Your computer may have a wide range of software installed, all of which will serve different functions. One of those programs will be the browser that you choose to work with.

Every web page that you go to will be a little different, and some will use embedded media or other tricks to make your browsing experience more rich.

The trouble is that some of the things that pages want to run will need external programs in order for them to be displayed correctly, or for them to be displayed at all. This is where plug-ins come in.

If the content of a web page needs a video application in order to run-for instance a flash video player, it needs to not only call on the application but also get it to run within the web page.

The page itself will tell the browser that it needs the use of this external application, but the browser alone cannot help. It does not know how to open the other application, or even which application is needed.

As a user you have to install the plug-in needed for the content on the page. The page itself will tell you if the plug in is missing and will often direct you to a website where the plug in can be found. Installation is easy, normally requiring that you just click a link and accept the install, before restarting your browser.

When you run the same web page again, it will put out the call the same as before for an external application, but the plug-in rather than the browser will now recognise that call.

It is then able to act as an intermediary between the browser and the external application, causing it to load and be displayed appropriately within.

You could say that the plug-in is the translator for the web page content. It alone understands the call that the web page puts out, and acts on it appropriately. Without the plug-in the browser cannot ‘talk’ to the external software application.

From time to time your browser has to be upgraded, or the other software applications themselves need upgrading. When this happens there is an occasional chance that you will need to re-install the plug-in that allows you to view the content on various pages, but again it is a simple process.

It will be prompted by you visiting a page that contains content that needs the plug in to run, and should not take long on today’s internet download speeds.

There is no need to install plug-ins before they are first needed as they install quickly, but once the time comes there is no way of avoiding it, if you want to see the web page’s content.

Browser Plug-ins – What are They and Why do you Need Them? is a post from: Computer Spot

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In the early days of the world wide web, there were few browser options for the layman. Browsers were not the intuitive software that they are today, nor were they laden with the number of features available today.

There were two main contenders in the early days: Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. Many regular internet users-and especially those who were more technically minded, preferred Netscape for it’s rich feature set. Yet it’s dominance did not last.

There were two main reasons for it’s downfall-the latter of which was AOL deciding to no longer update it. But this only occurred when it was already almost extinct. It was Internet Explorer that really did the damage.

Microsoft for a long time, bundled only Internet Explorer with it’s operating systems. This meant that by default, they had the biggest market share, as many people knew nothing of the choices available in browsers, or how to download or install a new one. They simply stuck with what came with the computer.

A court case ruled this bundling to be monopolistic and illegal. Microsoft was forced by courts to give a way to choose, and ended up having to provide only installers that helped the user install their browser of choice, rather than making the choice for them.

But this wasn’t the only reason for the fall in popularity. Internet Explorer historically was at best buggy, prone to crashing and freezing and at risk from the many security flaws that are found.

As Netscape began to fail, the core of it’s source code was integrated into a new browser. This browser had amazing features such as tabbed browsing (though it was not the first to use this), was easy to use and most of all-it was secure.

Mozilla Firefox was the newcomer. It focused on security, and this made it attractive to people who were aware of the potential problems with Internet Explorer. What’s more it was light weight and ran fast, using far less system resources than did it’s competitor.

Today, Microsoft’s browser holds just under half of the market share, at 49.87%. This is down from 91.35%-by far the dominant browser back in 2004. By comparison, Firefox is up from 3.66% in 2004, to around 35% currently. It has the second largest market share of the browsers, and is growing all the time.

The beta version of Internet Explorer  has now been released, and Microsoft has it’s hopes pinned on it to be the saving grace of the company when it comes to browser share.

They have attempted as they did with Internet Explorer 8 to emulate some of the many features that others prefer about alternatives. It is fast, uncluttered thanks to the lack of tool bars, and integrates seamlessly with Windows 7.

However it also takes away some desirable features such as short cuts, switching instead to pinning short cuts to the task bar, as Windows 7 does with programs.

Despite them trying so hard this time to make a browser that will be well accepted on netbooks, laptops and desktops alike, their market share keeps steadily falling.

The question now becomes-can Microsoft save it, or is Internet Explorer headed the way of Netscape?

The Downfall of Internet Explorer is a post from: Computer Spot

Microsoft has been fighting the battle of the browsers for many years now, and doesn’t seem to be particularly successful till now.

