Mozilla updated its bleeding-edge browser Firefox Aurora to version 6 just before the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S., finally giving Firefox fans the same range of in-development browsers that have been easily accessible to Chrome users for some time. Firefox Aurora 6 can be downloaded for Windows, Mac, Linux, and like its Google counterpart Chrome dev, it offers fewer major changes than what people are used to, but it offers them more often.

In a blog post, Mozilla said that this first release of Firefox Aurora 6 includes an improved add-ons manager that comes with a plugin check verification tool built in. This means that plugins like Adobe Flash will automatically get checked to ensure that they are up-to-date. There's also a new Groups On Demand feature for Panorama, which ought to improve browser start times by loading saved groups only when using the tab grouping feature. Power users also get a new data management window for fine-tuning control that individual Web sites have over your browsing data like cookies, passwords, and location information. It's accessible by typing "about:permissions" into the location bar.

Developers see some love in Aurora 6, too. The new Scratchpad lets developers quickly build and test JavaScript snippets, similar to Chrome. The Web Console can now be moved around or even broken out into a separate window, just like a tab; and the Web Developer Menu concentrates access to the developer tools from the Firefox menu button in one place.

Other developer support enhancements in Aurora 6 include server-sent events, better HTML5, and DOM level 3.

The successor to Windows 7 debuted today at the D9 conference, and so far it appears to be Windows Phone 7's interface and tile-style of app management bolted on top of Windows 7.

Code-named "Windows 8" by Microsoft, the next-generation operating system is notable for two features: it's the first major attempt by the operating system giants to elevate a mobile OS to desktop status, and it's expected to be touch-friendly and work seamlessly on tablets, desktops, and laptops.

This Windows 8 preview video from Jensen Harris, director of program management for Windows, certainly looks impressive. The "app tiles" concept from Windows Phone 7 has been blown up, expanded to suit a larger, horizontal screen. In many ways, this makes sense. Having a persistent, real-time weather or traffic feature on your desktop is something that you can now achieve with a multitude of programs and widgets, but making them look and feel like mobile apps better positions Windows to reach younger consumers whose first computing experience is likely to be a high-powered tablet or phone, not a 186 running DOS.

Windows 8 also appears to meld Windows 7's file-sharing tools to the friendlier, touch-tacular mobile interface. You can easily tap locally stored and networked photos to select them, adding them to your albums, the implication being that this would work for documents, videos, and music. Perhaps the world is, in fact, ready for a dual-input computer, one that you can use a keyboard and mouse with as naturally as you can tap, swipe, and pinch its screen. This is definitely one aspect of Windows 8 that must be watched.

Most importantly for legacy Windows users, including all of us on Windows 7, getting to the Windows 7-based view is simple. All you'll have to do is swipe up from the bottom of the screen, although it's not really clear how well this would work with a mouse. Windows 7 programs are expected to work on this new version, said Steven Sinofsky, president of Windows, although this doesn't jibe with what we heard at Mix 2011 about Internet Explorer 10. The next version of IE, at least as of April, was not expected to work on pre-Windows 8 computers. What's more logical to conclude, although not guaranteed, of course, is that the Windows 8-specific features of Internet Explorer 10 won't function in Windows 7 or older, although the more traditional aspects of the browser will.

Another important nod to current users is that legacy Windows 7 hardware is expected to support Windows 8--again, at least so far. It's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Microsoft could pull an Apple here and force people who want to upgrade to buy newer hardware.

So, we've got probable legacy hardware support, potentially easy access to the traditional interface, what appears to be some smart sharing features, and a nifty split keyboard for mobile usability. We also know that there are questions surrounding programs, how many major core Windows legacy programs will be supported, and how the traditional Windows 7 programs that do work on Windows 8 will function under the greasy touch of a finger when they currently require the precise control of a mouse.

That leaves us with the two biggest questions, ones that will only get answered once consumers get their hands on whatever Windows 8 winds up getting called. The first is, do people really want a dual-operating system setup? BlueStacks seems to think so, offering an intriguing marriage of Windows 7 and Android, but that hasn't hit the public yet. Although Microsoft says that the integration between the HTML5 and JavaScript-powered Windows Phone 7 side and the traditional Windows 7 side is tighter than many would expect, that doesn't mean that a double-dose of Windows is the upgrade people want.

Riding the tail of that question, we're also left wondering whether Windows Phone 7 has had the kind of consumer impact that warrants this elevation. According to Neilsen market research, Windows Phone 7 commands only 1 percent of the U.S. smartphone marketshare, and as CNET's Donald Bell noted during CNET's Live Blog of the Windows 8 reveal at D9 (read the transcript here), the WP7 interface is the successor to the discontinued ZuneHD.

There's too many reasons that this isn't "Vista II: Electric Boogaloo." Windows 7, and this successor, are both Microsoft's first hardware-downgrade compatible operating systems in more than a decade. That means that the new operating system will run on less than cutting-edge hardware. Windows 7 is also a proven, successful base to bolt a more touch-friendly interface to, a critically acclaimed one that users have demonstrated they want by the still-increasing Windows 7 adoption rates in the marketplace, more than a year and a half after its release.

