s Deviant Art website. The application is part of the developer’s bigger Origami project which tries to port the Windows 8 start screen in metro style to the Windows 7 desktop. (via)

Most Windows users can uninstall the web browser from the operating system’s Control Panel applet. Some users have however reported that the uninstallation does not remove the Internet Explorer version from their computer system.

Finding out if the removal of Internet Explorer was successful is not complicated. You could first try and start the browser and check the reported version under Settings > About Internet Explorer.

If Internet Explorer 9 is listed, or if the browser does not start up at all, it is time for a thorough clean-up to remove the browser from the system.

Microsoft has released a Fix it application to resolve Internet Explorer 9 uninstallation issues. Microsoft Fix Its are lightweight programs that resolve specific issues on a system without user interaction.

All that is usually required to do is to run the Fix It with elevated rights. The program will take care of the rest on its own. The particular Internet Explorer 9 Removal Fix It creates a System Restore point before it starts the removal of the browser.

The Fix It app will remove Internet Explorer 9 automatically and prompt for a reboot once it is done.

Microsoft has furthermore posted a manual fix if IE9 cannot be uninstalled correctly on Windows.

To uninstall Internet Explorer 9, follow these steps:

• Log on to the computer as an administrator.
• Close all Internet Explorer browser windows.
• Start Notepad.
• Copy and paste the following HTML text into Notepad to convert the HTML text into plain text:

  FORFILES /P %WINDIR%\servicing\Packages /M Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer-*9.*.mum /c “cmd /c echo Uninstalling package @fname && start /w pkgmgr /up:@fname /norestart”

• Click Start, and then click Run.
• Copy and then paste (or type) the following command in the Open box, and then press Enter: cmd
• Copy the text from Notepad, paste the text into the Command Prompt window at a command prompt, and then press Enter.
• After the command runs, and the Command Prompt window returns, repeat step 7, and then go to step 9.
• Restart the computer to complete uninstallation of Internet Explorer 9. When you do this, the previously installed version of Internet Explorer is installed.

The Fix It hopefully resolves all Internet Explorer 9 removal issues for Windows users. Did you try out Microsoft’s latest web browser? What’s your verdict? (via)

Most users who have that I know do the following when they want to open a link or a website that is displayed in one browser in another: They click in the address bar field of the browser and mark all of the address. Advanced users may use the shortcut Ctrl-a after clicking for the same effect. They then right-click and select Copy (or press Ctrl-c) to copy the website address to the clipboard. Then they open a new tab in the second web browser and paste the url into the address field there. In the final step they click the load button or press enter.

That’s a lot of work for a very simple operation. If you have enough screen estate you may be able to run both Internet browsers on the screen at the same time. If you do, you can use simple drag and drop operations to open a link or open website in one web browser in another.

This works with all browsers that I have tested. You can drag and drop from and to Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer.

To drag you move the mouse over the favicon of the website or the link in question, click and hold the left-mouse button and drag the address into the other web browser. You can drop it anywhere there and the website will be loaded in the active or the selected tab.

It is such a simple thing that can make such a big difference in day to day work. Did you know about this method? Or do you know of other (browser) related tips that optimized your workflow significantly?

That’s usually the end of the story. Once you switch the default browser you are all set up to work with that Internet browser on the system. There may be situations on the other hand where you need to switch the default browser multiple times.

This can be in a development environment where you have installed multiple browsers. To make the testing easier, you switch default browsers. But it can also have technical reasons. Say you do not get the prompt to make your favorite browser the default browser on the system. While you could edit the Windows Registry manually for this or try to uninstall and re-install your favorite browser, you might also use a program like Change Default Browser for the job.

The program supports the four web browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Opera. It detects the installed browsers automatically and displays them in the interface. You can use the browse button to select a different browser, for instance if you have multiple versions of a browser installed on the system. You can even select other programs or executable in case you want to make a different browse the default on the system.

To make a browser the default, simply select it in the program interface and click on the Set Default Browser to make it the default system browser.

If there is something to complain about it is the need to install the application before you can change the default browser on the system. Other than that it is a solid program with no downsides.

You can download the program that is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows from the official program homepage. Please note that you need to run the program with elevated rights as it needs to make modifications to the Windows system registry.

This is the menu for Internet Explorer that allows for viewing of the source code. “Notepad” is they typical default source code viewer.

Select Source and the source code will open in the default text editor. In this case, EditPad Lite is the text editor. It is an excellent text editor and it is available free from the link above.

How to Choose Your Favorite Text Editor

You probably have a personal favorite as far as text editors are concerned. If not, try EditPad Lite. It is a versatile text editor that supports Unicode, all Windows and all ISO-8859 text file encodings. Additionally, EditPad supports DOS, Mac, EUC, EBCDIC, as well as other legacy encodings. Notepad may be your favorite, though it is limited, and generally you don’t have to set that because it is the usual default text editor.

