ReadWriteWeb

To help combat what is quickly become a muddled mess of share buttons, Mozilla has rolled out a new service called F1. The browser extension adds a button to the Firefox toolbar, so that sharing Web pages to Twitter, Facebook or email is much simpler.

Currently the add-on only supports those three services. Mozilla says it picked those because of their popularity, their API support and their use of OAUth. Other services, such as Yahoo's email, required a CAPTCHA authentication prior to sharing, something that defeated the purpose of a single-click share button.

Web apps that rely on features that only modern browsers can offer are becoming a standard feature on the Internet. Sadly, though, the fact that a lot of users don't regularly upgrade their browsers (or that their IT departments don't allow them to upgrade) complicates matters greatly for those developers who want to use the latest and greatest features of modern browser technologies like HTML5. The latest data from Pingdom and StatCounter, however, notes that a surprisingly large number of users (71%) already run the latest official versions of their browser.

The Worldwide Web Consortium has released the results of its first tests to ascertain browsers' conformity to HTML5.

And in a side-by-side comparison of Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 7, Firefox 4 beta 6, Opera 10.6, and Safari 5.0, the tests found that the most compliant browser currently available is IE9.

As we noted earlier this morning, Apple's Mac Store guidelines have been revealed, including the long list of apps Apple plans to reject. While some developers will jump at the chance for exposure a Mac App Store provides, not everyone in the industry is happy about the news - least of all, Mozilla Firefox chief Mike Beltzner. For him, Apple's version of a desktop-based Mac App Store is especially disturbing.

In fact, Beltzner accused Apple as attempting to "bypass the Web" altogether.

Mozilla has released the first beta of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo. Also known as Fennec, the mobile version of the browser is built on the same platform as the desktop version and includes features like Firefox Sync, Add-ons, and the Awesome bar.

According to a blog post announcing the beta release, Mozilla says it has made two big changes from the alpha version, namely with Electrolysis and Layers. The former splits the browser into two processes: one for the user interface and one to render the web content. The Layers architecture helps in performance and in graphic areas such as scrolling, zooming, and animations.

Despite last month's promising debut of Internet Explorer 9, the world's most popular browser has fallen below 50% for the first time, according to StatCounter.

StatCounter Global Stats, which looks browser market share by browser and not by version, shows Internet Explorer occupying just below 50%, down from nearly 60% a year ago.

Earlier this summer we told you about the launch of Firefox Home, an iPhone app developed by Mozilla that allows users of the popular Web browser to take their bookmarks and browsing history with them on-the-go. Since a full-blown mobile Firefox client would likely be turned away by App Store reviewers, the handy app has been a decent compromise that keeps iPhone users interested in using Firefox on the desktop. Today, Mozilla outlined its plans for the future of Firefox Home, which includes expanding to more mobile platforms and adding richer social media integration within the app.

Firefox Home, the mobile app that brings your bookmarks, open tabs and browsing history to your iPhone, has gone worldwide, multilingual and more with its latest release.

For those of you hoping for a mobile version of Firefox on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, we say don't hold your breath, but this app will help you bring much of what you do on your home computer on the go.

Your choice in Web browser is about to get more interesting as all three of the top browsers on the market today - Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome - prepare and launch updated beta versions, each offering compelling, and in some cases unique, new features.

Although IE's beta launch is still weeks away, the company has detailed its plans for the improved browser, which include additions like hardware acceleration, HTML5 support and a faster JavaScript engine. Firefox, meanwhile, has added multi-touch support for Windows 7, among other things. And Chrome's latest has added form autofill, plus extension and autofill synchronization.

That little search bar at the top right of your Firefox browser (along with the Google search on the default Firefox start page, as a reader pointed out) is driving 9.18% of searches, according to research by advertising network Chitika, Inc.

That's a huge chunk in a market where Google handles more than 80% of searches and its competitors Bing and Yahoo! handle just 8.56% and 6.69%, respectively - suggesting a huge bidding war may be brewing for November 2011 when Google's contract with Mozilla is up.