“We can confirm that we made a change to the random icon order algorithm in the browser choice screen for Europe,” said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz.

IBM software architect Rob Weir who has been testing the randomness of the browser screen said he noticed a change last week. “Sometime last week — I don’t know the exact date — Microsoft updated the code for the browser choice website with a new random shuffle algorithm” Weir wrote on his blog.

From Weir’s early testing, the update appears to have solved the problem, with each browser now just as likely to appear in position number one.

Weir has created a test page, where users are able to test the ballot screens randomness for themselves.

Two sessions at MIX 2010 give clues as to what we might see in the new browser; HTML5 Now: The Future of Web Markup Today and Future of Vector Graphics for the Web.

“Couple these clues with a post from the IE team on its official blog late last year about increased JavaScript rendering speeds and CSS support, and the team’s recent push to provide better support for SVG graphics and animations, it looks like IE 9 will present a huge step forward for Microsoft into the realm of HTML5, CSS 3 and other modern technologies that drive the most forward-thinking web apps” wrote Scott Gilbertson.

This is good news for browser users, with signs that Microsoft is taking its falling browser market share seriously. It suggests Microsoft are trying to bring the browse back to the forefront of browser technology, something we have not seen since the release of Internet Explorer 6 back in 2001.

“By integrating Opera Mini with the Windows Mobile platform, Opera is able to deliver an optimized version of the popular Opera Mini browser that dramatically improves performance and the overall user experience. While Opera Mini traditionally requires Java, the new Windows Mobile version does not, which means that Opera Mini will work on any Windows Mobile phone” Opera said in a statement.

The benefits of using Opera Mini on the mobile phone appear quite clear, with Opera including Opera Turbo technology that compresses data traffic by up to 90%, improving page-loading time and reducing data usage, potentially saving users when on a pay-per-MB data plan.

Opera Mini 5 for Windows Mobile can be downloaded from the Opera Mini Next website.

“Plugins such as Flash and Silverlight run in a separate process from the browser. If a plugin crashes it will not crash the browser, and unresponsive plugins are automatically restarted” said an announcement from Mozilla.

Currently, out-of-process support is only available on Windows and Linux versions, with Mac support still under development. This is only the first step, with each tab also expected to be moved to it’s own process in time, much like rivals Internet Explorer and Chrome have already done.

You can download the new test version of Firefox from the Mozilla Developer News Blog.

Overnight, Opera have released a finished Opera 10.50 into the wild, claiming that it is now the fastest browser in the world.

With an incredibly quick development cycle, the browser includes many improvements over Opera 10.

Opera 10.50 includes a new JavaScript engine, along with a new rendering engine, giving it an up to 7x speed advantage over Opera 10.10 at times.

The new browser also incudes a new interface for Windows users, along with support for Jump Lists, Aero Peak and Aero Glass in Windows 7.

A full list of changes can be found in the changelogs, while the browser can be downloaded from the Opera website.

As usual, Internet Explorer lost more market share for the month, dropping from 62.12% to 61.58%.

Firefox also lost some ground, dropping slightly from 24.43% to 24.23%.

Both Opera and Safari were also down, to 2.35% and 4.45% respectively. Opera had 2.38% market share in January, while Safari had 4.53%.

The only browser to gain share this month was Google, climbing to 5.61%, up from 5.22%.

The coming months are sure to be interesting, with Microsoft beginning to roll out the new browser ballot screen to European users.

The new browser contains many significant improvements over Beta 1 according to Opera.

Changes include:

• Skin work, and tweaked styling of internal pages (opera:* and error pages)
• Improved opera:config
• Improved overlay authentication dialogs to avoid spoofing
• Context menu fixes
• Basic Web Storage user interface
• Lots of crash fixes
• Widgets fixes

A full list of changes can be found in the changelog. A download link can be found on the Opera Desktop Team Blog.

Internet Explorer 6 users are currently presented with a nice message urging them to upgrade to a newer browser.

“On March 13, we are dropping support for your browser. You’ll still be able to watch videos after this date, but new features may not work properly” reads the message.

This gives users two weeks notice, though it may be of little use to many IE6 users, who are stuck using the browser on corporate networks.

More Google services are dropping support for IE6 later this year, but no firm dates have yet been given.

The ballot screen, which can be seen at http://www.browserchoice.eu/, lists the 5 major browsers in a random order, followed by 8 lesser known browsers also in a random order.

Early testing by DSL.sk shows the ballot screen might not be as random as once thought, with testing showing that the screen appears to favour Google’s Chrome, while IE shows the least amount of favouritism.

These results could be an anomalie however, and may differ with further testing.

A Windows Update is available for download for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 users in United Kingdom, Belgium and France.

“Our goal is to provide a consistent runtime that spans devices, inclusive of [mobile and] desktop operating systems,” said Flash marketing director Adrian Ludwig at this weeks Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Adobe is currently working on providing Flash on devices powered by Windows Mobile, Android, Palm WebOS, Symbian, and BlackBerry OS powered devices, delivering parity with the desktop versions of Flash.

“I suspect what will happen is that as we have more devices in the market… Apple will have more market pressure to include Flash on the iPhone,” said head of Adobe’s platform business David Wadhwani.

“Apple would like to move rich content off the web and into its App Store, where it can more readily monetise it….Ultimately, the consumer will decide.”

Adobe has a version of Flash ready to go for the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad, but is being blocked by Apple from getting low-level access to the iPhone that’s necessary to properly implement Flash.

Whether Adobe’s prediction will come true remains to still be seen, only time will tell.