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Just this morning, as I turned on my bedroom Windows 7 PC, I was greeted by the familiar "You've got updates!" notification. It turns out this was the much-talked about browser ballot - after installing, though, I couldn't find the darn thing (probably because I uninstalled IE long ago). Anyway, to get to the point: we have more complaints. A few browser vendors are - once again - unsatisfied with the ballot's design. On a related note, Opera is already claiming an increase in downloads.

"DSL.sk did a test of the 'ballot' screen at www.browserchoice.eu, used in Microsoft Windows 7 to prompt the user to install a browser. It was a Microsoft concession to the EU, to provide a randomized ballot screen for users to select a browser. However, the DSL.sk test suggested that the ordering of the browsers was far from random. Maybe there was cogent technical analysis of this issue posted someplace, but if there was, I could not find it. So I'm providing my own analysis here, a little statistics and a little algorithms 101. I'll tell you what went wrong, and how Microsoft can fix it. In the end it is a rookie mistake in the code, but it is an interesting mistake that we can learn from, so I'll examine it in some depth."

Use gnuplot to dynamically generate Web pages from your system using raw data to provide graphic images. This raw data typically contains MIS-related information, on system performance, storage, or database growth.

Despite the recent interest in adopting HTML5's video tag, there is still one major problem: there is no mandated standard video codec for the video tag. The two main contestants are the proprietary and patended h264, and the open and free Theora. In a comment on an LWN.net article about this problematic situation, LWN reader Trelane posted an email exchange he had with MPEG-LA, which should further cement Theora as the obvious choice.

The Apache Software Foundation has arguably been the leading force for open-source software over the last 10 years and promises to continue being a force in the new decade. During a visit to the organization's corporate headquarters in Forest Hill, Md., Jim Jagielski, chairman of the ASF board of directors, told eWEEK that ASF has indeed had a "huge impact" on the industry.

"Their arrival heralded a new age of communications and they played a major role in the explosion of the internet. We're talking, of course, about modems. Here we look back on the development of this remarkable device."

We've already talked about this whole browser ballot thing so much, that it really slipped past us that the deal has finally been finalised this week. This means that the EU has accepted Microsoft's browser ballot proposal, and that the other browser makers can't complain any more.

The groups responsible for standardizing the language used to build Web sites have begun tackling technology to provide a direct interface to Webcams. The World Wide Web Consortium has begun work on the HTML Device addition to the Hypertext Markup Language specification. "The device element represents a device selector, to allow the user to give the page access to a device, for example a video camera," according to a December 11 draft of the specification.

According to a message on one of the development mailing lists, Google seems to be planning a beta of Chrome to appear sometime in December. There isn't any set date, and the message wasn't even addressing the release of a beta for Mac, but Nick Baum, a Google Chrome product manager, also the author of the mailing list post, let word fly. "Why make the switch now? The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December. We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that. If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"

There are a number of browsers allowing you to switch between rendering engines, with Lunascape being one of them. We've covered this browser before quite extensively, and today, the Lunascape team released the first beta of Lunascape 6 ORION, the bext version of this triple-engine web browser.

We waited a little while with this news, because we wanted official confirmation from Skype before jumping on the internet bandwagon. It's official now, so here we go: Skype has announced that it will release its Linux client as open source. A little late, but welcome nonetheless.

"Type designers and Web designers have reached a consensus on a format specification for embedding fonts on the Web. Mozilla is already including support for the font format in Firefox 3.6, and wide adoption could come sooner than many expected."

After long negotiations and back and forths between the EU, Microsoft, and other browser makers, Microsoft's browser ballot proposal has been amended and offered up for debate yet again by the EU; this time around, it will actually be tested out by consumers. A number of changes have been made since the first proposal, so let's take a look.

Mozilla Firefox has been outperforming Internet Explorer for a number of years, and its latest version is even faster than ever. However, there is a new, lean, free web browser on the block which runs web pages at lightning speed. It goes by the name of Google Chrome.Tweak the right settings and with some experimentation, Firefox can keep pace with Google Chrome. Unknown to many of its users, Firefox has a raft of options that can unleash the browser's true potential. With just a few minutes of your time, you can make your daily web browsing more enjoyable.Read more