With a lot of competition out there, and with other browsers far more innovative than Internet Explorer (IE), what is Microsoft doing to try and prevent the further erosion of it’s market share?

Ten years ago there was no huge problem for Microsoft in the browser stakes. The amount of competition was small, with one of the main contenders being Netscape. This browser ultimately died out because of falling numbers, but the software at it’s core became IE’s main competition-Mozilla Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox has been an industry leader for more than seven years now. Though initially it was built upon the foundations of another browser, and used ideas that were not it’s own, it soon developed it’s own style, and gained a crowd of followers who came to rely upon it’s stability and security.

Security for IE has always been bad. Time and again insecurities are found with it’s coding that allow hackers and virus writers to exploit it, damaging people’s computers or stealing personal information from them as they do it.

Mozilla on the other hand prided itself in being safe, and providing users all of the tools that they needed to protect their private data.

With it’s latest browser, Microsoft is promising much of what the other browsers are already doing. Primarily they are offering a more secure, cleaner interface with less tool bars to clutter up the screen, and one that is more stable, less prone to crashing.

There are other minimalist browsers out there, some of which reach extremes that Microsoft never will, such as Chrome by Google.

HTML5 support is also to be included, alongside greater compliance to W3C standards. This will be viewed as a positive move by developers, who have long complained about IE’s poor rendering of code, and the fact that it still allows sloppy and incorrect code to be viewed.

For users of Windows 7, features of that system will be integrated into the new browser. This includes the ability to pin sites to the browser as you can programs to your tool bar. Security features will help scan downloads for malicious content, and there will be a search facility built into your address bar rather than in a separate search box.

The release of IE 9 unfortunately marks the start of the end for another Microsoft product-that being Windows XP. The new browser will not be available for this system, giving it a push into the realm of the obsolete and forcing users to upgrade to a newer operating system, such as Windows 7 instead.

The automatic installation of IE on a computer has now been ruled as uncompetitive, and unfair and has been outlawed in some countries.

If this practise and push towards openness and choices is to continue then Microsoft will have to work hard to develop a product that people choose to use, instead of merely using it as it is the default installed browser.

Internet Explorer 9 is a post from: Computer Spot

As technology matures, it always yields better results. Proceeding on similar lines, since the featured web browser from Google, Chrome is still currently in beta form.

You’ll find precious little news on just why Google believes the technology incorporated in Chrome is advancement on the existing web browsers, notably Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the Mozilla’s Firefox!

There are lot many reasons that may be listed out but here are my Top 10 Reasons to try Google Chrome includes:

1. Open source

I know it sounds strange, and Firefox is open source too, but as a matter of fact, Internet Explorer isn’t! If you don’t know why open source can be a good thing, then you’d better read this…

2. Crash control

Every tab the user opens, runs independently in the browser, consequently if any application crashes it doesn’t take anything else down with it.

So it can be considered to be highly stable, on the other hand I have personally experienced Firefox crashing totally many a times, which is quite annoying!

3. One box for everything and SSB’s

Chrome allows creation of Site Specific Browsers, which are basically created from the main Chrome browser to allow users to quickly access a single site.

These are the stripped down versions of the main browser. Moreover Chrome incorporates Web search, dedicated Address bar providing suggestions as you type and Web history.

“One unified box serves all your browsing needs,” says Google, and that does make sense.

4. New Tab page & Dynamic tabs

Every time you open a new tab, you can find a visual sampling of the most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages as well as closed tabs. Pretty cool… ain’t it?
What has Google got to say on this-?

“You can drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs as you wish – quickly and easily”, Google says.

5. Application shortcuts; Omnibox

With Google Chrome you can use web applications without opening your browser as application shortcuts can directly load your favorite online apps.

All Webapps can be launched in their own streamlined window without the Omnibox URL box and browser toolbar. The Omnibox is the URL box at the top of each tab, similar to Opera, which includes auto-complete functionality but auto-completes only URLs that were manually entered.

6. Safe browsing mode; Incognito

Chrome includes an Incognito mode, which is similar to Safari’s Private Browsing and Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate! Google Chrome warns you if you’re about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website.

7. Instant bookmarks & Simpler downloads

If you wanna’ bookmark a web page, you can simply click on the star icon at the left edge of the address bar and that’s it you are done ?

What’s more there’s no intrusive download manager; you can see your download’s status at the bottom of your current window, which feels lot more convenient.