Were Apple to do this--bolting the popular and intuitive iOS on top of OS X with a smooth way to transition between the two--there would be far fewer uncertainties. Still, hedging bets on a look and feel that has not set the world on fire is a gutsy move, and congratulations are due to Microsoft for being the first to attempt it.

Happy day! Just a few weeks after Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time Magazine offered free iPad access to print subscribers, technology mag Wired has made the same move: if you subscribe to the print edition, you get current and back issues in the iPad app, no extra charge.

(Full disclosure: I'm an occasional contributor to Wired.)

That is, of course, the way magazine subscriptions should work. As publishers have discovered, subscribers feel insulted when you ask them to pay twice for content. I know I did.

With Wired, all I had to do was enter my subscriber number (which conveniently arrived in an e-mail) to gain full access to the digital library. If you're not already a subscriber, you can get one year of the digital edition for $19.99--obviously a much better deal than buying individual issues for $3.99 apiece.

Incidentally, CNET TV called Wired "the best digital magazine on the iPad," and I'm inclined to agree. The app closely replicates the look--if not the feel--of the print edition, while adding various interactive elements (videos, pop-up extras, and animated graphics) that complement the content rather than distract you from it.

Let's hope more magazines follow suit, as I'm rapidly growing accustomed to reading both print and digital editions at my leisure. I'm looking at you, Entertainment Weekly and Men's Health.

What magazines are you hoping to see on your iPad?

Originally posted at iPad Atlas

Chrome is now used by one out of every eight people on the Internet, new statistics show, but Microsoft's latest browser is showing signs of steady growth, too.

Specifically, Chrome usage increased from 11.9 percent in April to 12.5 percent in May, according to statistics released today by Net Applications. The company bases its findings on population-adjusted measurements of visitors to Web sites using its analytics tools.

Google has been promoting Chrome widely, taking out ads, publicizing it on YouTube with Lady Gaga songs and sentimental videos, sponsoring developer events, and devoting a full day at Google I/O to the browser and its close relative, Chrome OS. The company's primary objective: make the Web a faster, more powerful foundation for software and services.

Although the company offers Chrome for free, Google sees it as an indirect revenue source. For one thing, the company benefits when greater activity on the Web leads to more search and display ads. For another, it offers two options that dovetail with Google's talking point du jour--the lucrative business of building a platform. Chrome OS, sold in laptops and corporate subscriptions, is one; the other is the Chrome Web Store, through which Google hopes developers will sell Web apps.

Chrome's growth continues a steady trend, along with a couple others: Microsoft's Internet Explorer overall lost share, from 55.1 percent to 54.3 percent, and Firefox stayed about level, from 21.6 percent to 21.7 percent. Apple's Safari has been gaining in usage for months, but it didn't budge much, moving from 7.2 percent to 7.3 percent. No. 5 Opera dipped from 2.1 percent to 2.0 percent.

One important new browser, Firefox 4, outpaced its predecessor in May. It had 10.1 percent of usage compared to 9.1 percent for the earlier version 3.6. Firefox, after years as the top alternative to IE, is itself now an incumbent defending its turf: Chrome, Safari, and Opera together account for more usage than Firefox, and Chrome has well over half Firefox's share.

IE9, which emerged in March and embodies Microsoft's effort to become competitive in the modern browser market, is making steady gains. It rose from 2.4 percent of users in April to 4.2 percent in May, Net Applications said.

Microsoft prefers to measure IE9's success on a significantly smaller market, Windows 7 machines. IE9 doesn't run on Windows XP, which is still very widely used, or on Macs or today's mobile devices. In that market, IE9 was used by 12.2 percent of people in May, Net Applications said.

The Internet's present development is held back by the widespread continuing use of IE6, which doesn't support a wide swath of modern Web standards and which runs JavaScript programs very slowly. It's particularly common in China, South Korea, and India, but globally, IE6 usage dropped from 11.4 percent in April to 10.9 percent in May. Microsoft is trying to coax people to upgrade by promoting its IE6 Countdown site, which provides scary-looking banner graphics and reasons to upgrade.

One notable item: IE9 is due to arrive in Microsoft's "Mango" update to Windows Phone 7, set to debut by the end of the year. Given WP7's low market usage today, don't expect that to significantly change IE9 statistics anytime soon.

Apple's iOS, though, is a different matter. The OS is gaining in usage, accounting for 2.2 percent of operating systems used to browse the Net. Unlike on Mac OS X, it's pretty unusual for people to use a browser besides Safari, especially since alternatives must use Safari's rendering engine underneath.

Google has made a different choice with its mobile OS, Android. First, Google permits other browsers, and Firefox and Opera Mobile are available for Android, complete with their own Web page rendering engines. Some Android devices even ship with Opera Mini--a "proxy" browser that actually relies on a remote server to process Web pages.

Another difference from Apple and and Microsoft: Google chooses not to brand the mobile browser shipping with its Android mobile OS as Chrome. At May's Google I/O conference, Chrome leader Sundar Pichai said the reason is that, although the Android browser is derived from the same WebKit open-source project that Chrome (and Safari) use, it's not the same code base as Chrome.

That may seem like a fine distinction, but when it comes to brand issues--for example, a Web developer promising visitors that a Web site "works with Chrome"--compatibility and feature support is a real issue.

Originally posted at Deep Tech