An anonymous reader writes "The Microsoft Windows Engineering Team has announced that the Metro interface web browser in Windows 8 will not support plug-ins — Adobe Flash included. Users will still be able to open a traditional browser interface to make use of legacy sites that rely upon plug-ins. This news follows a recent blog post by the Internet Explorer 10 team pushing the use of HTML5 video as a replacement to Flash video. With Google, Apple, Mozilla, Opera and other major players already backing HTML5 — is Adobe Flash finally dead?"

A new government law has created an unusually precise list of injury codes for billing purposes. Currently there are 18,000 standard billing codes; the new law would expand that list to around 140,000. If you've been injured at the Opera, walked into a lamppost, pulled something while playing a trumpet, or have been attacked by a turtle, there's now a code for that. From the article: "The federal agencies that developed the system—generally known as ICD-10, for International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision—say the codes will provide a more exact and up-to-date accounting of diagnoses and hospital inpatient procedures, which could improve payment strategies and care guidelines. "It's for accuracy of data and quality of care," says Pat Brooks, senior technical adviser at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services."

An anonymous reader writes "The latest browser benchmarks are in... again. This is one of the better 'browser battle' articles, though. Chrome 13, Firefox 6, IE9, Opera 11.50, and Safari 5.1 are put through 40-some tests on both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion. As a PC guy, I was pretty impressed with the performance of Safari on OS X, and the reader feature looks awesome too. The author also uncovered a nasty Catalyst bug that makes IE9 render pages improperly and freeze up under heavy loads of tabs. The tables at the end pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of each browser, which is nicer than a 1-10 or star rating. The tests are more thorough than most browser comparisons I've seen."

Orome1 writes with an article in Net Security. From the article: "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 has proved once again to be the best choice when it comes to catching attacks aimed at making the user download Web-based malware. This claim was made by NSS Labs in the recently released results (PDF) of a test conducted globally from May 27 through June 10 of the current year, which saw five of the most popular Web browsers pitted against each other. Windows Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 12, Mozilla Firefox 4, Apple Safari 5, and Opera 11 were tested with 1,188 malicious URLs — links that lead to a download that delivers a malicious payload or to a website hosting malware links."

pbahra writes "When you think of product placement on television you tend to think of cumbersome 1950s examples where the actor would cheesily turn to camera and hold up, say, a bar of soap—where do you think the sobriquet soap opera came from—to deliver his line. Perhaps to save all of us the artistic murder, the practice was prohibited in Europe, but recently the prohibition has been relaxed and a U.K. start up is offering digital producers the chance to inject products realistically in post production with full directorial control. The problem with existing physical product placement is that there are no clear business plans, and the process is incredibly slow. In Europe, legal constraints prohibit directors from re-writing scripts to include products, so any placement has to be done at the creative stage."

rennerik writes "A recent study of 100,000 people taking IQ tests compared the scores with which browser the person uses on a regular basis. On average, Internet Explorer users fared the worst, with IE6 users at the bottom of the pile and IE8 users performing slightly better. Firefox, Chrome and Safari fell in the middle with little difference between them. IE with Chrome Frame and Camino landed on top, along with Opera, whose users scored the highest"

An anonymous reader writes "With a shiny new version of Presto that's apparently up to 20% faster, cool tweaks to Speed Dial, and a bunch of other features and bug fixes, the crazy Norwegians have just launched the latest version of desktop Opera."

fysdt writes with this excerpt from TechCrunch: "Opera founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company. In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that 'It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.'"

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner provides a look at 10-plus mobile browsing alternatives, from Firefox, to Opera, to SkyFire, to Mercury, and more — a rapidly evolving area fraught with confusion, especially for developers seeking to target the mobile Web. 'All of this turmoil is creating opportunities. On the iPhone, the formerly unknown browsers are quite nice. They run quite well and sometimes offer the ability to run Flash content directly because they have compiled Flash into the stack. There are a surprisingly large number of new names appearing, and some are beginning to be mentioned in the same breath as the big browsers that dominate the desktop,' Wayner writes. 'The turmoil is also changing the definition of what a browser might be. A number of small applications such as Instapaper, Flipboard, and Evernote never set out to be browsers, but people are using them to read Web pages.'"

CWmike writes "Mozilla and Opera are mocking browser rival Microsoft's use of the term 'native HTML5' to describe Internet Explorer 9 and the in-development IE10 as an oxymoron, an attempt to hijack an open standard and a marketing ploy. On Tuesday, Microsoft's Dean Hachamovitch, the executive who runs the IE group, used the term several times during a keynote at MIX, the company's annual Web developers conference, and in an accompanying post on the IE blog. Hachamovitch claimed in his keynote that, 'The only native experience of the Web of HTML5 today is on Windows 7 with IE9.' Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's director of community development, replied mockingly in Bugzilla: 'I'm pretty sure Firefox 5 has "complete native HTML5" support. We should resolve this as fixed and be sure to let the world know we beat Microsoft to shipping *complete* native HTML5.'"

syngularyx writes "The screenshots show Microsoft's new application store for Windows. The store appears to be running in Windows 7, hinting that the software giant may also be planning to offer its app store for legacy versions of Windows. Cnbeta posted the screenshots on Monday, however WinRumors is unable to confirm their authenticity at this time. The screenshots appear to show a number of Microsoft's own software, including third party software from Opera and Mozilla."

