Mozilla has been granted permission by the European Commission to join the suit with Opera against Microsoft for bundeling Internet Explorers with Windows.

Microsoft has been accused with distorting competition in the market for web browsers. If found guilty, Microsoft could be forced to offer other browser upon Windows installation.

Mozilla’s chairperson Mitchell Baker said that Microsoft is harming “competition between web browsers,” and undermining “product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice.”

Opera’s chief executive Jon von Tetzchner said “the only way to give users a genuine choice is to strip out IE from Windows and either replace it with a rival browser or offer users a list of browsers to choose from.”

The case is still only in its early stages.

Opera has released the final version of Opera Mini 4.2 for Google Android phones. Opera Mini 4.2 final brings back a lot of the regular features which were disabled in the early beta.

New features include the ability to upload and download files, save pages, and zoom in and out with a double tap.

Users will also be pleased to know that the password bug has now been fixed, and your passwords will be hidden as you enter them in.

Currently there is only one Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1 phone. You can download the browser from the Opera Mini website.

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.

Opera has announced a new version of its software development kit (SDK) at this years CES.

The new SDK will be available to all hardware makers who include the Opera browser with their product, including the Nintendo Wii.

Opera’s new SDK includes Opera Link which is found in the latest versions of Opera, as well as a new debugging tool called Opera Dragonfly.

Opera is yet to announce a release date for the new SDK.

Opera have updated their browser to version 9.63. The latest release fixes 7 security risks, and is a highly recommended update from Opera.

A full list of changes can be found in the changelogs, and you can download the latest version using the links below:

Download Opera 9.63 for your OS

The desktop team over at Opera have just released a version 10 alpha release of their popular alternative web browser.

Opera 10.1 Alpha includes many new features, including the long awaited auto-update, an inline spelling checker, and scores a perfect 100/100 in the Acid3 test.

A full run down can of other new features can be found on the Opera Desktop Team’s blog. You can download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 using the links below:

Download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 for Windows
Download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 for Windows Classic
Download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 for Macintosh
Download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 for Macintosh (Intel-only)
Download Opera 10.1 Alpha 1 for UNIX

It has been a good month for the ‘underdogs’ in the browser wars this month, with Firefox, Safari and Chrome all gaining ground.

Firefox has hit a fantastic milestone, now with over 20% of the web browser market, up 4% from last month. Apple’s Safari has climbed to just over 7%, up 8.5% from last month.

Even Google’s Chrome has crawled back some ground, after a steady drop off rate from the browsers first month. Chrome gained around 12% during the month, taking it’s total share to just under 1%.

The losers this month were both Opera and Internet Explorer. Opera lost 5% of it’s market, and is now 5th in the race, behind Google Chrome. November also saw Internet Explorer’s market share plummet below 70% for the first time since 1999.

You can view the full report at the Market Share website. Historical data can be sourced from Wikipedia. The browser wars are really firing up.

Next generation releases of both Firefox and Opera will incorporate the royalty free Theora video codec.

The lossy video compression technology uses only has a small CPU footprint and will allow videos to be viewed in the browser without the use of a Flash player, or any other additional codecs installed.

Wikipedia however has been using the Theora codec for video for a while now. Kat Walsh, a Wikimedia Foundation board member believes “open media formats are critical for ensuring a future where everyone can create and share media freely”.

This is fantastic news for users. If Safari and Microsoft get on board, the future will be looking quite bright.

It looks like we won’t see a browser war for the iPhone just yet, with Apple refusing to let Opera Mini be released for the iPhone.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera’s co-founder and chief executive said that “Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.”

Opera Mini is currently available for free for many other phones available today.

After the much anticipated release of Opera 9.6 a few weeks ago, Opera has released it’s first update for the 9.6 code branch.

Opera 9.61 addresses a few issues, including a problem with Opera Link which would cause duplicate enteries to appear. Several security flaws have also been fixed.

You can download the new version from the Opera website and you can see a full list of changes in the changelog.