wikinerd writes "The United States Copyright Office asks whether you would have any problem if you were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work via their website. The Norwegian government recently said no to proprietary formats, but it seems that the US government sites should be informed about the existence of non-Microsoft Web browsers, such as Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. I have written a letter about this issue, which is posted on my blog for everyone to copy and base on it their own response. If they see how many people use alternative browsers, they'll probably reconsider and stay within the W3C standards."

OSCON 2005 was held in a convention center this year, instead of a hotel, because it just got too big (2000+ people). Too big, in fact, for pudge and myself to cover more than a fraction of the talks and the ideas flitting around the hallways. But here's some of what I found cool last week. And if you attended or presented at OSCON and want to tell us about all the neat stuff we missed, please, share your thoughts in the comments, or submit a fact-rich writeup and we'll maybe do a followup story later.

Anonymous Cowherd writes "Paul Thurrott, a journalist that usually writes about all things Windows related (and sometimes about Apple affairs too), made a call in a recent article to boycott Internet Explorer, due to Microsoft's approach (continued in IE7) of not supporting web standards: 'My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators... You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.'"

Anonymous reader writes "The Opera browser will stop spoofing its User Agent (UA) as Internet Explorer. Currently Opera, by default, spoofs its UA to identify itself as Internet Explorer. This is seen, by some, as a move that will bring up Opera's usage stats a bit higher, and will hopefully make webmasters, who develop IE centric sites, more aware of Opera."

Opera Watch writes "The next version of Opera, 8.02, will have an embedded BitTorrent client. Opera has released today a Technical Preview of this new version on its FTP directory, though they have made no official announcement as of yet."

An anonymous reader writes "Secunia is warning that several popular browsers contain a vulnerability that could allow a phishing attack. 'The problem is that JavaScript dialog boxes do not display or include their origin, which allows a new window to open -- for example, a prompt dialog box -- which appears to be from a trusted site,' Secunia said. The browsers include the latest versions of IE, IE for Mac, Safari, iCab, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox and Camino. Opera 7 and 8 are also affected but not 8.01."

Anonymous Coward writes "ZDNet notes, 'The chief executive of Opera Software claimed on Monday that the market share figures for Mozilla Firefox are inflated, due to its support for link prefetching" In addition, "Opera has a better caching mechanism so it doesn't access Web sites as often as other browsers" and "Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer' "

Yankovic writes "Looks like MS will not support IE7 on Windows 2000. 'It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000... [S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.' While security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox." All the details about an MS product's fall into senility available at the lifecycle page.

erikharrison writes "I just watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. And it is good. There are lots of things I would like to say about it that I won't, as Slashdot isn't the place. Slashdot is the place to ask two questions, however. 1) How are the special effects and 2)What has Lucas done to the possibly tattered remains of my childhood?" Read on for Harrison's answers to those questions, and for Jamie's quite different impression of the sixth (and final?) Star Wars feature film.

Roblimo writes "Firefox and Opera are the two most popular cross-platform Web browsers. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Kris Shaffer tested them side-by-side on SUSE Linux 9.1, Mac OS X Panther, and Windows 2000, and decided that your choice may depend more on what you *do* with your browser than anything else, unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source."

loconet writes that early yesterday morning, "Dean Hachamovitch, IE product unit manager, confirmed that IE7, like Opera and Firefox first did years ago, will have tabbed browsing as one of its new features. Asa Dotzler,from Mozilla, points out that Dean reminds IE users who have not upgraded to XP that tabbed browsing can be added to IE through 3rd-party add-ons." cryptoz adds a link to this InformationWeek story which says that the tabs will be very "'basic' due to fears from Microsoft that tabbed browsing might scare off too many users. The feature is only being included because IE is slipping in the browser share market."

plasticmillion writes "Greasemonkey is a revolutionary Firefox extension that many feel has enormous implications for the future evolution of the web. By making it easy to write client-side scripts that modify webpages as you surf, it shifts the balance of power from content creators to content consumers. Since its inception, it has given rise to an impressive array of scripts for everything from enhancing Gmail with one-click delete functionality to preventing Hotmail from spawning new windows when you click on external links. In recent Greasemonkey news, Mark Pilgrim just published a comprehensive primer called 'Dive Into Greasemonkey', a must-read for those who want to try their hand at writing their own scripts. It should be noted that Greasemonkey is not without controversy, but this has done nothing to reduce its popularity among web programmers. Even Opera has jumped on the bandwagon with their own version of user scripts. To illustrate the principle to /.ers, I whipped up a handy little script called 'Slashdot Live Comment Tree', which lets you expand and collapse entire threads in an article's comments."

Slashback tonight with updates and clarifications on recent Slashdot stories (and story arcs), including a downright Operatic end to Jon S. von Tetzchner's cross-oceanic attempt (or was that just in fun?), the status of post-death email privacy, minimizing the dangers of RFID passports, and more - read on for the details.

rRogta writes "Previously reported on slashdot here, Opera CEO boldly promises to swim across the Atlantic should the new Opera browser be downloaded a million times in the first four days after it's release. Well, they reached their goal and in this press release it says he's now preparing for the long swim."

Viggeh! writes "An overly excited Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software, today proclaimed at an internal company meeting that if the download numbers of the new Opera 8 Web browser reach 1 million within the first four days of the launch, he will swim from Norway to the USA with only one stop-over for a cup of hot chocolate at his mother's house in his home country, Iceland. The new browser was released Tuesday and was downloaded 600.000 times in the first 48 hours since release. The challenge will end on Saturday at 0900 a.m. CET, so if you want to try out some new software and make the CEO stick to his big words, download it at Opera's webpage(direct link)."

bonch writes "After a series of beta releases, Opera 8 final has now been released. Read the announcement complete with download links. The new Opera sports a streamlined interface and several rendering improvements."

hixie writes " The W3C recently acknowledged a version of the Web Forms 2.0 draft submitted to the W3C by Mozilla and Opera. Meanwhile the WHATWG has updated the Web Forms draft and released a new call for comments. Send them in!"

naylor83 writes "Four weeks ago, Opera's CTO Håkan Lie put forward the Acid2 challenge to the IE developers at Microsoft. The Web Standards Project has now silently published the promised browser test. Somewhat surprisingly, both Opera and Firefox fail to correctly render the test page. Obviously though, they're no where near as lousy as Internet Explorer. More screenshots are available at my blog, as well as at other people's."

Bobert@flixnjoystix.com writes "On May 19th, fans of all ages will see the final installment of the Star Wars saga with Revenge of the Sith. However, for the first time ever a Star Wars film will be officially rated PG-13. Over the weekend the Daily Herald newspaper confirmed that George Lucas' conclusion to his nearly 30 year epic Space Opera received a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA is expected to release an official statement or press release sometime this week." This confirms the rumor we reported on back in March.

shashark writes "Technologically savvy users are merging these technologies to "Skypecast", using Skype's service to distribute recordings across the internet for free. This allows expert users to run their own mini-radio stations, which can be accessed by any Skype user. Skype does not actively support these uses, but encourages its users to find new applications for their service. Other possibilities discussed by Skypecasters at Unbound Spiral or Moodle are to turn an MP3 player into a radio station for any of Skype's 29 million registered users to dial up using their Skype line. Instructions also are available on how to record a personal soap opera and use Skype to distribute it en masse. Even more ominously, some Skypecasters record Skype calls and post them on the Internet."