8. Importing settings options and smart Pop up blocking

When you switch to Google Chrome, you need not lose all your private data and you can happily start from the same point where you left off with all the bookmarks and passwords duly restored from your existing browser.

Moreover the Popup windows are scoped to the tab they came from, meaning that they will not appear outside the tab unless the user explicitly drags them out!

9. Rendering engine

Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine on advice from the Android team, which is an interesting thing to watch out for… Only time can tell what difference can this really make, in helping Chrome scoring over the other browsers…

10. Blacklists

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists, first one being meant for phishing and other for malware, and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site.

This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called “Google Safe Browsing API“, which resembles the Internet Explorer 8’s functionality as well!

Google Chrome also has many more new advanced fabulous features such as gears, Sandboxing, cool Plugins, high Speed, support to all JavaScripts, high Stability, Multiprocessing abilities, efficient Task Manager and many more, which add developer features that could probably become web standards, typically relating to the building of web applications that even includes offline support too!

There’s lot more associated with Chrome than you can guess… so just be on the hunt to discover more!

Top 10 reasons to try Google Chrome is a post from: Computer Spot

Google Chrome has quickly become one of our favorite browsers occupying 1% market share on the very first day, but don’t be overwhelmed with this fact as there are many potential threats involved with the beta version currently.

Although the hot and happening web-browser from Google has barely entered the world, security researchers have been quick enough to find flaws in Chrome, which was supposed to be Google’s shiny foray into the browser market.

Before proceeding with the discussion, you can download the Google chrome beta version here & check it out yourself!

Welcome HACKERS!!

However be careful not to use it especially at cyber cafes or publicly shared systems, as you would be totally vulnerable to all the HACKERS everywhere!

Google launched the so called ideal browser; the Chrome this week, to the surprise and delight of many, but security researcher conceptually proved possibilities of exploiting the browser in a way, which takes advantage of code borrowed from an old version of Apple’s Safari.

As a result, this flaw leaves the Google browser open to carpet bombing attacks. Factually speaking, Chrome is apparently based on WebKit 525.13, which is essentially Safari 3.1, and suffers from the same flaw that Apple has since patched in its browser. That flaw, paired with a Java bug, could be used to execute code in Chrome.

A security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, reports, Chrome has also inherited a potentially serious security flaw from the old version of WebKit it is based on.

An attacker could easily trick users into launching an executable Java file by combining a flaw in WebKit with a known Java bug and some smart social engineering, thanks to Google!

It’s actually kinda’ surprising why Google has adopted several features from other browsers like Opera, Safari and mixed them all together because maintaining all the features security-wise is very hectic and problematic.

To do so, they must track all security vulnerabilities in those features, and fix them in Chrome too. This will probably be only after those vulnerabilities were fixed by the other vendors or were publicly reported. It will put Chrome users at risk for a long time.”

Although Chrome is a handy and slick browser, but it is far from being secured as it is advertised by Google! It borrows several insecure features from other browsers, and it has its own security design flaws as well!

Let’s see the details of this security flaw, which terms Google as carpet-bombing potential victim!

Carpet-Bombing

The most threatening problem is that whenever a user double-clicks the download at the bottom of the screen, this application is opened without any warning, which allows a malicious hacker to easily execute any Java program on a user’s machine!

Many internet researchers have even set up experiments to show the vulnerability of Chrome by executing Java scripts to open a simple notepad and likes of it… So if just testers can do it easily with good-will then you can imagine what the hackers would do!!

This exploit is really embarrassing for Google as first of all, Google stressed the security of Chrome in both the official announcement as well as in the live video demo just before the launch.

Google is ignorant?

But the shocking fact is that Apple already patched WebKit against this flaw when it released Safari 3.2.1 in July, though only after the flaw had been known already for more than two months.

Google, however, is using an older version of WebKit as the basis for Chrome. Obviously, this exploit only works because of the social engineering behind it.

Just like some pop-up ads trick users into clicking “OK” because the ad mimics a typical system message in Windows, this exploit would trick users who are not yet familiar with Chrome’s interface into believing that the download is actually just part of the web page.

Hope for a better tomorrow!

Hopefully Google will patch this flaw a lot faster than Apple did, but this fact will surely put up a bit of a damper on our enthusiasm for Chrome.

Google chrome is vulnerable… watch out there’s real danger on your way!! is a post from: Computer Spot