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Today sees a fire-drill test of the Microsoft Windows Update system for Windows 7 RC users: there will be downloads but Windows Update will actually be firing blanks.

To ensure that all is working well for when real updates arrive, Microsoft’s Update Team has blogged about a series of blank updates due to release today to test the Windows Update system. Some will be automatic while others will be available for manual download to test the notification features. In theory, there isn’t a lot that can go wrong, but Microsoft is taking the better-safe-than-sorry approach, as it did earlier in the year with the first beta.

_{Get ready for some important, yet completely unimportant updates}

When real patches do start arriving, it will be interesting to see what they fix, will they aim to improve Windows 7, or simply parallel Vista updates and fixes. These patches make no changes to the system, but please install them, just so Microsoft is happy that all is well in the world of update.

Also on the blog is an explanation of how Windows Update offers Internet Explorer 8, trying to defuse some of the ruckus about it being automatically added. “WU and AU will not automatically install Internet Explorer 8… The update will be offered to you, and you can choose Install, Don’t Install or Ask me later. If you choose Don’t Install then it won’t be actively offered to you again, and it will become an Optional Update which you can manually install at some point in the future.”

Site : APCMag.com

Steady uptake of Firefox, Safari and Chrome sees Microsoft’s browser slip to 66% of share – and the slide will continue until it tumbles below 50%, says one analyst.

The release of Internet Explorer 8 hasn’t been sufficient to halt the decline of Microsoft’s mighty and once near-unchallenged browser. Figures released by the browser-watching boffins at Net Applications show that as of April Internet Explorer dropped to an all-time low of 66.1% of the world’s browser market, down just over two points from six months ago.

The steady fall in Internet Explorer’s popularity has been mirrored by the climb in Firefox, Safari and Chrome, which in the past six months have all hit new milestones.

November 2008 saw Firefox finally nudge its way over 20% share, with the current figures pegging the open-source browser at 22.48% and trending to hit 25% before the year is out.

In the following month Chrome broke into single digits – a figure that might tempt one to dismiss Google’s shiny new browser but for the fact that it’s now sitting at 1.42%, more than twice the share of the longer-lived Opera.

Safari seems to be enjoying even better fortunes, rocketing from 6.57% in October 2008 to 7.93% in December and then bursting to the current 8.21%.

On a per version basis Internet Explorer 7.0 tops the chart at 44.51%, well ahead of Firefox 3 at 20.25%, Internet Explorer 6 at 17.52%, Safari 3.2 at 4.29% and Internet Explorer 8 at 3.99%.

The Internet Explorer tide is turning in favour of 8.0, of course, with the two previous editions show a definite dropping off — although some users appear to be moving to a competing browser instead of following Microsoft’s preferred upgrade path, which now includes IE8.0 being pushed to users through the automated Windows Update service.

In an interview with US publication Computerworld, a Net Applications spokesman said that if Internet Explorer’s downwards trajectory continues the browser would dip below a 50% market share by mid-2011.

“Is there an end to IE’s decline?” ponders Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing. “I don’t know. I never thought they would drop this far. IE had such a huge market advantage, and Firefox, in a competitive environment, continues to gain share. We’ve seen some seasonal flux [to Firefox’s share], but now it’s just continuing to go on an upward trend.”

File extension P7M is used to denote a digitally signed and encrypted E-Mail. Both the E-Mail message itself and any attachments are added to the P7M envelope, which can only be opened by clients with the appropriate key.

File extension P7M files are an implementation of the Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard which supports public key encryption. S/MIME provides essentially two cryptographic services which can be used by E-Mail applications. The first is digital signatures, which can be used to authenticate a message, check its integrity and prove its origin or source. The second is encryption, which is used to ensure that data remains both private and secure, even if an E-Mail is intercepted by a third-party.

As files with File extension P7M are encrypted, it is not possible to extract the contents without the appropriate software and decryption key. E-Mail applications with S/MIME support can be configured to automatically retrieve the necessary key to decrypt received P7M files and display the resultant message as an ordinary E-Mail. However, clients without support, such as web-based E-Mail services, will simply show the encrypted P7M E-Mail as an attachment.

Encryption is utilised by P7M files to ensure data privacy even if the E-Mail was accidentally sent to the wrong address or was intercepted during transmission. However, this has the disadvantage that anti-virus software is unable to detect malware, as it will not be able to decrypt the E-Mail once it has been created. Therefore, any attachments received in a P7M file should be checked prior to opening, even if they are from a known and trusted source.

