Browser market share results have been released for May 2009 thanks to Market Share by Net Applications, and no surprises as Microsoft Internet Explorer loose another 0.5% of it’s market share, dropping back to 65%.

Firefox had a steady month, still with its 22.5% share. Apple’s Safari has jumped from 8.2% to 8.4% this month, while Google Chrome has seen a jump from 1.4% to 1.8%.

Opera has also stayed steady, with 0.7% of the pie. Microsoft should be concerning, with the recent release of Internet Explorer 8 hoping to patch the trickle of users flocking to other browsers.

The full detailed statistics for May’s results are available online.

Along with Apple’s release of 10.5.7 yesterday, Apple has also quietly updated Safari 4 and 3 with security patches.

The update for Safari repaired input validation and memory corruption issues which could have allowed hackers to plant malicious code on websites.

The update was included for Mac users who have already installed the 10.5.7 update, or an updated version of the browser can be downloaded and installed manually from the Apple Safari website.

Both Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have continued their upward trends through April, increasing their market share. Firefox increased it’s share to 22.5%, up half a percent on last month, while Google Chrome was up around a quarter of a percent to 1.4% share.

Internet Explorer on the other hand continued to bleed users, slumping for another month. Despite the release of Internet Explorer 8, the browser lost almost three quarters of a percent to finish of the month with 66.1% market share.

Both Apple’s Safari and Opera stayed steady for the month, with 8.2% and 0.7% market shares respectively.

More detailed results can be seen using Market Share by Net Applications.

A new patent has surfaced from Apple hinting that volume control is coming to Safari.

Safari browser with audio controls mockup

The filling should give surfers the ability to apply controls to audio streaming in from the web.

The patent also appears to give surfers the option of storing audio preferences for different site, allowing users to mute all websites by default, but allow audio from say YouTube.

“When using a web browser application (e.g., Microsoft Internet Explorer.RTM., Apple Safari.RTM.), audio sources (e.g., websites) will often provide audio signals (e.g., music, noises) which may or may not be welcomed by the user. While operating system desktops often provide audio controls (e.g., volume controls), such audio controls adjust all audio signals playing on the host device, including desirable audio signals such as music the user desires to play from their music library while browsing the Web. Accordingly, if desktop audio controls are used, then desirable audio signals, as well as undesirable audio signals, will be adjusted together which may not be the intent of the user” the patent reads.

No word yet from Apple on when we can see this innovative idea in Safari.

Results for Februrary are in and Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera are all winners for the month.

Februrary statistics from Net Applications shows that Internet Explorers share continued its decline, dropping 0.04% to 67.51%.

Firefox was a big winner, with a 0.2% increase to 21.73%, while Google Chrome increased its share by 0.03% to 1.15%.

Opera also had a good month increasing its share by 0.01% to 0.71%.

Apple’s Safari did not far so well, with the first decrease in months to 8.00%. That’s a 0.29% drop from last month.

The next month will be interesting, with the inimant release of Internet Explorer 8 expected this month and Apple’s Safari 4 beta being released just days ago.

With the recent release of Safari 4 beta, Apple launched a large marketing campaign on it’s website.

Turns out, many of the facts are in fact, not fact.

Users over at the Opera forums have dissected several facts, with sources proving Apple has got it wrong.

You can read the full list of incorrect facts over at the Opera forums.

Apple has released Safari 4 beta to the public.

The release is incredibly impressive, with over 150 new features, including support for some HTML5 elements along with improvements in the rendering engine.

Safari 4 also scores an impressive 100/100 in Acid 3 which tests a browsers standards compatibility. Opera 10 alpha and Safari 4 beta are now the only two main web browsers to reach this feat.

Safari 4 includes a new JavaScript rendering engine called Nitro. It’s claimed to be 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1 and 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. Benchmark results should be out soon.

Users can download Safari 4 beta for both Windows and Mac today.

Apple has issued an update to its Safari browser for Windows users.

The browser, with version number 3.2.2, fixes an RSS vulnerability found in the browser mid January.

You can read the full details of the update in the support article. The update should be pushed out to Windows users, or users can download the update manually from the Safari website.

The latest nightly build of WebKit now includes support for CSS animations. WebKit is the rendering engine used by many browsers, including Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browser.

Dean Jacksons explains the benefits of CSS animations:

CSS Animations is one of the enhancements to CSS proposed by the WebKit project that we’ve been calling CSS Effects (eg. gradients, masks, transitions). The goal is to provide properties that allow Web developers to create graphically rich content. In many cases animations are presentational, and therefore belong in the styling system. This allows developers to write declarative rules for animations, replacing lots of hard-to-maintain animation code in JavaScript.

The new effects are already implemented in the iPhone and iPod touch browsers, and should make their way in to releases of Safari and Chrome shortly. In the mean time, you can test the new CSS animations by downloding the latest nightly release of WebKit.

European Union regulators have laid down fresh claims that Microsoft is again in breach of its anti-trust laws.

The complaint is related to Internet Explorer being bundled with all new Windows installations.

Microsoft lost a similar case in 2004 and was forced to sell Windows versions without Windows Media Player.

This has potential repercussions across the market. Apple currently bundles Safari with every copy of Mac OS X, while most Linux distributions are bundled with Firefox.

“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice” said a spokesman for the European Union.

Any final decision on the matter is likely to be years away.