It’s standard advice to run the latest version of whatever web browser of choice you use that your operating system supports; the reasons are for better security and protection against rogue scripts, stability of the app itself, features of newer versions and so on. However if I asked you, the audience, what version of browser you’re using currently,...

Periodically I receive PCMech reader mail from people asking for help with browser cookies, specifically pertaining to how they work with a security suite. Said honestly, it is not easy to explain how browser cookies work. They’re simple enough to define, but when it comes to explaining what they actually do to someone who doesn’t know otherwise,...

Evidently some people consider it a really big deal that IE has fallen below 50% market share. And yeah, I guess it is sort of a big deal given that IE has been above that mark for so long. Based on the comments received on articles I’ve posted here in the past about IE, many of you said goodbye to the IE browser long ago – measured in years for some...

It’s been said that 90% of people don’t know how to use CTRL+F in a web browser. Is this true? Probably. If you happen to be one of those 90%, you won’t be anymore after seeing the video...

Periodically a web site will change up its design, such as the recent minor redesign on PCMech that happened recently. With the PCMech site, tests are performed with various browsers on both Windows and Mac to make sure the site loads right and looks right before it goes live. With other web sites, let’s just say they don’t do as much testing as...

The Big Three web browsers all now have pinning ability. IE9 can pin to the taskbar, Mozilla Firefox 5 can pin as "app tabs" and Chrome can pin tabs as well. I’m going to skip IE9 here because its pinning ability is limited to the Windows taskbar and not in-browser; even though it can pin, I want to concentrate on in-browser stuff only. An...

I have a dual-monitor setup, and the way in which I personally compute is that I do assign certain sites to specific browsers because it just seems to work better. Fact: No one browser does everything well At this point I’ve pretty much given up the idea of using one browser for everything because certain browsers handle certain sites better than others. I...

In case you hadn’t heard, Flock, a "social web browser", is officially done as of April 26. Done as is no more new releases or support of it. I’ve never quite understood the point of a social web browser, or any "enhanced" browser to begin with. The first "enhanced" browsers I remember were from AOL and other ISPs. These...

The supposed be-all/end-all for testing a browser’s worth is whether it scores a 100 on the Acid3 test. I don’t pay attention to these tests because compatibility doesn’t really count for much; this is especially true since the vast majority of web sites fail (and fail hard) the W3C Validation Service (Google.com even fails that test badly)....

History in the context of this article means a record of the web pages you’ve visited in the past that the browser stores. Unless you’ve changed it, the default setting for how long a browser keeps a history of sites you’ve visited is either 20, 30, 90 days or forever depending on which browser you use. Why should you use the History...

RockMelt is a new web browser that I dub as being “social on steroids.” It’s designed to integrate the social stuff you use and make it easy to share-share-share anything and everything.The technical particulars Q: What browser engine is this? A: Chromium. Q: Is it the latest version of Chromium? A: Yes, it would appear so. Q: Is it as fast...

Chrome is a browser that doesn’t have a lot of market share at the moment (it’s nowhere near IE’s or even Firefox’s share), but is slowly and steadily gaining more usage as more people find out about it. The current version of Chrome is 5. How to use Chrome is fairly easy. Watch the video below to learn some basics. Below are some...

One of Google Chrome‘s best selling points is speed, and beta 5 of the browser is the fastest yet (for JavaScript anyway) according to Google’s benchmark tests. I’ve never been one to pay attention to benchmarks when it comes to web browsers because it does not take into account ISP connection speed or any extensions/add-ons you have...

Wonder whatever happened to the Netscape Communicator suite, and wish you could use it again with a modern engine? You can. It’s called SeaMonkey. Suite? SeaMonkey is more than just a browser. It also has a full email client, an IRC client (ChatZilla) and web page editor (Composer). It’s also compatible with some Firefox add-ons, so it is...

The web browser is the most used software on your computer, so it helps to know as much about it as possible. Here are a few things you may not have been aware of. Triple-click to select paragraph To select an entire paragraph, such as this one, left click on it three times. This works in IE and Firefox (but not in Opera, however it might work in others like...

Opera‘s latest version of their browser is 10.50, currently only available for Windows (although I suspect Mac and Linux versions will be released very shortly). This versions of Opera, said very honestly, is the best version I’ve ever used. It has Windows 7 Aero Glass support, the menus are more streamlined than ever, and it is the ONLY browser that...

I have to admit this caught me by surprise. IE8 is evidently the world’s most-used browser, according to a report by Net Applications. The surprise comes from the fact it’s not IE7 that’s holding the top spot. It is true that IE8 is the best IE you can use, due to the fact it’s the least-crashable, the most secure and so on. You’ve...

"You shouldn’t complain about something if it’s free." I don’t agree with that statement when it comes to web browsers, because is required software in order to use the web. Note that I said web and not internet. Traditional email requires no browser nor does instant messaging. Also bear in mind that it was messaging that existed...

If you have a task to remember, you probably have a method you use to send yourself a reminder. For an easy to setup method you “can’t miss”, consider setting a reminder page as [one of] your browser homepage(s). For example, create an HTML file called “reminder.htm” and type what you want to remember: <HTML> <b>Task...

Mozilla just released Firefox 3.5.6, and while the fix list isn’t that long, the one to pay attention to that was repaired is: Crashes with evidence of memory corruptionFF 3.5.5 for whatever reason just blew up in memory use, and so far since upgrading to 3.5.6, that rapid overuse of memory seems to have decreased quite a bit. This upgrade did not break...