Representatives of big browser makers Microsoft, Mozilla and Google talk about the future of browsers, as developers decry browser incompatibility and ask what browser makers plan to do about it. The panel of experts talked about HTML 5, Canvas, Silverlight, IE 8, Google Chrome and Firefox at the Web 2.0 Expo.

It wasn’t a good week to be an Alaskan vice-presidential candidate, an online publication or even a multinational science project — as all were compromised by hackers this week.

A comparison of the past two weeks of traffic on Tectonic.co.za - a period that covers the launch of Google’s Chrome browser - shows that in the week of September 1 to 8 Chrome jumped from 0 percent of browsers used to an above-average 2.98 percent, largely at the expense of Mozilla Firefox.

When Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the codebase at the heart of Firefox were originally conceived, browsing was less complex. Now, however, functions that previously could be performed only on the desktop — email, spreadsheets, database management — are increasingly handled online.

In a sense, Chrome is not a browser, it’s an anti-browser. It’s mission is to destroy the concept of the browser, and become a frame for other applications – or, more pointedly, a kind of “chrome” window. In other words, Chrome is the long-awaited Google OS, a way of running Web-based applications like Gmail, Google Docs and the rest. That Chrome’s default function is as a browser is almost a historical accident.

The public trial of the Google browser will be available in 43 languages in 100 countries, Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management said at a news conference at the company’s Mountain View, California headquarters. Google Chrome relies on Apple’s WebKit software for rendering web pages, he said. It also has taken advantage of features of community-developed browser Firefox from Mozilla.

Even as Microsoft gears up to release Internet Explorer 8, the developers behind the Firefox Web browser are experimenting with a new technology that sharpens the threat their browser software poses to Microsoft’s most valuable businesses. The new technology, dubbed TraceMonkey, promises to speed up Firefox’s ability to deliver complex applications.

Firefox includes a great deal of functionality for day-to-day web browsing, but it’s capable of so much more. Simon Pickstock cherry picks the best extensions to make your internet life super-productive.