Let me tell you about a browser. An innovative browser that was the first to implement new Web technologies that allowed for greater interactivity. A browser with a striking new interface. Chrome? No: Internet Explorer 6.

There’s a reason that Microsoft’s browser took over 95 percent of the Web browser market from Netscape (Firefox’s ancestor): IE6 could do things earlier browsers could not. There was dynamic HTML, CSS, and yes, it even had new security features.

But over the years, problems with all these unique capabilities reared its ugly head. Every major Web site started to target IE, to the point that the sites didn’t function correctly or fully in other browsers.

Fast forward to 2011. The hot new browser is Google’s Chrome, which has just overtaken former indie darling Firefox in global market share, according to StatCounter. Chrome can do things that no other browser can do, and Google now targets Chrome exclusively, meaning some Google sites only function fully when viewed in Chrome. Even today, you can read on the Google blog about some new Angry Birds levels that only work in Chrome.

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Apparently experiencing what Adobe Systems called the “full Web” on mobile devices isn’t so important after all.

In what appears to be a momentous about-face, Adobe Systems is scrapping its high-profile effort to bring its Flash Player software to smartphones and tablets, Jason Perlew at sister site ZDNet reported today. Such a move would mean Adobe’s pragmatism won out over ambition.

The move, if confirmed, would undermine a selling point many Android phone makers had used in an effort to stand out above Apple’s iOS devices, which barred the plug-in.

Windows 8 will have two versions of Internet Explorer 10: a conventional browser that lives on the legacy desktop, and a new Metro-style, touch-friendly browser that lives in the Metro world. The second of these, the Metro browser, will not support any plugins. Whether Flash, Silverlight, or some custom business app, sites that need plugins will only be accessible in the non-touch, desktop-based browser.

Should one ever come across a page that needs a plugin, the Metro browser has a button to go to that page within the desktop browser. This yanks you out of the Metro experience and places you on the traditional desktop.

The rationale is a familiar one: plugin-based content shortens battery life, and comes with security, reliability, and privacy problems. Sites that currently depend on the capabilities provided by Flash or Silverlight should switch to HTML5.

An attack targeting sites running unpatched versions of the osCommerce web application kept growing virally this week, more than three weeks after a security firm warned it was being used to install malware on the computers of unsuspecting users.

When researchers from Armorize first spotted the exploit on July 24, they estimated it had injected malicious links into about 91,000 webpages. By early last week, The Reg reported it had taken hold of almost 5 million pages. At time of writing, Google searches suggested that the number exceeded 8.3 million

Wix.com, a free Web publishing platform, has announced that it will now help customers cater to on-the-go audiences with the launch of WixMobile, a free mobile Web site builder. The update expands the company’s product line, which lets users create free Web sites and customized Facebook fan pages.

Designed as an easy and cost-effective way for anyone to get a mobile site up and running in under 10 minutes, WixMobile users can build mobile sites without any previous coding experience. They simply select a site template and customize the background, colors, text, icons, and more. WixMobile offers one-click access to business hours, contact information, directions, and other action-oriented areas. Now small business owners can quickly create a mobile site without the need to shell out big bucks for costly coders.

iPad traffic is starting to get on the global Internet traffic map.

In fact, according to a report from NetMarketShare, Apple’s iPad makes up one percent of Web traffic worldwide and 2.1 percent of online traffic in the United States.

It started with Chrome browser. Google decided that the stop button is not important enough to have its own space on the browser toolbar. I guess the 16 pixel button takes too much space that Google merged it with the refresh button as a toggle button.

Now Firefox 4 also copied this poor design and eliminated the stop button.

As part of my job I sometimes need to do some web development or debug an html page. Today I has such case where I had to look at an HTML page that has an automatic refresh/redirect code in the page after few seconds. I use Firefox browser for years now and all I had to do for this kind of pages to stop the refresh is to press the stop button. However since I recently upgraded to Firefox 4 I found this task impossible because the refresh button toggle to the stop button for a split second before the page actually refreshed itself.

