Fortunately, there have been a number of third party browsers that have made their way into the App Store. Atomic Browser and Opera Mini are both very popular, streamlined browsers that support tabbed browsing. Skyfire offers rich social integration and can even play Flash videos. The newest entrant into this space is Dolphin HD, a tablet-optimized version of the popular Android browser, which just launched for iPhone a few weeks ago.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

While none of these third options universally blows Safari out of the water (for most users anyway), there are a number of things that each one does very well and that Apple would be wise to make note of.

1. The Web is Social Now. Make Sharing Easy.

By far the most shocking limitation of Safari for iPad is its lack of native social sharing options. Tapping the "share" icon next to the URL bar reveals four options: bookmark it, add it to the home screen, email a link or print it. That's right, Apple has made it easier to share Web content on paper than via Twitter or Facebook.

This may well improve with iOS 5, but for the time being the process of sharing a link on Twitter from the iPad looks something like this:

1. Double-tap the URL.
2. Tap "Select All" (or, more likely, be forced to drag the text selection tool manually).
3. Hit "Copy".
4. Minimize Safari.
5. Open Twitter or your Twitter iPad app of choice.
6. Write a clever tweet.
7. Paste the URL.
8. Shorten the URL.
9. Post the tweet.

On the desktop, sharing any page via Twitter is a much simpler process, especially with tools like the Bit.ly sidebar bookmarklet or Hootsuite's hootlet.

The Web itself is a very social place now, with sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and all the rest woven throughout many pages, especially on content-heavy sites. But users also need simple, browser-level tools for easily sharing pages on social networks. The "social magazine" apps like Flipboard and Pulse do a wonderful job of this.

For an example of how a tablet browser can nail social features, look no further than Skyfire. The browser gives prominent placement to social sharing buttons across the bottom of the app, and even includes a universal "Like" button for Facebook. It can also send content straight to InstaPaper without the need for workarounds. Dolphin HD for iPad is another browser that makes sharing easy, although it's limited to Facebook and Twitter.

The next version of iOS is going to have deep integration with Twitter, so we can probably expect to see improvements in this area as far as Twitter is concerned. Hopefully other social networks will get baked into Safari in due time.

2. Tabbed Browsing is the Norm (To Be Fair: Coming Soon!)

Yes, we know this one is a little unfair, but we had to get it out of the way. When iOS 5 is publicly released this Fall, Safari will finally have tabbed browsing. This is something that many users have been clamoring for since the iPad first launched, and we understand why. Desktop browser have had tabs for years now.

Granted, the processing power on a tablet is not quite the same as a desktop computer, and stability is important. Those of us who keep dozens of browser tabs open all day would probably be more frustrated with a crashing browser than with its lack of tabs. But a few third party iPad browsers have successfully implemented tabbed browsing, even if their performance isn't always quite as good as Safari's. Dolphin and Terra are two of the more popular third party browsers that include tabs.

3. RSS Feeds Were Meant to Be Subscribed To

RSS may not have reached mainstream status, but lots of people use it and it's very important to how content is consumed online. Thus, you'd think that Safari for iPad would know what to do when it encounters an RSS feed on a Web page. In some cases, it does. For example, if the feed is hosted on Feedburner, that service's usual feed landing page displays and you can subscribe in your feedreader of choice. But if it's a plain RSS feed, Safari will simply display a page containing its title and recent items. Yes, you can bookmark that page and check it later and there may well be other workarounds to enable RSS subscriptions, but they are exactly that: workarounds.

Dolphin includes an "RSS Subscribe" button on any page that offers a feed. This is a feature that should be built directly into any modern Web browser, regardless of the device it's running on.

4. Take Better Advantage of Multitouch

One of the most celebrated features of iOS is its use of multitouch for user interactivity, which has been used to create some truly neat user experiences in various apps. Surprisingly, the Safari browser doesn't take as much advantage of this as it could. In addition to the pinching and zooming necessary to scale Web pages up and down, the browser could easily utilize multi-finger swipes to the left and right to advance pages, for example. Just as the browser window scrolls up and down, similar gestures could be used to navigate between pages.

Terra uses sideways swipe gestures to jump from tab to tab. Perhaps in a future version of Safari, a two-finger swipe to the left would skip to the previous page, while a three-finger swipe would jump to the next tab.