P7M files can be opened in any E-Mail client that supports S/MIME provided that the necessary public key is available. P7M files can also be opened using other applications such as Cryptigo p7mViewer, which is designed specifically for opening signed and encrypted E-Mails.

RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery, and file spanning. It was developed by a Russian software engineer, Eugene Roshal (hence the name RAR: Roshal ARchive), and is currently licensed by win.rar GmbH as well as being an acronym for ‘Rational And Reliable’.

The file extension RAR is used by RAR for the data volume set and .rev for the recovery volume set. In previous versions, if a RAR-archive was broken into many smaller files (a “multi-volume archive”), then the smaller files used the extensions .rar, .r00, .r01, .r02 etc.

Comparing to ZIP file format, file extension RAR provides a number of advanced features: more convenient multipart (multivolume) archives, tight compression including special solid, multimedia and text modes, strong AES-128 encryption, recovery records helping to repair an archive even in case of physical data damage, Unicode support to process non-English file names and a lot more.

File extension RAR supports data compression, spanning and error recovery. Though less common, RAR files are also used to denote a Resource Adapter Archive, which is the specified format for the deployment of resource adapters, or connectors, on IBM’s WebSphere Application Server.

RAR files typically take longer to compress, though have a higher compression ratio than other popular archiving formats such as File extension ZIP or GZIP. The exact improvement in compression largely depends on the types of file being compressed. As well as data compression, RAR files support spanning, which means that archives can be split across multiple volumes. In this case, the first file in the archive will retain the RAR file extension, with subsequent volumes numbered in the form File extension R00 up to File extension R99. The entire archive can be browsed by opening the original RAR file. This was a particularly useful feature for compressing large volumes of data. Some RAR files may also contain a recovery volume, which allows the contents of an archive to be restored in the even of minor corruption. RAR archives also support password protection and strong 128-bit AES encryption algorithms.

Currently, RAR files can only be created using commercial software such as WinRAR or Squeeze, both of which are only available on Windows. The command-line version, RAR, can be used to create and extract archives on Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX-based operating systems. However, RAR file can be opened and the contents extracted by several applications such as WinZIP, WinAce and Stuffit, courtesy of the freely available UnRAR source code from RARLAB which allows developers to incorporate RAR decompression into their applications.

Microsoft has finally delivered the browser that its fans have been anticipating, hopefully.
Today during his keynote speech at the Mix 09 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada Dean Hachamovitch, the head of the IE8 development team, launched the new browser.

It is currently available for download in 25 languages on the Microsoft website and can be downloaded to Windows XP, Vista, and Server in either 32-bit or 64-bit editions.

This launch follows behind the release of Silverlight Beta, and the preview of Expression Blend 3 web design and prototyping tool.

It would seem that Microsoft is finally delivering for the people.”Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft said in a statement (conveniently managing to avoid mentioning anything about standards compliance, even though that is a greatly improved area in IE8.) “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

The browser leaves much to be desired when it comes to JavaScript and extensions however Microsoft claims it packs a little more punch than Mozilla’s Firefox in its initial no add-ons state in terms of browsing capabilities. For example it is equipped with Accelerators, tab assistance, search improvements and WebSlices. InPrivate browsing also known as “porn mode” which leaves no evidence that a browsing session ever existed to those who use the PC after you, additionally it prevents the monitoring of your browsing activities by third parties. Microsoft now has a Smart Address bar which is similar to Firefox’s “Awesome Bar.”

Microsoft really needs to pat itself on the back this time for launching its first standards compliant browser. This means that it fully supports Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 2.1. Older versions of IE required backward compatibility on Microsoft’s thoroughly broken interpretation of web standards. IE8 comes equipped with a standards mode and an IE7 mode, which allows users to render sites which have been built to previous IE specifications. IE8 comes with an “auto render” mode that uses a Web site list which has determined which sites are known to have trouble rendering correctly in IE8. If someone happens to stumble upon one of those sites while browsing then it will automatically render in IE7 by default.

You can download IE8 here, though as usual if you work in a large organisation there’s a high chance you have a lazy IT manager clinging to IE6 because it is compatible with all the lazily written apps produced or commissioned by the IT department. In that case you’ll need to find a way to break the download and installation restrictions on your work PC and simultaneously lobby the IT manager’s boss to understand why tying the company to a five year old web browser is going to be bad for the company in the long term.

Source: APCMag.com