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.

Microsoft has released a new update for Windows 7 users for Internet Explorer 8.

The update – dubbed a compatibility and reliability update – addresses a few issues people were having. A list of fixes include:

• When Internet Explorer 8 is installed with Adobe Flash Player 10, Internet Explorer may become unresponsive.
• You experience a Print dialog box that is unusable when you try to print an Adobe PDF document.
• After a crash, Internet Explorer 8 becomes unresponsive and you must restart the computer to resolve
  the problem.
• Internet Explorer 8 may crash when you visit some Web sites.
• Internet Explorer 8 may crash when you resize the browser window.
• Internet Explorer 8 does not seem to remember information that was stored in cookies on the computer.
• Popular third-party extensions cause crashes in Internet Explorer 8.
• Previously blocked third-party extensions are no longer blocked after you upgrade to Internet Explorer 8.

The update will be pushed out to Windows 7 users via Automatic Updates or can be manually downloaded from Windows Update.

Internet Explorer 8 RTM

Microsoft has finished Internet Explorer 8, with the release to manufacturing (RTM) build expected to hit OEM’s, TechNet, MSDN and Connect in the next few days.

The scoop comes from Russian publication Wzor, with the final build being built on February 21st. This means that any remaining bugs and issues have been fixed.

The final build number is 8.0.6001.18691, with release date for the wider community not expected for a few more weeks.

Microsoft is yet to announce an official release date.

Trend Micro has warned that attackers are exploiting a new bug in Internet Explorer 7 which was patched by Microsoft last week.

The patch which was marked as critical was pushed out using Windows Update last Tuesday, but there are still millions of unpatched versions out there.

The exploit allows remote attakers the ability to install spyware on vulnerable systems.

Users and system administrators are urged to make sure they install all critical patches from Microsoft.

Rumors coming out of Tech ARP suggest that Internet Explorer 8 is headed our way in final two weeks of March.

Internet Explorer 8 will be a free download for existing Windows XP and Windows Vista users, while it is expected OEM partners such as Dell will include the browser pre- installed with new systems.

The date is still speculative, but we should have some more information by early March.

As promised Microsoft has made available Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 (RC1).

IE8 RC1 can be installed on both Windows XP and Windows Vista, but is not available for the newely released Windows 7 beta.

Microsoft has posted a full list of changes since beta 2.

You can download the new versions from the Internet Explorer 8 download site.

Microsoft has announced that it will deliver the first release candidate (RC1) of Internet Explorer 8 to the public on Monday.

IE8 has been at beta 2 since August 2008, and this new early release is highly anticipated by many in the industry.

According to Microsoft, “a release candidate means the software is feature complete and the code is basically stable, and a final release is imminent”.

IE8 is more compliant with web standards such as CSS, to web developers delight.

IE8 RC1 will be released for both Windows XP and Windows Vista. We will post links to the download when they are available.

Pixel Labs has posted a rather amusing yet statistical poster of the browser wars. The cartoon depicts web browser and their market share over time.

Strangely absent from this cartoon is Google’s Chrome, which has a greater share than Opera.

Click on the cartoon to see the full version.

Still with no release date, Microsoft has released details that the next version of its browser, IE8 will be pushed out via Automatic Update, Windows Update, and Microsoft Update as high priority to Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 users.

For Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 the update will only be pushed out with an important priority.

For network administrators or users who do not want to update, there is a toolkit available to stop Internet Explorer 8 being pushed out.

The toolkit has no expiry date, unlike previous versions, and can be configured via a registry file run on uses machine or pushed out via a group policy.

You can download the IE8 Blocker Toolkit here.

With 2009 fast approaching, details for IE Mobile 6 have started to appear. The latest mobile Internet browser from Microsoft should bring a positive change to the web browser market.

Currently, there are still no screenshots available, as Microsoft has made all beta testers and OEM’s sign NDA’s, but details on the new browser are starting to emerge. Here are some of the key features for IE Mobile 6.

• A full HTML rendering engine (unfortunately based on IE6).
• Support for Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, something still not found on Apple’s iPhone.
• AJAX and JScript 5.7 support.
• Support for touch, including scrolling and zooming.
• Ability to switch between full and mobile versions of websites.

With these unique, and some innovative features, IE Mobile 6 may make up some ground in the mobile browser market, but is it enough to entice Opera Mobile or even iPhone Safari users?