The next development milestone of Firefox 4.0 will be shipped in early 2011, with Beta 8 currently available for testing.The fact that Mozilla will only be able to deliver Beta 9 no earlier than January 2011 is a true measure of the delays that hit the project.

Some users might remember that the initial plan was to have Firefox 4.0 wrapped up and ready to go by the end of November 2010.

But in November 2010, Mozilla still had three Beta Builds of Firefox 4.0 to deliver, and it only managed to offer Beta 8 to early adopters on December 11th.

And the final version of Firefox 4.0 is not really just around the corner. Not by any standards.

With Christmas and New Year’s Eve up next, it’s safe to assume that work on the next iteration of the open source browser will suffer, and that little progress stands to be made.

According to Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s Director of Firefox “the next product planning meeting will be on January 5th, 2011. We expect to be looking at a schedule for shipping Firefox 4 for Desktop Beta 9 at that time.”

In this regard, I think it’s rather safe toassume that testers will be lucky to get Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 by the end of January 2010, if no other delays hit the project.

Fact is that Firefox 4.0 has been pushed so far into 2011, that Microsoft might get to release Internet Explorer 9 ahead of Firefox 3.6’s successor.
Remember, Mozilla still has to deliver Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 and Beta 10 ahead of pushing onward with the first Release Candidate (RC) Build.

The latest blocker count for Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 reveals that there are some 49 major problems that need to be resolved, this not counting any regression issues.

In total, Mozilla estimates that there are still over 450 bugs that need to be resolved before Firefox 4.0 can be finalized and delivered to the public.
To download firefox for windows click here.

Microsoft Corp is developing a feature in its new operating system that allows users to turn off Internet Explorer and other key Microsoft programs.

The new feature is a major step for the world's largest software company, which has been accused by competitors and regulators of forcing consumers to run its own software, squeezing rivals' offerings out of the marketplace. "In addition to the features that were already available to turn on or off in Windows Vista
, we've added the following features to the list in Windows 7," said a Microsoft blog published on Friday, listing Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player and a host of other Microsoft programs.

The publicly available blog was written by Jack Mayo, a manager in the team developing Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system, which will replace the unpopular Vistaearly next year. The new design will make it easier for users to remove any traces of Internet Explorer from their desktop, although the software will remain installed on the computer, and allow them to run other browsers more smoothly.

Last month Google Inc, which recently launched its own Chrome browser, joined the Mozilla foundation, producer of the Firefox Web browser, and Norway's Opera, in protesting Microsoft's dominance in the browser market. In January, European regulators brought formal charges against Microsoft for abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows operating system, which is used in 95 percent of the world's personal computers. In the past decade, Microsoft has fallen afoul of both U.S. and European antitrust regulators for bundling key programs with its operating system.

After the Great success of IE7,and the Beta version of Internet Explorer 8, the Microsoft has decided to launch its Final IE 8 in the Next year of March 2009.
In fact, a recent move from the Redmond company reveals that the gold release of IE8 might come as late as over a year after the launch of the Beta 1 build, if not even later. Of course, with no official confirmation, anticipating the final release of IE8 is nothing short of examining chicken entrails. However, the Redmond company does provide indications pointing to the availability of Internet Explorer 8 closer to, or even well into, the second quarter of 2009.
The pre-released versions of IE8 Beta 2 is available on the Microsoft site.Although the official help and support is currently focused on Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (All Languages), Microsoft doesemphasize that pre-released versions of the browser are in fact supported, and not just the second Beta. Up to this point in time the company has promised to support development milestones of IE8 until March 31, 2009.
“Free unlimited installation and usage support is available for Internet Explorer 8 pre-released versions, but only for North America English customers.
This support for Internet Explorer 8 pre-released versions is valid until March 31st, 2009. Advanced issues are not supported. Advanced issues include, but are not limited to, problems that are associated with software and hardware development, domain connectivity, server-based technologies, Web site development, and business-critical systems,” the message on the page reads, as you can very well see from the adjacent image.
The initial deadline for the IE8 pre-RTW support cut-off date was November 1, 2008. In mid-November, Microsoft pushed the date forward to December 31, 2008. Furthermore, just ahead of the start of 2009, support for IE8 pre-RTW was extended until the end of March 2009.

Microsoft is really stressing the importance of its fall update to the Xbox 360, especially the long awaited New Xbox Experience. Essentially a revamp of the old blade system which is currently
employed in the Xbox 360 navigation menu, this promises to bring a much more user friendly experience and to take personalization to new extremes. In order to promote the system, Microsoft has just relaunched the Xbox.com website where you can experiment the new user interface and see movies of the finished version in action.The content tabs are now fully displayed, the categories being Welcome, Inside Xbox, Game Marketplace, Friends, Video Marketplace and, last but not least, My Xbox. All of them promise to bring users a more pleasant experience while playing or browsing for content for their favorite console. Accessibility is the word best describing this user interface because it will offer a much less complex navigation for the users who aren't all that used to the console.
Also, the much awaited Avatars are showed, only in movies unfortunately, but promise to be a pretty interesting feature for the working version of the experience. Several other improvements and features in this update are the ability to save games to your hard drive and a new, more accessible in-game guide that helps gamers in those difficult situations.
Praises have already begun showering Microsoft because its users feel that this new experience is something that might give it the edge over the PlayStation 3. Although the two systems resemble quite a bit, Microsoft has stressed that this new interface is the hard work of quite a lot of people. Nonetheless, in my opinion, it looks very good and is sure to attract even more people to the Xbox, especially the casual gamers who see something much more friendly in this new interface than the old blade system.