Mitchell Bronze writes "Mozilla's Mike Shaver said in an interview that the upcoming Firefox 2 will have anti-phishing capability using technology that might come from Google." From the article: "With the continued rise in online attacks, security tools have become something Web browser makers can use to try to stand out. Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers against online scams in Internet Explorer 7, due later in 2006. Similar functionality is already in Netscape 8 and Opera 8, both released last year. 'It is another example of the energy that has returned to the browser market,' Shaver said."

dxprog writes "Opera has announced that they and Nintendo are going in together to create a web browser for the DS. The browser, based on Opera's core engine, will take advantage of the system's two screens and the touchscreen to provide on-the-go portable internet access. From the article: 'Within just five seconds of turning on the system, the Nintendo DS is already fully operational. This makes it the ideal device to enable people to swiftly obtain the latest information from the internet, wherever they are.'" Update: 02/15 15:50 GMT by Z : More information about the browser and game announcements available from Gamasutra, and Iwata's aim that they'll hit 10 Million DS units sold is reported on the Next Generation site.

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices has an interview with Jon S. von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera Software, on the growing importance of device computing, Linux in the device space, browsers as an interface platform for Linux devices, and how future WHAT standards like WebForms 2.0 and Canvas will make the Web more usable on mobile computing devices of tomorrow."

ZarK writes "Technical Preview 2 of the upcoming Opera 9.0 browser is now available for download. In addition to the general bugfix and rendering improvements there's also new features, like x-platform type widgets, improved content blocking, bittorrent support, thumbnail preview of tabs and more. Improved functionality also comes in the fact that a good lot of the scripts from userscripts.org will now work, advanced settings have improved in opera:config, and more browser customization is available at the opera community. However, some clear indications that this is still an alpha release is the experimental support for NTLM which breaks the proxy functionality for some users, and the fact that widgets are always on top."

Billosaur writes "The Register has an article by Mark Ballard on attempts to lure more women into the area of technology by a '...TV soap that depicts them making a success of careers traditionally pursued by men.' The Public Awareness of Science and Engineering (PAWS) Drama Fund has been attempting to develop a soap opera called 'Happy Valley' to encourage girls to pursue careers in science and technology by giving them successful role models to follow. The idea is tanking, however, as no one is willing to pick up the show. To quote the show's writer, Tony McHale: 'People say, why don't you do a science soap. My reply is that no-one will commission it, because it's boring.'"

You posted a lot of great questions for Mike Nash last week, and he put a lot of time into answering them. As promised, his answers were not laundered by PR people, which is all too common with "executive" interviews with people from any company. Still, he boosts Microsoft, as you'd expect, since he's a VP there. And obviously, going along with that, he says he likes Microsoft products better than he likes competing ones. But this is still a great look into the way Microsoft views security problems with their products, and what the company is trying to do about them.

worb writes "The tiny mobile browser Opera Mini was officially released worldwide today. Opera is known for its PC and mobile browsers, but even the cell phone version Opera require more memory than most phones today are capable of. Opera Mini works by passing pages through Opera's servers to strip them down before they are displayed on the phone. Also, the Register has a story on how this actually means that Opera now offers a reason not to buy a smartphone, a market Opera currently has a strong foothold in."

hahafaha asks: "I am currently working on a website for a small organization. We (I am not alone in this) have a beta version ready, and are currently testing the site on browsers. We have tried all of the big browsers (Firefox, IE, opera), as well as other browsers, such as lynx, links, w3m and even NetFront. So, when can one decide that they will stop supporting a system. Obviously, going (for example) down to IE 1 is crazy, but is IE 3 crazy? This is not only relevant to web design but to any programming at all. When, for example, can you say that I will *not* support a certain version of Windows. Can you say that now about Windows 98? How about 95?"

BRAINBUZ asks: "I'm finding more and more web-pages are blasting sound at me. Everyone who chooses to blast sound at me seems to manage to make their sound files much louder than what I was trying to listen to. I am finding this to be even more annoying than popups -- at least with pop-ups I could click the X and be done with it, pages with sound don't give an option to turn it off without closing the browser, or muting all sound. When I can, I avoid sites with sound, but just today I was checking my balance on one of my credit cards only to have some awful noise nearly blow out my speakers from one of their ads, for themselves. Opera has a feature to turn off sound in web pages, which doesn't work on most noisy pages. Haven't been able to find a similar option in Firefox or IE. The next killer feature, what I really want from my browser, is the ability to shut every web site up. I get security warnings from my browsers all of the time, why can't I get a warning about every media file (whether it be audio, video, flash, ActiveX or Java based) on the page that wants to play and the option to play or not play them?"