An anonymous reader writes "From the techspot article: 'This week, the Opera web browser became the first non-native browser made available in Apple's Mac App Store. While Apple approved the browser, it still managed to hurt its competitor by putting this ridiculous label on it: "You must be at least 17 years old to download this app." Opera has reacted in good humor. "I'm very concerned," Jan Standal, VP of Desktop Products for Opera Software, said in a statement. "Seventeen is very young, and I am not sure if, at that age, people are ready to use such an application. It's very fast, you know, and it has a lot of features. I think the download requirement should be at least 18."'"

An anonymous reader writes "Of all the Hollywood properties consigned to development hell in the reductionist policy of the last 3-4 years of bad economy, the very last to have a prospect of a green light are expensive fantasy and SF projects that fall outside the 'family' remit. Not even the addition of James Cameron to David Fincher's Heavy Metal remake has stopped its begging-bowl passage from studio to studio; Robert Rodriguez's propriety of the Barbarella remake likewise toured the world in vain, apparently unmindful of the very unusual set of cultural and demographic circumstances that caused a major studio to back an 'erotic space opera' in 1968 — and to the fact that these circumstances are not likely to reoccur. David Fincher lamented in 2008 that the creation of dazzling artificial movie worlds is limited to family-friendly output — but in the long wake of the box-office disappointment of the 'R'-rated Watchmen movie, there seems no current prospect that the adults will ever get to play with the kids' toys again." The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.

Apparently Firefox was just the beginning: Pigskin-Referee writes "Microsoft has released a Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome so as to enable H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using built-in capabilities available on Windows 7. As you may recall, less than two months ago, Microsoft released the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in with the same goal in mind. Even though Firefox and Chrome are big competitors to Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, the software giant has decided Windows 7 users should be able to play back H.264 video even if they aren't using IE9. Here's the current state of HTML5 video: Microsoft and Apple are betting on H.264, while Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are rooting for WebM. Google was actually in favor of both H.264 and WebM up until earlier this month, when the search giant decided to drop H.264 support completely, even though the former is widely used and the latter is not. The company also announced that it would release WebM plugins for Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. Although IE9 supports H.264, excluding all other codecs, Microsoft is making an exception for WebM, as long as the user installs the corresponding codec, and is helping Google ensure the plug-in works properly."

GMGruman writes "The end of numbering for HTML versions beyond HTML5 hides two painful realities, argues Neil McAllister. One is that the HTML standards process has failed, becoming a seemingly never-ending bureaucratic maze that has encouraged the proliferation of draft implementations. That's not great, but as all the wireless draft standards have shown, it can be managed. But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process."

An anonymous reader writes "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."

surveyork writes "''Mozilla today officially released Firefox 4 Beta 9 and it's a big improvement over previous betas and a parsec beyond the Firefox 3.6.x experience. At this stage, after months of development, Mozilla developers are clearly nearing the end of this development marathon.' After Firefox beta 9, a beta 10 and a single RC are scheduled (this road map can change, of course). The main features of Firefox beta 9 are IndexedDB and tabs on titlebar (just like Chrome and Opera). IndexedDB allows sites to store data on your computer (with your prior authorization). Tabs on titlebar is self-explanatory. Old-schoolers can always turn on the 'show menu bar' to get their familiar GUI back. Oh, and Fx beta 9 is fast and starts fast. Firefox beta 9 available here and in lots of official mirrors."

An anonymous reader follows up to yesterday's Google announcement that they would drop H.264 support from Chrome. "Thomas Ford, Senior Communications Manager, Opera, told Muktware, 'Actually, Opera has never supported H.264. We have always chosen to support open formats like Ogg Theora and WebM. In fact, Opera was the first company to propose the tag, and when we did, we did it with Ogg. Simply put, we welcome Google's decision to rely on open codecs for HTML5 video.'"

surveyork writes "Opera Software released Opera browser 11 for desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). The main features are support for extensions similar to Chrome and Tab Stacks, Opera's version of tab management. The extension catalog is still small, with roughly 200 extensions, but steadily growing. The browser is very fast — Chrome-fast — and lightweight, with a new installer which is 30% smaller than the one in the previous version. Other enhancements include visual mouse gestures and better address field. There's no hardware acceleration yet, but it could be coming in a further dot release and benefit XP users as well as Mac, Linux and Windows 7/Vista users."

An anonymous reader writes "Opera 11 Beta has just been released and now includes support for extensions. Also new in this release Tab Stacking, Visual Mouse Gestures, performance improvements, new installer, and much more. Even with its many new features, Opera 11 is 30% smaller than Opera 10.60. That means that Opera downloads more quickly and installs in fewer steps. There are over 130 extensions and climbing including NoScript and AdBlock! Extensions can be found here."