Opera have announced the availability of Opera Mini 5 and Opera Mobile 10 final.

Both mobile browser have been in development since at least October last year, and include many improvements over their predecessors.

The browser both include new tabbed browsing, a streamlined user interface, new faster JavaScript and HTML rendering engines.

Perhaps the best inclusion is Opera Turbo, which can compress data by as much as 90%, and save mobile browsers time and money.

A full list of features plus download links can be found on the Opera Mobile website.

Apple has released a new version of Safari, taking the browser to version 4.0.5.

According to Apple, the release fixes several issues:

This update is recommended for all Safari users and includes improvements to performance, stability, and security including:

• Performance improvements for Top Sites
• Stability improvements for 3rd-party plug-ins
• Stability improvements for websites with online forms and Scalable Vector Graphics
• Fixes an issue that prevented Safari from changing settings on some Linksys routers

Mac and Windows users can download the update from the Safari website, or it will be pushed out via Apple’s Software Update tool.

Microsoft has announced that it has discovered a new zero-day exploit in Internet Explorer.

The vulnerability is being exploited in the wild, and allows remote malicious code to install itself on a users system.

Currently, it appears only Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are affected while Internet Explorer 8 is safe this time around.

No word from Microsoft on when we will see a patch, but users are urged to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 to protect them from the current vulnerability.

After reports two weeks ago that Microsoft’s Browser Ballot screen for the European Union was not as random as first seemed, Microsoft have updated the algorithm used to determine a browsers random position.

“We can confirm that we made a change to the random icon order algorithm in the browser choice screen for Europe,” said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz.

IBM software architect Rob Weir who has been testing the randomness of the browser screen said he noticed a change last week. “Sometime last week — I don’t know the exact date — Microsoft updated the code for the browser choice website with a new random shuffle algorithm” Weir wrote on his blog.

From Weir’s early testing, the update appears to have solved the problem, with each browser now just as likely to appear in position number one.

Weir has created a test page, where users are able to test the ballot screens randomness for themselves.

Microsoft is looking to push Internet Explorer 9 at this years MIX conference, with a Customer Technology Preview build of the browser expected to be released to the public at the same time.

Two sessions at MIX 2010 give clues as to what we might see in the new browser; HTML5 Now: The Future of Web Markup Today and Future of Vector Graphics for the Web.

“Couple these clues with a post from the IE team on its official blog late last year about increased JavaScript rendering speeds and CSS support, and the team’s recent push to provide better support for SVG graphics and animations, it looks like IE 9 will present a huge step forward for Microsoft into the realm of HTML5, CSS 3 and other modern technologies that drive the most forward-thinking web apps” wrote Scott Gilbertson.

This is good news for browser users, with signs that Microsoft is taking its falling browser market share seriously. It suggests Microsoft are trying to bring the browse back to the forefront of browser technology, something we have not seen since the release of Internet Explorer 6 back in 2001.

Never fear Windows Mobile Opera Mini users, Opera has got your back, with the release of Opera Mini 5 Beta 1 for Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones.

“By integrating Opera Mini with the Windows Mobile platform, Opera is able to deliver an optimized version of the popular Opera Mini browser that dramatically improves performance and the overall user experience. While Opera Mini traditionally requires Java, the new Windows Mobile version does not, which means that Opera Mini will work on any Windows Mobile phone” Opera said in a statement.

The benefits of using Opera Mini on the mobile phone appear quite clear, with Opera including Opera Turbo technology that compresses data traffic by up to 90%, improving page-loading time and reducing data usage, potentially saving users when on a pay-per-MB data plan.

Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile can be downloaded from the Opera Mini Next website.

Mozilla is hard at work on the next version of Firefox, and the latest alpha builds include out-of-process support for plugins.

“Plugins such as Flash and Silverlight run in a separate process from the browser. If a plugin crashes it will not crash the browser, and unresponsive plugins are automatically restarted” said an announcement from Mozilla.

Currently, out-of-process support is only available on Windows and Linux versions, with Mac support still under development. This is only the first step, with each tab also expected to be moved to it’s own process in time, much like rivals Internet Explorer and Chrome have already done.

You can download the new test version of Firefox from the Mozilla Developer News Blog.

Overnight, Opera have released a finished Opera 10.50 into the wild, claiming that it is now the fastest browser in the world.

With an incredibly quick development cycle, the browser includes many improvements over Opera 10.

Opera 10.50 includes a new JavaScript engine, along with a new rendering engine, giving it an up to 7x speed advantage over Opera 10.10 at times.

The new browser also incudes a new interface for Windows users, along with support for Jump Lists, Aero Peak and Aero Glass in Windows 7.

A full list of changes can be found in the changelogs, while the browser can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Results for web browser market share during February are out thanks to Market Share by Net Applications.

As usual, Internet Explorer lost more market share for the month, dropping from 62.12% to 61.58%.

Firefox also lost some ground, dropping slightly from 24.43% to 24.23%.

Both Opera and Safari were also down, to 2.35% and 4.45% respectively. Opera had 2.38% market share in January, while Safari had 4.53%.

The only browser to gain share this month was Google, climbing to 5.61%, up from 5.22%.

The coming months are sure to be interesting, with Microsoft beginning to roll out the new browser ballot screen to European users.

Opera have released Opera 10.50 Beta 2 for Windows.

The new browser contains many significant improvements over Beta 1 according to Opera.

Changes include:

• Skin work, and tweaked styling of internal pages (opera:* and error pages)
• Improved opera:config
• Improved overlay authentication dialogs to avoid spoofing
• Context menu fixes
• Basic Web Storage user interface
• Lots of crash fixes
• Widgets fixes

A full list of changes can be found in the changelog. A download link can be found on the Opera Desktop Team Blog.