Back in 2005 (last week) we sent Opera Software CEO Jon von Tetzchner twelve of your questions. This year (this week), we have his answers. Enjoy!

sayanchak writes "Reuters reports that Opera Software has agreed that Google will be the default partner for its mobile Internet browsers. Google will be the default search partner for the mobile browsers, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini." From the article: "Oslo-based Opera Software is a tiny competitor of Microsoft in the Internet browser market, but the fast-growing part of its business is in browsers for mobile phones and other mobile electronic devices."

Opera Software has gotten all kinds of media play lately, including rumors that both Google and Microsoft were buying the company. Whether you love or hate Opera, you've got to give them credit for building a decent browser and grabbing a small but noticeable market share in the face of competition from both MSIE and Firefox. Co-founder/CEO Jon von Tetzchner is obviously reponsible for at least some of this success -- and for much of the company's high press profile, due not only to the Opera Browser itself but to at least one whacky PR stunt and at least one high-profile beef with Microsoft. So who is this guy? Ask and find out. He's obviously not your typical software company CEO, so we don't expect typical CEO-type answers from him. We'll send him (direct, not through a PR person) 10 or 12 of your best questions Friday afternoon (US EST), and run his answers during the first week of 2006.

We've had several submissions this morning concerning a CoolTechZone article stating that Microsoft has purchased Opera, seemingly confirming the Dvorak article we reported on yesterday. However, roblimo has followed up with Opera and found that to be (so far), less than true. Opera PR person Berit Hanson told Slashdot by phone from Oslo, Norway, that "last week it was Google, this week it's Microsoft." She laughed and added, "If I was working for Microsoft I think I'd know it, but I'm still in Oslo, not Washington, still working for Opera." Which, of course, is not to say it won't happen ... it just hasn't happened yet.

patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."

patro writes "Opera Watch writes Google is planning to buy the Opera browser. The source of the claim is Pierre Chappaz, the former president of Yahoo Europe. Google obviously can't buy Firefox, so Opera might be the next possible candidate." I can't begin to imagine why.

An anonymous reader writes "Opera has announced that they will be putting one lucky user's face up in Times Square during the New Year's Eve celebrations. The ABC SuperSign will display the winner of of Opera's most recent contest that only requires a submission of your picture and the reason why you should be chosen as their New Year's mascot. Nearly one million partygoers will witness the super sized fan tribute with the Opera browser logo on the 585 square foot (that's 54 square meters!) screen."

zackmac writes "For over two weeks domain registrar GoDaddy has been serving blank pages to Safari and Opera users who attempt to access sites using its domain forwarding and masking service. GoDaddy is blaming Apple as the source of the problem, and with nowhere to turn, Mac users are flocking to Apple's support forums to discuss the issue in-depth. Apple has so far been unresponsive and GoDaddy has directed affected customers to contact Apple Support. An inconvienent workaround is to open the website first in Firefox or Internet Explorer and then the page will load in Safari or Opera. Speculation abounds as to the cause of the problem and how to fix it. The current belief is malformed headers, an invalid 302 header with a bogus location and a redirect loop."

daria42 writes "A developer has added tabbed browsing of e-mail messages to Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client, mimicking one of the most popular features of the Firefox and Opera Web browsers." From the article: "It is unlikely the feature will be found in Mozilla's imminent release of Thunderbird 1.5 -- currently in testing -- but software developer Myk Melez has put test versions of Thunderbird online with the tabbed browsing feature included. However, there are doubts over the suitability of these downloads for production use as they are based on bleeding-edge 'unofficial' code. "

prostoalex writes "The Web browser market hasn't seen the competition heat up for a while, but things are getting quite exciting, PC World reports. The magazine looks into the latest features that are incorporated into Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Foundation's Firefox and Opera Software's Opera. From the article: "We took Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1, and Opera 9 Preview 1 out for a spin. Both the Firefox beta and the Opera beta are available for download, although Opera isn't publicizing this early testing version; the browsers' final editions should be out around the time you read this. On the other hand, the IE 7 beta will not be available for downloading until early next year.""

axonis writes "Benjamin Joffe has developed Canvascape - "3D Walker", a simple javascript browser based 3D first person game engine that shows off the capabilities of the Canvas tag found in Firefox, Safari and Opera. " Don't expect much except a proof of concept ;)