Mozilla has responded to Microsoft’s proposal for a browser ballot in Windows and they are not satisfied.

Mozilla VP and General Counsel Harvey Anderson believes that various mechanisms in the operating system that are controlled by Microsoft could create conditions that encourage users to unintentionally reset their default browser to Internet Explorer.

“Our most urgent concerns in the EC investigation related to protecting a user’s choice of a non-IE browser. The proposal largely addresses those concerns and should merit support if certain deficiencies are corrected” said Anderson.

Anderson is quick to criticise, but offers little in the way of suggestions to ease his concerns. Full details on Anderson’s concerns can be read in his blog post.

Netscape founder Marc Andreessen is backing a startup who believes they have the next best browser under their belt.

Named RockMelt, the yet to be released browser is still surrounded under a cloud of mystery, with very little being known about the actual technology.

The RockMelt website offers users a registration form, allowing the, to be informed about the browser as new information is released.

No release date has been announced, but the browser will be set to face stiff competition against the main 5 browsers already in the market.

We will keep you updated.

Opera has released a third beta of Opera 10. Other then an additional 38 languages, the following changes have been made since Beta 2.

Improvements

• Visual tabs now available on the left or right side of the browser window
• Further tab improvements with better attention state design
• Spellchecker menu item moved to Preferences > Advanced > Browsing dialog box
• Additional debug skin tooltip information: skin information of the parent element, plus what skin type is active (top, left, right, bottom or default)

Fixed

• Problem when trying to open a .pdf file
• Problem when saving a session
• Pages using webfonts which caused a problem in Windows 98®
• HTML clipboard now works with both MS Office® and OpenOffice.org®

More details on these changes and download links for Windows, Mac and Linux can be found on the Opera Next website.

Apple has released a new version of Safari, fixing several security and stability issues.

The update according to Apple includes the following changes:

• Stability improvements for webpages that use the HTML 5 video tag
• Stability improvements for 3rd-party plug-ins
• Stability improvements for Top Sites
• Fixes an issue that prevented some users from logging into iWork.com
• Fixes an issue that could cause web content to be displayed in greyscale instead of color

The update is available for both Mac and Windows and can be downloaded from the Safari website.

Microsoft is set to support Internet Explorer 6 for a while longer according to a post on the companies IEBlog, despite a renewed effort demanding it be scrapped and users forced to upgrade.

“The choice to upgrade software on a PC belongs to the person responsible for the PC” said Microsoft’s Internet Explorer boss Dean Hachamovitch.

“We’ll continue to strongly encourage Windows users to upgrade to the latest IE. We will also continue to respect their choice, because their browser is their choice. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments.”

Hachamovitch’s comments come after Digg’s proposal to remove support for IE6, and a new ‘IE6 No More‘ campaign.

Hachamovitch also points out that the large majority of IE6 users don’t have the ability to upgrade, but are rather bound by the software their organisations allow them to use.

It appears IE6 is still here to stay – for now.

After releasing some news of Firefox 3.6 just a few days ago, Mozilla has opened its doors on Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1, codenamed Namoroka.

Firefox 3.6 is not going to include many new changes like Firefox 3.5 did, but rather is aimed at improving speed and reliability. Windows 7 support (jump lists and Aero peak) do not appear to be on their way for this release.

Mozilla Links has posted a full review of the new browser. Firefox 3.6 Beta  1 is expected some time in September, with the final version on track for November of this year.

Downloads and more information are available from the Mozilla Developer Center.

Microsoft has finally jumped onto the HTML5 bandwagon, providing feedback on the current draft version.

Up until now, most of the HTML5 draft has been worked on by rivals Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Google.

According to reports, Internet Explorer Program Manager Adrian Bateman has sent a letter to the World Wide Web Consortium, with Microsoft’s thoughts and queries on the current editor’s draft.

“As part of our planning for future work, the IE team is reviewing the current editor’s draft of the HTML5 spec and gathering our thoughts. We want to share our feedback and discuss this in the working group. I will post our notes as we collect them so we can iterate on our thinking more quickly. At this stage we have more questions than answers, but I believe that discussing them in public is the best way to make progress” said a letter from Bateman.

Microsoft hasn’t completely ignored HTML5, with Internet Explorer 8 including support for the DOM Store, Ajax Navigation, Cross Document Messaging and Cross Domain Messaging, all components of  HTML 5.

More developments are sure to continue.

Google is planning on adding cloud-based bookmark and password sync using ‘push’ technology for its Chrome browser.

Users will need a Google Account (such as Gmail), which will be used to store bookmarks and passwords.  This will allow browsers to have their preferences available on any computer when they enter their details in any Chrome browser around the world.

“A bunch of us have been working on a feature to sync user data in Chromium with a Google account. The great news is that we’ll be starting to work directly in the Chromium project this week.” explained Chrome developer Tim Steele.

“We have built a library that implements the client side of our sync protocol, as well as the Google server-side infrastructure to serve Google Chrome users and synchronise data to their Google Account.”

“Rather than only depending on periodically polling for updates, when a change occurs on one Google Chrome client, a part of the infrastructure effectively sends a tiny XMPP message, like a chat message, to other actively connected clients telling them to sync.”

No details on when we will see this in Chrome have been announced.

Third time’s a charm, with tab previews now expected to be included in Firefox 3.6, after the feature was dropped from Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5

Tab preview provides a visual preview when switching between tabs in Firefox (Ctrl + Tab), much like Alt + Tab when switching between programs in Windows Vista and above.

Tab preview is available in the latest Firefox 3.6 nightly releases but is turned off by default. To enable tab preview, set browser.ctrlTab.previews to true via about:config.

Firefox 3.6 is expected to be released sometime in 2010.

Mozilla has realesaded updated to both Firefox 3 and 3.5 yesterday, fixing several security and stability issues.

A full list of changes can be found in the Firefox 3.0.13 and Firefox 3.5.2 release notes.

Users of either browser should have the updated pushed out to them, or you can manually get the update by going to the help menu and selecting check for updates.