Taking things a step further is the Dolphin browser, which uses custom gestures to navigate the Web. Users can define their own gestures to call up certain bookmarked pages.

5. Better Download Management

Another feature that's standard on the desktop but hasn't quite made its way into the mobile versions of Safari is download management. The browser renders standards-compliant Web pages beautifully and even handles PDFs and certain other filetypes well. When you encounter files that don't naturally render in a Web browser, Safari gives you the option to try opening the file in another application, but there's no central repository from which to manage those downloads.

Dolphin handles this quite nicely. It keeps a "Downloads" list of every file you've downloaded from the Web and gives you the option to open in Dropbox (if you have it installed) or whatever app would be most suitable.

A Few Other Things We'd Like to See

Some other features we've seen in third party iPad browsers that we wish Safari had are fullscreen page viewing, the ability to clear data from within the browser (in Safari, you have to go to the device's settings to wipe history, cookies and cache), a "speed dial" feature similar to the one seen in Dolphin in Opera. This is just a tiled home screen that lets you jump straight to your favorite sites without having to dig through bookmarks.

Of course, a few lessons can be drawn from desktop browsers as well. The ability to install browser add-ons and plugins to extend its functionality would be a dream come true. Most modern desktop browsers support this and its a great way to customize the browsing experience. In addition to full-blown extensions, an easy way to add simple bookmarklets to the browser would help users take better advantage of the Web's capabilities when using their tablets.

See Also: ReadWriteWeb's roundup of the best third party browsers for Android.

Are there any features you'd like to see in future versions of Safari for iPad? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Meanwhile, in the mobile browser market, Apple's Safari has risen over 12 percentage points to have a 62% share of that market, according to leading Internet statistics provider Net Applications. However, Apple will have to continue to look over its shoulder at Android, which has also gained over 2011. Let's look more closely at how the desktop and mobile browser markets changed over 2011.

The latest data from Net Applications still shows Microsoft's Internet Explorer at over 50% market share on desktops (52.63%). Chrome (17.62%) is less than 5 percentage points below Firefox (22.52%), which hangs onto second spot for now. Safari has 5.43% and Opera 1.56%.

The trends data is more telling. Since December 2010, only Chrome and Safari have increased their market share. IE, Firefox and Opera all declined. Here are the gains and losses:

• IE: -6.63%
• Firefox: -1.17%
• Chrome: +7.26%
• Safari: +1.41%
• Opera: -0.71%

Source: Net Applications

Our own browser statistics for ReadWriteWeb show an even bigger swing towards Chrome, which is understandable, as we have a much more tech-savvy audience compared to the data from Net Applications. Chrome became the number 1 browser among RWW readers during 2011. Last month it was about 36%, up 12% from last November. Firefox is our number 2 browser at about 29%, down nearly 4% over the year.

Among our own writers, most now use Chrome as their primary desktop browser. Very few use Firefox.

Of course in an increasingly multi-device world, mobile browser share is very important too. On that front, according to Net Applications, Safari has risen 12.86% to now have 62.03% of the mobile browser share. The next best is Android browser at 18.60%. So Safari on mobile is now almost the equivalent of IE on desktop.

The big losers over 2011 in the mobile browser market have been Opera Mini (-13.4%), Symbian (-4.94%) and Blackberry (-0.87%, but it only has 2.03% share overall). Opera, despite its constant innovation, is really struggling to keep hold of users on both its favored mobile platform and on the desktop.

Source: Net Applications

Google & Apple Have The Momentum Heading Into 2012

In Net Application's statistics, Firefox is holding grimly on in the desktop browser market. But Chrome has the momentum and, as Jon Mitchell pointed out, it has done much of the innovating in this market over 2011. ReadWriteWeb's own statistics have Chrome as a clear number 1, which is typically a good indicator of where the mainstream is heading. All of this suggests that Chrome will overtake Firefox as the number 2 browser very soon. Then Google is set to make a run at dethroning Microsoft from number 1, but that's still at least a couple of years away.

On the mobile browser side, Apple is becoming increasingly dominant. However the rapid growth of the Android platform will keep them on their toes, so it's unlikely that Apple will enjoy the monopoly that Microsoft had for over a decade in the desktop market.