To begin choosing your favorite text editor, go to the “Tools Menu” and then select “Developer Tools” or you can press “F12” and access the Developer Tools Window. For this demonstration, we switched to TextPad as a default text editor and we are going to change it to EditPad Lite. In the Developer Tools Window, select “File Menu”, then “Customize Internet Explorer View Source” and then click on “Other”.

This will present the “Program Directory” for the default text editor. This is the “Program Files Folder” for EditPad Lite. All you have to do to change the default application is browse for the program folder that you would like to use as a text editor. In this case, EditPad Lite 7 will be selected. You may download many different free text editors with a simple search and these will show up on the list as options for default. You can perform this operation at any time and customize your text editor for any given purpose.

When you have identified the program that you choose as a text editor, click on the .exe file for that particular application and then click “Open”. Now all you have to do is close the “Developer Tools Window” and the process is complete. Your default text editor is set and this is what Internet Explorer will use as a default for viewing source code. Switching from TextPad to EditPad Lite or any other text editor is easy. Now, going to the View menu, select source and you will see something like this:

Select yes to make the selected text editor the default. Now this PC is set for EditPad Lite as the text editor for Internet Explorer 8.

You can view source code with any text editor you see fit for your purposes. EditPad is a practical choice, but you can build a list of various text editors to fit different circumstances.

There are fundamental differences though. The Metro UI version of Internet Explorer is plugin free, which means that you won’t be able to access Flash, Silverlight or Java contents using that browser. Microsoft concentrates fully on HTML5, which is a bold move.

The desktop Internet Explorer 10 on the other hand will continue to support browser plugins and other standards and other browser extensions.

Our approach in Windows 8 starts with one great HTML5 browsing engine that powers two different experiences. The single engine provides strong support for web standards, hardware-accelerated performance, security, privacy, and more. Then, we built two experiences on top of that engine: a new Metro style experience as well as a more traditional, current-generation desktop browser with tabs and relatively minimal “chrome.”

Microsoft notes that “the Metro style browser in the current Windows Developer Preview is for developers, not consumers” which means that it is likely that it will get optimized and fine tuned before the RTM version of the operating system is released.

The two “experiences” share data between each other. This includes the browsing history, typed addresses, favorites and settings among other things.

Here is how Internet Explorer 10 looks under the Metro UI.

The user interface has been reduced to a bare minimum. All you see is a bar at the bottom to enter a web address and perform other actions like reloading the page or opening a previously visited website. The remaining user interface elements auto hide once the user begins interacting with the website. The controls include an option to view the current page in the desktop browser, which can be handy to access websites that rely on plugins.

Microsoft has created a short demonstration video which you can see below.

Offering two versions of Internet Explorer on the same operating system feels redundant on first glance. I can see tablet users working with the Metro UI version of IE10 as it seems easy to use and work with, but even they will run into many websites that do not work properly because of missing plugin support. Think of all the Flash gaming sites for instance, they won’t go away in the next year or so.

And what about Windows users who would like to use the full version of Internet Explorer in the Metro UI? Is there a way to do that?

It is impossible to answer all questions that we have at this point in time. Windows 8 is a work in progress. I do hope that Microsoft will offer ways to customize the operating system to please all users.

You can read more about Internet Explorer 10 in its current form on the Building Windows 8 blog.

Users who want a little bit of comfort can install one of the available browser extensions instead to submit sites and files directly from an Internet browser to Virus Total. We already reviewed the Virus Total Firefox and Virus Total Chrome extensions previously. This time, we take a look at the Internet Explorer version of Virus Total.

The Internet Explorer version of Virus Total is limited in comparison to the Chrome or Firefox version. Unlike those versions that integrate not only into the browser’s right-click context menu but also into the file download dialog, the Internet Explorer version only integrates into the context menu.

When you install the Internet Explorer add-on, you will notice afterwards that a Send URL to VirusTotal entry has been added to the context menu of Internet Explorer. This option is only displayed on right-clicks on links, and not if the user right-clicks on other page elements. This basically means that you cannot really check the site you are on currently, unless it links to itself somewhere on the page.

Another issue that users may come across is that the context menu entry will always submit the url to the Virus Total url analyzer, even if a file is the link target. It is possible to switch to the antivirus report in that report, but it takes another click to load it.

The add-on definitely has its flaws, from the context menu limitations to the fact that it is always the page that gets scanned even if the link is pointing directly to a file. The Explorer add-on is however still handy and faster than having to submit file links or urls directly on the Virus Total website.

Virus Total Explorer is compatible with all recent versions of Microsoft’s Internet browser. downloads are provided at the Virus Total website. There is unfortunately no option to directly link to the page where the download is offered. Open the Browser Addons page and switch to Internet Explorer in the menu below to find information and downloads. (via)

On news sites for instance, links to additional sites with news, videos and images are displayed if available. On shopping sites, you might get price comparison information and links to accessories.

