Are there contenders in this list to subvert the web browsing paradigm? What browser(s) do you use and why? Let us know in the comments!

via 14 Alternative Browsers That Are Not Internet Explorer 6.

Mozilla Fennec

Is a full-fledged, add-on-powered mobile browser something you want for your phone? Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s Vice President for mobile, works every day to make it happen. Read what Sullivan has to say about Fennec, iPhones, Android, and all things mobile.

Sullivan leads the team at Firefox maker Mozilla creating a mobile version of Firefox, dubbed Fennec, which would be available as both a pre-installed browser on cooperating phone makers’ models and as a free download for as many phones as possible. We’ve taken screenshot tours of the first alpha, and newer betas and alphas are available for download for touchscreen Windows Mobile phones, Nokia tablets, and for desktop testing.

Sullivan talked with us by phone just under two weeks ago about where Fennec is at the moment, what platforms we might see it on, and what it could mean for the future of web development.

Read the full interview on Lifehacker.com…

Microsoft is tweaking how IE8 prompts users about becoming the default browser when it is first run. Users who install IE8 and have another browser set as the default will have to consciously make the decision right when IE8 is first started using the above screen (notice that neither option is preselected) and “Use express settings” will no longer set IE8 as the default browser. Users who already have IE set as their default browser won’t see this screen. This screen was originally part of the “Choose custom settings” option, and the “Use express settings” option set the browser as the default. This will no longer happen when Microsoft updates IE8. Microsoft is trying to give users more control to reduce confusion.

Microsoft plans to send out a dynamic update in mid-August that will change this default functionality. Microsoft claims that over 90 percent of those who run the IE8 first-run setup accept dynamic updates. The company will also make this change available in the next cumulative security update for Internet Explorer. This change will be evident for IE8 installations on XP and Vista, but also when users with a non-IE default browser install Windows 7. Administrators can find information about how to manage software and security updates on TechNet.

All in all, this is a positive update, but it doesn’t seem like something that Microsoft would decide to do on its own. This change is likely as a result of EU’s ongoing antitrust complaints against Internet Explorer.

via Ars Technica

Twenty years ago, in a research establishment in the Swiss Alps, a British-born computer scientist dreamt up a new way for academics to share information around the globe.

Little did he realise that his invention would break out from the confines of academia and give birth to the world wide web.

Two decades on, there are over 200 million websites and over one trillion unique URLs. An astounding 1.6 billion people use the web worldwide, and here in the UK the figure stands at over 70 per cent of the population.

To celebrate this milestone, we’re looking back on how and why the web came into being, taking a look at how the web’s key technologies have changed since the early ’90s and investigating how it has affected our society and culture.

illustrate how vividly things have changed, we’ll take a snapshot of the web at four stages in its development – at five, 10, 15 and 20 years old. And to complete our commemoration of the web at 20, we’ve consulted an expert to find out just how different it could look in another five years’ time.

How it all began

The web might have come into being 20 years ago, but that wasn’t the start of the internet – far from it. To find the first faltering steps of the information superhighway we have to turn the clock back almost 40 years to the launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET, which is widely regarded as the evolutionary starting point of the internet we know today. So to see why the web was so revolutionary, we need to investigate how the internet looked back in the late ’70s

Some aspects of ARPANET-inspired technology are still with us. ARPANET was the world’s first packet switching network, and some of its technologies – including email, FTP (file transfer protocol) for uploading and downloading files, and Usenet, which served a similar purpose to today’s web-based newsgroups – were already in existence.

The biggest differences between these systems and their modern-day counterparts lies in the user interface more than the underlying technology. The older services were accessed using typed commands rather than via the now-ubiquitous graphical user interface.

Read more at  TechRadar UK.

Windows/Mac/Linux: The final version of the Firefox is starting to show up on Mozilla’s web site, and some readers are reporting update notices.