Let us know in the comments what browsers you use on both desktop and mobile. Did you switch browsers during 2011? If so, tell us why.

Fortunately, there have been a number of third party browsers that have made their way into the App Store. Atomic Browser and Opera Mini are both very popular, streamlined browsers that support tabbed browsing. Skyfire offers rich social integration and can even play Flash videos. The newest entrant into this space is Dolphin HD, a tablet-optimized version of the popular Android browser, which just launched for iPhone a few weeks ago.

1. The Web is Social Now. Make Sharing Easy.

By far the most shocking limitation of Safari for iPad is its lack of native social sharing options. Tapping the "share" icon next to the URL bar reveals four options: bookmark it, add it to the home screen, email a link or print it. That's right, Apple has made it easier to share Web content on paper than via Twitter or Facebook.

This may well improve with iOS 5, but for the time being the process of sharing a link on Twitter from the iPad looks something like this:

1. Double-tap the URL.
2. Tap "Select All" (or, more likely, be forced to drag the text selection tool manually).
3. Hit "Copy".
4. Minimize Safari.
5. Open Twitter or your Twitter iPad app of choice.
6. Write a clever tweet.
7. Paste the URL.
8. Shorten the URL.
9. Post the tweet.

On the desktop, sharing any page via Twitter is a much simpler process, especially with tools like the Bit.ly sidebar bookmarklet or Hootsuite's hootlet.

The Web itself is a very social place now, with sharing tools for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and all the rest woven throughout many pages, especially on content-heavy sites. But users also need simple, browser-level tools for easily sharing pages on social networks. The "social magazine" apps like Flipboard and Pulse do a wonderful job of this.

For an example of how a tablet browser can nail social features, look no further than Skyfire. The browser gives prominent placement to social sharing buttons across the bottom of the app, and even includes a universal "Like" button for Facebook. It can also send content straight to InstaPaper without the need for workarounds. Dolphin HD for iPad is another browser that makes sharing easy, although it's limited to Facebook and Twitter.

The next version of iOS is going to have deep integration with Twitter, so we can probably expect to see improvements in this area as far as Twitter is concerned. Hopefully other social networks will get baked into Safari in due time.

2. Tabbed Browsing is the Norm (To Be Fair: Coming Soon!)

Yes, we know this one is a little unfair, but we had to get it out of the way. When iOS 5 is publicly released this Fall, Safari will finally have tabbed browsing. This is something that many users have been clamoring for since the iPad first launched, and we understand why. Desktop browser have had tabs for years now.

Granted, the processing power on a tablet is not quite the same as a desktop computer, and stability is important. Those of us who keep dozens of browser tabs open all day would probably be more frustrated with a crashing browser than with its lack of tabs. But a few third party iPad browsers have successfully implemented tabbed browsing, even if their performance isn't always quite as good as Safari's. Dolphin and Terra are two of the more popular third party browsers that include tabs.

3. RSS Feeds Were Meant to Be Subscribed To

RSS may not have reached mainstream status, but lots of people use it and it's very important to how content is consumed online. Thus, you'd think that Safari for iPad would know what to do when it encounters an RSS feed on a Web page. In some cases, it does. For example, if the feed is hosted on Feedburner, that service's usual feed landing page displays and you can subscribe in your feedreader of choice. But if it's a plain RSS feed, Safari will simply display a page containing its title and recent items. Yes, you can bookmark that page and check it later and there may well be other workarounds to enable RSS subscriptions, but they are exactly that: workarounds.

Dolphin includes an "RSS Subscribe" button on any page that offers a feed. This is a feature that should be built directly into any modern Web browser, regardless of the device it's running on.

4. Take Better Advantage of Multitouch

One of the most celebrated features of iOS is its use of multitouch for user interactivity, which has been used to create some truly neat user experiences in various apps. Surprisingly, the Safari browser doesn't take as much advantage of this as it could. In addition to the pinching and zooming necessary to scale Web pages up and down, the browser could easily utilize multi-finger swipes to the left and right to advance pages, for example. Just as the browser window scrolls up and down, similar gestures could be used to navigate between pages.

