Microsoft is still hard at work on Internet Explorer 9, and today provided an updated on how they are going with the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) web standards.

Latest results show that IE9 is now fully HTML5 standards compliant.

Microsoft conducted W3C Web Standards tests for HTML5, SVG 1.1 2nd edition, CSS3 media queries, CSS3 borders & backgrounds, CSS3 selectors, DOM level 3 core, DOM level 3 events and DOM level 2 style across a variety of browsers.

These browsers included IE9 May 2010 Preview, Firefox 3.6.3, Opera 10.52, Apple Safari 4.05, and Google Chrome 4.1 all running on Windows. The results are very promising for IE9.

A preview IE9 build can be downloaded from the IE Test Drive website.

Mozilla has renamed its Weave add-on to Firefox Sync. The plugin allows users to synchronise their password, bookmarks, history and tabs across multiple devices.

“We are excited to announce that the “Weave Sync” project from Mozilla Labs has officially graduated and is now being incorporated into the Firefox roadmap. “Weave Sync” is now named “Firefox Sync” and the service will become a feature of Firefox in an upcoming major release” announced Mozilla’s Ragavan Srinivasan.

The add-on for Firefox has already had over 1.4 million downloads, and is proving to be hugely popular. A similar feature is available in both Google Chrome and Opera.

Currently available in more than 15 languages, the Firefox Sync add-on can be downloaded from the Mozilla Add-ons website.

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

Internet Explorer lost more ground in May, dropping from 59.95% in April, to 59.69% in May.

Firefox also dropped some users, falling from 24.59% to 24.35%. The browser appears to be having a hard time cracking the 25% mark, and as suggested, may be loosing users to Chrome.

Chrome passed the 7% mark, up from 6.73% to 7.05%, while Safari was also up, from 4.72% to 4.77%.

Opera was also up, from 2.3% to 2.43%.

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

Opera sure has been busy, releasing Opera 10.60 Alpha to the public for Windows, Mac and Linux, just 2 months after releasing Opera 10.50.

Opera 10.60 Alpha is the first new release of the browser for Linux users, who haven’t had a new version since Opera 10.20 Alpha.

“This alpha will give you noticeable gains in performance, an improved user interface (UI), and lots of bug fixes” wrote Opera’s Desktop QA Haavard.

“You will notice that the O menu button now says “Menu” for easy discovery, and instead of hard to read thumbnails for internal tabs, we have replaced them with icons. The tab hover previews have also received a facelift” continued Haavard.

Windows 7 Aero Peak has been disabled by default, to stop problems with too many open tabs. This can be re-enabled by changing the setting in the Tabs section of the Preferences window.

Performance gains are also noticeable with JavaScript, DOM and CSS.

Opera 10.60 Alpha can be downloaded from the Opera Desktop Team blog.

Native 64-bit builds of Firefox 4 Alpha for Windows are now appearing in the Firefox Nightly builds, and are expected to be released simultaneously when Firefox 4 ships.

Mac and Linux users have had 64-bit builds since early April, but there is still limited plug-in support, with most plug-ins falling back to 32-bit.

“This is still just a very very very early experimental build” noted Mozilla’s John O’Duinn. This means the browser may not behave as expected, and testers are advised to proceed with caution.

Eager testers can download 64-bit versions form the Firefox Nightly repository.

The Chrome team have now enabled desktop notifications for the browser, allowing extensions to step out from a simple icon, and provide a notification box to give users more information.

Desktop notifications are available as of Chrome 5, and Google’s own Gmail Notifier is one of the first browser extensions to support the new notifications.

“When notifications are used from an extension, there are no permission prompts or infobar warnings. The experience is seamless – it just works” wrote Chrome Software Engineer, Aaron Boodman.

Full details for developers on how to add desktop notifications to their extensions can be found in the documentation. More desktop notification enabled plugins are sure to pop-up in the coming days and weeks.

In response to the recent Chrome browser speed test video from Google, which later proved to have be faked, Opera have made their own browser speed test video spoof.

Watch and enjoy!

An article written by Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb suggests that Google Chrome’s battle is with Firefox, and not with Internet Explorer as many think.

They base this data on their Google Analytic data that is collected from their website, with users of the site being described as early adopters.

ReadWriteWeb data shows a big drop in Firefox users over the last 12 months, from 54% to 39%, while Chrome has enjoyed a jump from 7% to 18%, all while Internet Explorer usage has stayed constant at around 25%. These statistics make this theory sound plausible.

We can’t vouch for these figures in our own statistics, but it is interesting none the less. Market Share data from Net Applications shows that Firefox is still gaining share slowly, while Chrome is also growing, and Internet Explorer is on a one way slop down.

This would suggest that Firefox may be taking users away from Internet Explorer, but that older and more experienced Firefox users are taking the plunge to Google’s Chrome browser.

Either way, the entrance of Chrome into the market has surely stirred things up. Statistics over the next few months will be very interesting, with yesterdays release of Chrome for Mac and Linux.

Rumors are starting to circulate suggesting that extensions might be on their way for Apple’s Safari browser, bringing it into line with other browsers such as Firefox and Chrome.

Technology enthusiast and blogger John Gruber has alluded that such an announcement might be made at this years Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).

“The other big thing that’s missing (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing” wrote Gruber.

While not exactly confirmation, the possibility of an announcement at this years WWDC is entirely plausible, and would be a very welcomed addition to the Safari browser.

We will keep you updated if this story continues to develop over the coming weeks.

Google Chrome 5.0.375.55 has been released to the stable channel, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The release marks the first stable version of the Chrome browser for the Mac and Linux platforms.

The release also closes 6 security holes, 2 of which were rated as high, and 4 rated as medium. The new browser also fixes several stability bugs, which would cause the browser to crash.

New features found in Chrome 5 for exsisting stable users include:

• Better HTML5 support
• Geolocation API
• App cache
• Drag and Drop for files

Adobe Flash Player is not bundled into the browser as expected, but Google promises it will be back once Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is released.

The latest release will be pushed out to existing Chrome users, while new users can take the plunge and download the browser from the Chrome website.