Chrome browser was not different, I could not stop the page from refreshing. All angry and upset I was thinking to myself, well probably IE9 (which I also recently installed) that looks like Chrome too, was no different, however I tried that too, and kudos to Microsoft, the product designer did leave the stop button on the tool bar and I was able to finally stop the page from reloading itself.

While I don’t use IE9 as my default browser I finally found a good use for it. It is no doubt that Microsoft products have best user interface designers and this is no exception.

I call to Mozilla and Google to please BRING BACK THE STOP BUTTON, I’m sure that many users will be happy to scarify a whole 10-16 pixels from the toolbar to have this button back.

Amazon.com Inc. is planning to start a service that would let people store music and video online and access it from various digital devices, people familiar with the matter said.

The company could announce the effort as early as Tuesday, the people said.

Amazon is still working out key legal issues related to the service, these people added. Most notably, Amazon has yet to secure content licenses from at least some major record labels and movie studios.

One major music company, Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, expressed dismay at Amazon’s plans, echoing concerns of others in the industry. “We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music,” a spokeswoman said Tuesday evening.

Israeli startup Wix, which allows users to build flash websites, has just raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Insight Venture Partners and DAG ventures, with Benchmark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners participating in the round. This brings Wix’s total
funding to $61 million.

Founded in 2006, Wix provides a simple mechanism for anyone to create Flash-based websites. Users can customize their Wix websites with a drag and drop editing tool and pretty templates, making the site user-friendly for users who may not be tech savvy. The site makes its money from a freemium model where users pay for extra customization and design features.

Since I joined Wix as a Server Group Manager Wix has gone some major changes in development methodologies we are forming the state of the art development process which will let us do a very quick development cycle, building very advanced, cool frameworks and tools and trying to be one of the leading hi-tech companies in Israel.

My team consists of the best and brightest developers and although recruiting people for the core server team is very challenging since we only look for the best developers, it makes the working environment very challenging and productive where everybody of the developers has a major role in all aspects of the development process. (Now here comes the sales pitch) By the way I’m always looking for the brightest and best developers so if you think you are a Java guru you are welcome to submit your resume to (jobs at wix dot com) or send me a note.

So if you are looking for a free website builder check out Wix.com

Mozilla’s newly launched Firefox 4 Web browser was downloaded nearly 7 million times worldwide in the first 24 hours, according to media reports.

The number was almost triple the 2.4 million downloads that Microsoft reported in the first 24 hours after the Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) was released.

Nevertheless, the number lagged behind the record-breaking performance of Firefox 3, which was downloaded more than 8 million times in the first day after launch in mid-2008.

Statistics show that Firefox 4 has attracted interest from around the world, with 44 percent downloads in Europe, 26 percent in North America. and 20 percent in Asia.

Mozilla launched Firefox 4 on Tuesday at around 10:00 a.m. EDT to compete with Microsoft’s IE9 and Google Chrome.

Oracle is killing Sun.com, the online home of Sun Microsystems and one of the oldest dot-com domain names.

An entry on the Oracle’s OTN Garage says that sun.com will be decommissioned on June 1.

The closure comes after Sun’s new owner, Oracle, moved most of the content on BigAdmin, OpenSolaris.com, and some sections of Sun Developer Network to the Systems Admin and Developer Community of OTN.

That apparently leaves just a hardware compatibly list, which OTN Garage said engineers are “working on a solution” for. Once that’s been relocated to the happy fields of Redwood Shores, Sun’s domain will be turned off.

Microsoft has released its Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) web browser, saying that it “unleashes a more beautiful web”.

Microsoft has been publicly testing IE9 beta releases for some time and revealed that over 40 million people had downloaded the betas. The Vole has been aggressively promoting a number of IE9 features, with the highlight being HTML5 hardware acceleration.

This has led Microsoft to come out with unsubstantiated hyperbole such as “IE9 harnesses the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU), unlocking 90 per cent of the PC’s power that went previously untapped by web browsers.” Admittedly GPU acceleration for both HTML5 and Adobe’s Flash Player will help performance, but it should also improve battery life on laptops.