Terra uses sideways swipe gestures to jump from tab to tab. Perhaps in a future version of Safari, a two-finger swipe to the left would skip to the previous page, while a three-finger swipe would jump to the next tab.

Taking things a step further is the Dolphin browser, which uses custom gestures to navigate the Web. Users can define their own gestures to call up certain bookmarked pages.

5. Better Download Management

Another feature that's standard on the desktop but hasn't quite made its way into the mobile versions of Safari is download management. The browser renders standards-compliant Web pages beautifully and even handles PDFs and certain other filetypes well. When you encounter files that don't naturally render in a Web browser, Safari gives you the option to try opening the file in another application, but there's no central repository from which to manage those downloads.

Dolphin handles this quite nicely. It keeps a "Downloads" list of every file you've downloaded from the Web and gives you the option to open in Dropbox (if you have it installed) or whatever app would be most suitable.

A Few Other Things We'd Like to See

Some other features we've seen in third party iPad browsers that we wish Safari had are fullscreen page viewing, the ability to clear data from within the browser (in Safari, you have to go to the device's settings to wipe history, cookies and cache), a "speed dial" feature similar to the one seen in Dolphin in Opera. This is just a tiled home screen that lets you jump straight to your favorite sites without having to dig through bookmarks.

Of course, a few lessons can be drawn from desktop browsers as well. The ability to install browser add-ons and plugins to extend its functionality would be a dream come true. Most modern desktop browsers support this and its a great way to customize the browsing experience. In addition to full-blown extensions, an easy way to add simple bookmarklets to the browser would help users take better advantage of the Web's capabilities when using their tablets.

See Also: ReadWriteWeb's roundup of the best third party browsers for Android.

Are there any features you'd like to see in future versions of Safari for iPad? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

In addition to touting a very Chrome-esque tabbed browsing interface, Dolphin has re-imagined the way that sites and pages are called up and explored within a mobile browser. Its "Speed Dial" feature allows you to designate a page as a favorite, much like you can do with your phone's contacts. This is in addition to standard bookmarks, which Dolphin also has.

Flipboard-Style Social Content

As if all of this didn't make for a compelling enough alternative to Mobile Safari, the app also comes with a built-in social content browser called Dolphine Webzine. Much like Flipboard on iPad, Dolphin Webzine lets you peruse status updates and content shared by your social connections on Facebook and Twitter, as well as from various blogs and other publishers.

One feature we've longed for in the iPhone's native browser is the ability to quickly share links to pages via Twitter and Facebook without having to jump into another app. Dolphin accomplishes this by putting a Twitter icon next to the browser's address bar. We actually missed this feature at first, because we expected to find it under the sharing icon at the bottom of the screen.

Surviving Apple's Third Party App Restrictions

Once upon a time, Dolphin may not have have made it passed Apple's application approval process. The App Store used to be more strict about not allowing third party browsers, which would compete directly with Mobile Safari, the Apple-made browser that comes pre-installed on iPhones. For example, when the Mini Opera browser app was first submitted in 2008, the app was rejected. It has since been resubmitted and approved.

The issue with third party browsers may have originally been that they were attempting to use an engine to render HTML other than WebKit, which appears to be a violation of the SDK agreement. Under these rules, a Gecko-based browser like Firefox or Flock would never fly, but an iPhone specific version of Chrome might.

Dolphin managed to avoid this controversy all together by building its browser on top of WebKit. So it renders pages exactly the same as Safari, but with all of these extra bells and whistles layered on top of the UI.

It's unlikely that an app like this would pose a competitive threat to Apple's native browser, but in terms of feature set, Safari has some catching up to do. Tabbed browsing is already going to be included in iOS 5 when it launches this Fall, but when it comes to UI design and social features, the iPhone's built-in browser has room to grow.

There were 57 security patches for Safari in the update to version 5.1 and 5.0.6 and most of them have to do with "remote code execution," which is security slang for "drive-by malicious downloads." Yes, Apple fans, your computer is just as vulnerable to malware if you visit a malicious site as any PC. This update for Safari will help alleviate some of the problems but as Macs gain more market share, expect a lot more security updates to come from Cupertino.