The toolbar displays information on mouse over. One interesting feature is that some of the information can be displayed directly in that overlay window. This is the case for videos and images that the extension suggested as related to the current page.

Some information on the other hand, like web links, open in a new browser tab.

Google explains the concept in detail on their support website:

Whenever you’re navigating to a new page, Google Related will look for interesting related content and, if available, display it in a bar at the bottom of your page. Google Related can display categories such as videos, news articles, maps, reviews, images, web sites and more. To preview a listed item or see additional items, just use your mouse to hover over different categories in the bar. For example, when you hover over a video link, the video pops up in a preview box and you can play the video directly on the page.

A video has been published as well.

Interestingly enough, the video mentions that Google Related is available for both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. The web page on the other hand states that Google Related requires Google Chrome 11 or higher.

Google Related os also be part of the Google Toolbar which would explain this discrepancy.

Google Related works mostly on English Internet pages currently. Toolbar users furthermore need to have google.com configured as their Toolbar’s search engine.

The research “measuring the effects of cognitive ability on the choice of web browser” was apparently conducted on 100,000 people who went looking for an IQ test.  As I pointed out at the time the data from this research would have been utterly meaningless, as it completely failed to take into account people using web browsers both at home and at work where they would have had no control over the browser they used.

Now it has emerged that the entire thing was a hoax with the BBC reporting that not just they, but other big media organisations including CNN and Forbes were taken in (not gHacks though I’m happy to say!).

It has emerged that the company website for AptiQuant was only set up recently and that all the staff images had come from a perfectly legitimate, and unconnected, business website for a company in Paris.

The BBC contacted the French firm, Central Test, who confirmed that they’d been made aware that AptiQuant has been using its images with the staff names changed.

It was quite an elaborate hoax with an extensive research document (containing grammar errors) and a very convincing website to back it up.  There is no clue at this stage who was behind the hoax.  In the study AptiQuant said…

The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser.  From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers. This hypothesis can be extended to any software in general, however more research is needed for that, which is a potential future work as an extension to this report.

gHacks readers too it seems are a savvy bunch with Jakin posting “This is a stupid study.   Intelligent people can choose to use IE or use another browser”  though Betttie said “IMHO, the study is among the most robust I’ve come across.”

It can be argued that the reason the hoax was so successful worldwide is because of the venom many people have towards Internet Explorer and the knowledge that some users of Microsoft’s browser can be less likely to know about, or know how to find, download and install other browsers.  With the exception of businesses still using Internet Explorer 6, it can be argued that it’s these people who are unlikely to even have Windows Update switched on, let alone download a new version of the browser whenever the update service tells them that one is available.

This is not proof of people having a low IQ however, far from it.  Instead this is merely proof that technology is very confusing and difficult to use for many people.  That these people should be considered “dumb” was something that gHacks users seemed particularly keen to attack, and good on you for it.

The BBC sought an alternative view to the research and asked Professor David Speigelhalter of Cambridge University’s Statistical Laboratory, he said “I believe these figures are implausibly low – and an insult to IE users.”  When the BBC tried to contact AptiQuant on the number provided on their website nobody was available for comment.

Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos commented that “It’s obviously very easy to create a bogus site like this – as all phishers know it’s easy to rip-off someone else’s webpages and pictures.”  He went on to add that this is exactly the type of behaviour exhibited by phishers and malware writers.  Though he added that the PDF file from the website containing the research appeared to be free of any malware.

Microsoft has acknowledged the issue under windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. The company notes in the official Microsoft Support listing that “core fonts in Internet Explorer 9″ may appear “blurred compared with the same text and fonts in Windows Internet Explorer 8″.

The fonts showing those behaviors are Arial, Verdana and Tahoma all on regular font styles and font sizes of 8,9 and 10 points.

This issue is caused by different font rendering techniques:

By default, Internet Explorer 9 uses sub-pixel positioned ClearType to render text by using DirectWrite, whereas Internet Explorer 8 uses whole-pixel positioned ClearType to render text by using the Microsoft Windows graphics device interface (GDI).

Microsoft has released updates for all versions of Windows that Internet Explorer 9 is compatible with. This includes the client operating systems Windows Vista and Windows 7, as well as the server operating systems Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

• Windows 7 x86
• Windows 7 x64
• Windows Vista x86
• Windows Vista x64
• Windows Server 2008 x86
• Windows Server 2008 x64
• Windows Server 2008 IA-64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 x64
• Windows Server 2008 R2 IA-64

All update downloads require a validation before they become available.

The Windows PC needs to be restarted after the update installation.

The Knowledge Base article lists additional information about the update and the changes that it makes to the system. Microsoft mentions Internet Explorer 9 explicitly in the article, other programs however may benefit from the updated fonts as well. (via)

Please let everyone know if you noticed a change for the better or worse after installing the update on your system.