Opera has told The Register it is still unhappy with Microsoft’s new browser ballot screen.

The problem according to Opera, is that the ballot screen is completely obstructed when a user opens Internet Explorer for the first time on a fresh installation of Windows.

Opera fears that users will just ignore the ballot screen, and continue to use Internet Explorer without realising they had a choice.

Microsoft has dismissed the claims. “This scenario is very easy to reproduce in a test lab, but would occur only in unusual cases in the real world. For it to occur with the Browser Choice screen, the user would need to have IE set as their default browser and have never configured it for use. Opera’s example, where a Windows XP user has rejected installation of IE 8 for the year it has been available but suddenly decides to install it is not realistic” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

Opera has alerted the European Union of the problem.

Google has done the “impossible” to show the power of HTML5, and ported Quake II to run in the web browser in what seems another dig at Adobe’s Flash.

The move seems a little contradictory, with Google announcing just last week that they were bundling Adobe’s Flash with Chrome. Either way, a lot of work appears to have gone into porting the game.

“We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript. You can see the results in the video above — we were honestly a bit surprised when we saw it pushing over 30 frames per second on our laptops (your mileage may vary)” said Google’s Chris Ramsdale.

Right now, the game will only run in Google Chrome and Safari, and the port can be downloaded by visiting the Google code page.

Web browser market share results are now available for March 2010 thanks to Market Share by Net Applications.

Internet Explorer was the only browser to loose share last month, dropping from 61.58% to 60.65%, while it is likely to account for less than 60% of the market by the end of April.

Firefox was up in March, from 24.23% to 24.52%, while Chrome was up from 5.61% to 6.13%.

Safari and Opera also gained share in March, jumping from 4.45% and 2.35% to 4.65% and 2.37% respectively.

Full results can be read in the March 2010 Browser Market Share report.

New images have emerged over on Chinese site LiveSino which appear to be a leaked Internet Explorer 9 interface.

The interface appears to resemble the new minimalistic Metro interface found in the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series.

Microsoft has been tight lipped about the images, and has not yet released a statement. It is uncertain whether they are real, or part of an elaborate April Fools prank.

A second screen shot can be seen after the break.

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Mozilla have pushed out an urgent Firefox 3.6 update, which closes a critical security issue.

It’s the only change for Firefox 3.6.3, which closes a hole that could potentially allow remote code execution after a user visits a site with the infected code.

Full details for Firefox 3.6.3 can read in the release notes, including more detailed information about the fixed security issue.

Firefox 3.6.x users will receive a notification from the browser when it is ready to be updated, or  it can be downloaded directly from the Firefox website.

Microsoft has released an out-of-band update to fix a security issue in both Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

Internet Explorer 8 is safe this time, while the vulnerability could allow for remote code execution when a user visits a website with the malicious inserted in it. Full details on the issue can be seen in Microsoft Security Advisory (981374).

The update is included with Security Bulletin MS10-018 and the flaw is rated as critical, and was originally expected during the 13th April update cycle.

“The Internet Explorer team accelerated testing of this update due to the growing attacks against the publicly disclosed vulnerability” wrote Microsoft Security Response Center Group Manager Jerry Bryant.

The update is available from Microsoft Update, or will be pushed out to Windows users who have automatic updates turned on.

The Chrome development team have today announced a new partnership with Adobe which bundles Adobe’s Flash with Google Chrome browser.

The latest development builds include Adobe Flash Player 10.1.51.95 (10.1 beta 3), and allows Chrome users to receive updated Flash updates automatically without the need of user intervention.

“The traditional browser plug-in model has enabled tremendous innovation on the web, but it also presents challenges for both plug-ins and browsers. The browser plug-in interface is loosely specified, limited in capability and varies across browsers and operating systems. This can lead to incompatibilities, reduction in performance and some security headaches” explains Google.

This move will ensure participating plug-ins are always up to date, increasing browsers security, while also integrating plug-ins tighter within the browser ensuring they become more stable.

Mozilla is also in on the plan, with Google using Mozilla’s next generation browser plug-in API. Other plug-ins such as Adobe’s PDF reader are expected to come further down the track.

Adobe’s Flash Player can be found from today with today’s dev channel update for Chrome; version 5.0.360.4 for Windows and Mac and 5.0.360.5 for Linux.

Google has pushed out a small update to Google Chrome, taking it to version 4.1.249.1045 on Windows.

The update fixes a crash bug, and adds a new option to disable the new translate feature. This release also closes a security hole which was rated as low and would crash the browser upon receiving a bad FTP response.

Information on these two crash bugs can be read in issues 38857 and 38845.

The update will be pushed out to Windows Chrome users automatically, or alternatively, you can download the browser from the Google Chrome website.

Welcome to the newly improved Browser Watch, fetching a brand new custom created WordPress theme.

We hope the updated design will make it easier for our users to read the news without the pages being too cluttered.

The design itself relies heavily on CSS3 features, such as border-radius, box-shadow, text-shadow the CSS gradients, so Internet Explorer users, and to a degree Opera users (with it’s lack of CSS gradient support) will miss out on the full effect, though the site is fully functional in both browsers.

It’s still a work in progress, with a few features missing (such as the search box), but it’s mostly all there. Let us know if you spot any bugs, have any suggestions or comments.

IntoMobile have put Opera Mini for iPhone up for a speed test against the iPhones native Safari browser.

The results are not surprising, with Opera Mini for iPhone using Opera’s Turbo technology, which compresses data by as much as 90% before sending the data to the iPhone.

In the test, the power of Opera Turbo is revealed, with Opera Mini for iPhone killing the Safari browser. You can watch the results yourself in the video below.

No word yet on when or whether Apple will approve the Opera Mini browser for the iPhone.