Included in the WebKit updates are a variety of terms that Windows users may be familiar with if they follow the security patches on their computers regularly. Vulnerabilities have been patched for URL spoofing (when the browser goes to a different location than what is in the address bar), malicious RSS feeds, cross-site scripting. Almost all of the WebKit updates start with "visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to..." Essentially, that refers to drive-by downloads when Safari visits malware infected sites.

Here is an example:

Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.8 in preparation for Lion 10.7 in late June and it also brought a plethora of security updates for both the operating system and Safari. About a month later came the next round of security updates, this time almost double the 28 items found in the 10.6.8 update. At this rate, it won't be long until Apple is issuing weekly updates to OS X, just like Microsoft does with "patch Tuesday."

Apple has added the "Do Not Track" option to the latest version of its default browser, Safari, catching up with the rest of the browser market. The Federal Trade Commission suggested the feature late last year during an investigation of ways to protect consumer privacy and, since then, most major browsers have adopted it.

"Do Not Track" gives users the ability to identify and opt out of certain type of online tracking.

Today, Apple rounded out the list of major browsers by adding "Do Not Track" to a test version of Safari. According to The Wall Street Journal, "the tool is included within the latest test release of Lion, a version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system that is currently available only to developers."

The addition leaves Chrome as the only major browser without built-in "Do Not Track" support.

When Google announced the browser extension, an FTC spokesperson was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "We're pleased that Google is engaged in the process, but Mozilla and Microsoft are clearly steps ahead." It looks like Apple has joined the pack.

This weakness stems from a design consideration from Apple. It only occurs on websites that identify themselves as mobile sites, as it allows Web developers to take advantage of more of the "precious screen real estate" on the iPhone's small screen, says Dhanjani. However, for phishers, this could be a new way to direct users to dangerous websites.

If you don't have an iPhone to test it, you can watch this YouTube video instead.

In the demo, mobile Safari visits a Web page that looks nearly identical to Bank of America's mobile website. The website name and lock icon even appear in green, an indication that the website is protected via SSL. However, as you can see, the graphic is not the real address bar. If you scroll up, the actual address bar appears at the top of the page.

Although the problem Dhanjani demonstrates is only observable in mobile Safari today, the researcher cautions that third-party applications that contain their own Web browser could be built to take advantage of this security weakness, too. "In the case of iOS, since most applications are full-screen, it is in the interest of the application designers to keep the users immersed within their application instead of yanking the user out into Safari to render web content," Dhanjani explained. "Given this situation, it becomes vital for iOS to provide consistency so the user can be ultimately assured what domain the web content is being rendered from."

He recommends that developers of iOS applications make sure they clearly display the domain from which they're rendering content.

Any Solutions?

Dhanjani also says he alerted Apple to the issue. "They let me know they are aware of the implications but do not know when and how they will address the issue," he says.

Meanwhile, third-party security firms are jumping on this news to promote their own "safe surfing" products - for example, Trend Micro and its Smart Surfing for iPhone app, an alternative Web browser application that always shows the system's address bar.

However, there may be a simpler solution to all of this until Apple makes any changes: just scroll up.

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.

The numbers show that IE9 doesn't score perfectly in these areas. But all told, it gives a better showing than Chrome, trouncing the latter in the "xhtml5" spec.

Being at the forefront of comformance with the not-yet-official HTML5 standards challenges the IE9's reputation as the bane of web development. As The Register notes, "we can still marvel at just how much Microsoft's browser philosophy has changed in recent months." Whether the new philosophy and better compliance in these tests will help IE9 win back developers remains to be seen.

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.

When you look at the browser wars on a more regional level, IE is still above 50% in North America, while it has dropped as low as 40% in Europe. In Asia, IE is even more dominant, with nearly 60% of the market. Almost universally, Firefox holds a strong position in second place. Worldwide, Chrome holds the third spot easily, though the browser battles it out with Safari in North America.

As you can see from the video (and the title of this article), the newest version of Opera is pretty quick. When placed side-by-side with an iPhone 4, an HTC Desire running the latest Opera browser has no trouble outpacing Safari. In some cases the difference is minor, but with full pages, Opera loads several seconds faster. Opera has also improved on the browser's ability to zoom and scroll - both of which happen much faster and more smoothly.

