Web browser market share results are now available for August 2010 thanks to Market Share by Net Applications.

Internet Explorer fell slightly in August 2010, from 60.74% to 60.40% market share. Opera was the other looser this month, dropping to 2.45% to 2.37%.

Firefox rose slightly to 22.93% from 22.91%, as did both Chrome and Safari rising to 7.52% from 7.24% and 5.16% from 5.09% respectively.

Full results can be read in the August 2010 Browser Market Share report.

This has been one of the blocks for wide adoption on the standard with both Mozilla and Opera opting not to support the format in the past citing royalty concerns.

“MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015, and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time.”

Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer 9 already support videos encoded with the H.264 codec.

Mozilla and Opera are yet to comment on the move.

Microsoft’s Russian Press site has released a screenshot of the upcoming user interface scheduled to make an appearance in Internet Explorer 9 Beta.

Soon after, the screenshot was pulled indicating it is likely real, but Microsoft journalist Jo Foley managed to save the image before it was removed.

New features are set to include a combined URL and search bar, tear-off tabs, and a consolidated menu.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be released on September 15th during a launch event in San Francisco.

Mozilla are still hard at work, today releasing Firefox 4 Beta 4 tot the public which is packed with several new features.

New in the latest release is Firefox Panorama, which lets you arrange and organise your tabs at the click of a mouse button.

Also new in this release is the inclusion of Firefox Sync, which syncs bookmarks, tabs, history and passwords between different computers you use. Previously this has been available as an add-on for Firefox, but as of now it is included directly with the browser.

Firefox 4 Beta 4 is available for Windows, Mac and Linux users right now. A full list of changes can be read in the release notes.

A full list of changes can be found in the Opera Changelog, while the update affects Windows, Mac, and Linux users.

Opera 10.61 can be downloaded from the Opera website.

Mozilla is still busy at work, today releasing Firefox 4 Beta 3 to the public.

Beta 3 is now available in over 30 languages, 10 more than the previous beta. Also new in this release is multi-touch support for Windows 7 and new JavaScript values to experience faster and smoother graphics.

A full list of changes can be read in the release notes, and current Firefox 4 Beta testers will automatically receive the update in the coming days.

Firefox 4 Beta 3 can be downloaded from the Mozilla Firefox Beta website.

The latest release contains an updated version of Adobe Flash, fixing several security vulnerabilities to the plugin.

Chrome users for all platforms will receive the update within the next few days, or alternatively the browser can be downloaded from the Google Chrome website.

“For Firefox 4 minor updates will occur automatically.  Users can change the setting in Options > Advanced > Update.  We’ll only be using the major update dialog box for changes like 4 to 4.5 or 5″ wrote Mozilla’s Alex Faaborg.

The implementation will be slightly different to Chromes, with users still seeing the updating progress bar on load, but this is an implementation issue, which will hopefully be addressed in the future.

The aim of this of course is to keep users safe, and take away the hassle of users having to install security updates when prompted.

Auto-updates are expected to appear in Firefox 4 before it is final release to the public later this year.

Microsoft has released a fourth and final platform preview release of Internet Explorer 9.

This latest release scores 95/100 in the Acid3 test, compared to the first platform preview which only scored 55/100. For comparison, Firefox 3.6 scores 94/100.

Also new in this release is full support for hardware accelerated HTML5, improved SVG support, and improved JavaScript performance. A more detailed list of changes can be found in the IEBlog.

A public beta is widely expected in September 2010.

Web browser market share results are now available for July 2010 thanks to Market Share by Net Applications.

Internet Explorer rose again in July 2010, from 60.32% to 60.74% market share. Firefox dropped again from 23.81% to 22.91%.

Chrome also fell slightly, from 7.24% to 7.16%. Safari rose, up from 4.85% to 5.09%, as did Opera, up to 2.45% from 2.43% in June.

Full results can be read in the July 2010 Browser Market Share report.