Opera 5.0 on the iPhone looks broken and choppy when placed next to its 5.1 counterpart on the Android. Tabbed browsing is much more enjoyable on 5.1 and the ability to let pages load in a new tab in the background - something Safari won't do - is a nice way to be more efficient.

One of the downsides to Opera Mini is that is doesn't support Flash the way the default Android browser does. When I tested a few Flash features that work in the default browser, Opera was unable to play them. The lack of Flash could be a deal-breaker for some Android users, but regular browsing is much faster than the default browser, which could bridge some of that gap.

As an iPhone user, the future of Opera on the platform seems exciting if the company can bring the speed and snappiness over from Android. The only problem is Apple won't allow users to change the default browser, so clicking links in emails or apps won't automatically launch Opera - a feature Android, on the other hand, does provide.

For some, this is seen as a big win for Google over Apple, as the two companies battle over the search and mobile spheres.

Worldwide, the browser market is dominated by Internet Explorer, which holds nearly 53% of browser use, with Firefox coming in at just over 31%. Chrome follows with 9% and Safari with under half of that at 4%. The picture is similar for the U.S., but with Chrome and Safari coming in nearly even at around 9%. According to StatCounter, Chrome just barely took the lead over Safari this week with 8.97%, as opposed to Safari's 8.88%.

Chrome has steadily gained ground over the past year, and recently has been stealing away the geeks and early adopters from open-source alternative Firefox. For many of these same users, it has been Chrome's lack of features that has held them back, but as the little-browser-that-could has added functionality like extensions or location awareness, its speed and minimal design have drawn an ever-increasing user base.

Apple did not announce Safari 5 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, but only in press release. Neither the browser nor the developer package are available on the Apple site as of press time. While writing this story, the URL for the press release ceased functioning. We have a question in to Apple but have not heard a response as we post.

The Safari Developer Program allows developers to customize Safari 5 with extensions based on standard tech like HTML5, CSS3 and Java. Safari Extensions are sand-boxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

When Safari Reader detects an article, an icon appears in the address field. Click it and it will display the whole article on one clean page, presumably without links, sidebars or dancing banditos. Think print-ready page. There are options to enlarge, print or send via email.

5 uses the Nitro JavaScript engine. According to Apple, it does some heavy lifting.

• Runs JavaScript 30 percent faster than Safari 4, three percent faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6
• Loads new webpages faster using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching
• Improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly

Heavy on HTML5, the new browser allows full-screen playback and closed captions; geolocation, sectioning elements, draggable attribute, forms validation, Ruby, AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket.

Update: Yeah, it does. Safari 5 was demoed at WWDC about half an hour ago. It is now available for download.

What's more interesting about Chrome is the activity it's enjoying from early adopters and geeks. Our own browser statistics at ReadWriteWeb show that Chrome was used by 17.89% of our readers in April, putting it behind only Firefox (38.95%) and IE (24.76%). Further, our figures show a very clear movement from Firefox to Chrome over the past year. Chrome has gained nearly 11% over the past year, whereas Firefox has lost over 15%.

Source: ReadWriteWeb

I can also tell you that many of ReadWriteWeb's staff now use Chrome. I myself made the switch as soon as a (relatively) stable Mac version became available in 2009, primarily because I had been experiencing slowness and crashes in Firefox for months prior. I've never looked back - sorry Mozilla. Chrome is fast, hardly ever crashes and can handle multiple tabs with ease. It does the job. The only thing I still use Firefox for is, ironically, offline Gmail! That's because on a Mac, Google Gears is only available on Firefox and Safari - not Chrome.

Before I get assailed by Firefox fans in the comments, granted the much larger NetMarketShare stats show a couple of percentage points of growth for Firefox over the past year. They also show IE losing over 8% share and Chrome gaining over 4%.

Source: NetMarketShare

However, even NetMarketShare's stats show that Firefox's real battle is not with Microsoft's IE anymore (whose downward slide is inevitable and long overdue), but with Google's Chrome.

It's not just on the statistics and performance fronts either. Google is now directly attacking Firefox's main strength from a developer point of view: its ecosystem of add-ons. At the Google I/O event earlier this month, Google announced an application store to help with discovery and sales of Web applications. Some startups have already moved focus from the add-on model to a web site or app (e.g. GetGlue), so Google's App Store will only accelerate this.

Yesterday we reported that the beta tag for Google's Chrome browser has been removed for the Mac and Linux versions. Is that also a sign that the gloves are now off too? Chrome is now a 'serious' browser, no beta tags and all OS's covered with stable versions.

Overall I can't help but think that Chrome is really hitting at the heart of Firefox nowadays. The early adopter and geeky readership of ReadWriteWeb - bless you all - is often a forerunner of future mainstream trends. And our stats clearly show our readers are moving away from Firefox and largely onto Chrome. How long before the mainstream follows?

This is Lynn LaVallee's monument to the composition of the Web: "I'm a Web engineer," she explained to the L.A. Times, "so the tattoo represents the proper separation layers of a Web document. The first file is the structural layer - which is the house. The second is the presentational layer - CSS - and the third is the behavioral layer, which is JavaScript."

RSS

Wordpress/Drupal

Google

Farmville Hot Rod Tractor

@critter

Rackspace

Cisco

Fork Bomb

(Don't know what a fork bomb is?)

Firefox/Safari

Android/BlackBerry App World

@BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi

Want more? Geekytattoos.com is a good place to start. Got your own geek ink you want to share? Let us know about it in the comments.

Lead photo: fiatlux. Lynn LaVallee: jayzombie. RSS: gorillasushi, bestdamntech, creepysleepy. Wordpress/Drupal: bakershours.com, vegasgeek, Dries Buytaert. Google: ivanmor, growabrain, mezdeathhead. Farmville Hot Rod Tractor: geekytattoos.com. @critter: digitalpapercuts, korneliuz, freezerburns.com, critterscode.com, trioutnc.com. Rackspace/Cisco: MarJor24, simonov, geekologie.com. Fork Bomb: silveiraneto. Firefox/Safari: liveneedle.com, fisherwy.blogspot.com, bmezine.com. Android/BlackBerry App World: ivanmor, gadgets.boingboing.net, blindfutur3. @BaltimoreMD Fail Whale, Reddit Alien, Free Wi-Fi: supeertakai, urdb.org, geekytattoos.com.

According to the Director of Firefox Development, Johnathan Nightingale, plugin safety is an issue across the web. "Outdated plugins are a major source of security and stability risk for web users," he wrote in a recent company blog post.

Nightingale says that some studies have shown that the number of users running outdated plugins in their web browser is as high as 80%. However, the plugin checking mechanism built into the latest builds of the Firefox web browser keeps its users better secured as it will prompt you to update your plugins when new ones become available. He notes that over 60% of Firefox users visiting the plugin checker page were running the most recent version of the Adobe Flash plugin, a plugin that's a popular target for attackers looking to exploit security vulnerabilities in the browser. When including users with either the latest version of the Flash plugin or the second most recent, the number was 75%, much higher than the rest of the web as a whole.

Beyond Firefox: Plugin Safety for All Browsers

But plugin safety isn't just an issue for Firefox users. All web surfers who use plugins can be affected by security issues. And most do have plugins, even if they don't realize it.

Mainstream users may not understand that clicking "install Flash" to watch a web video means they've installed a browser plugin, but that's exactly what they just did. And now in Google Chrome, the new web browser from the Internet Search giant, the Adobe Flash plugin will come pre-installed with the browser itself.

To help address the issues of plugin safety outside the Firefox ecosystem, Mozilla has updated their plugin safety page to work with a number of other web browsers, including Safari 4, Chrome 4 and Opera 10.5. It also checks the safety levels of the most popular plugins for Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

If you're using a non-Firefox browser such as those listed above, you can visit this Mozilla webpage and have your plugins checked for you. If any of the plugins are old, just click the "Update Now" button to remedy the situation. If the plugin checker can't determine the status of the plugin, a "Research" button will appear instead. Plugins that are current will show a green "Up to Date" button.

Reminder Badges

Web site owners who want to remind their visitors to check their plugins can add one of these quirky banners to their site. "Groom parrot, Polish trophies, Check plugins," the banner reads.

Although the plugin checker page is a handy tool for web surfers concerned about security, it's better when the browser does it for you. Our online lives are busy enough, we don't need to add another to-do item to our list.