After announcing that Windows 7 would ship in the European Union without Internet Explorer, Microsoft has done a back flip and will once again include the companies web browser.

Microsoft released the following statement:

In the wake of last week’s developments, as well as continuing feedback on Windows 7 E that we have received from computer manufacturers and other business partners, I’m pleased to report that we will ship the same version of Windows 7 in Europe in October that we will ship in the rest of the world.

One reason we decided not to ship Windows 7 ‘E’ is concerns raised by computer manufacturers and partners. Several worried about the complexity of changing the version of Windows that we ship in Europe if our ballot screen proposal is ultimately accepted by the Commission and we stop selling Windows 7 ‘E’. Computer manufacturers and our partners also warned that introducing Windows 7 ‘E’, only to later replace it with a version of Windows 7 that includes IE, could confuse consumers about what version of Windows to buy with their PCs.

A ballot screen update is still said to be on the cards for all Windows XP, Vista and 7 European Users if the EU accepts Microsoft’s proposal.

Microsoft has confirmed that users of Windows Vista and Windows XP in the European Union will also be provided with a ballot screen of web browsers.

The change will be pushed out via Windows Update to all users in the EU.

“Microsoft will distribute a Ballot Screen software update to users within the EEA of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Client PC Operating Systems, by means of Windows Update as described hereafter: A software update enabling the Ballot Screen to be displayed will be made available to all current and future users of Windows XP and Windows Vista who receive updates from Windows Update. For Windows XP and Windows Vista users the Ballot Screen update will first be made available between 3 and 6 months after the adoption of the Commission’s decision.”

There is still no word on when the final decision will be made.

Rumors coming out of Tech ARP suggest that Internet Explorer 8 is headed our way in final two weeks of March.

Internet Explorer 8 will be a free download for existing Windows XP and Windows Vista users, while it is expected OEM partners such as Dell will include the browser pre- installed with new systems.

The date is still speculative, but we should have some more information by early March.

Microsoft has announced that it will deliver the first release candidate (RC1) of Internet Explorer 8 to the public on Monday.

IE8 has been at beta 2 since August 2008, and this new early release is highly anticipated by many in the industry.

According to Microsoft, “a release candidate means the software is feature complete and the code is basically stable, and a final release is imminent”.

IE8 is more compliant with web standards such as CSS, to web developers delight.

IE8 RC1 will be released for both Windows XP and Windows Vista. We will post links to the download when they are available.

European Union regulators have laid down fresh claims that Microsoft is again in breach of its anti-trust laws.

The complaint is related to Internet Explorer being bundled with all new Windows installations.

Microsoft lost a similar case in 2004 and was forced to sell Windows versions without Windows Media Player.

This has potential repercussions across the market. Apple currently bundles Safari with every copy of Mac OS X, while most Linux distributions are bundled with Firefox.

“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice” said a spokesman for the European Union.

Any final decision on the matter is likely to be years away.

Google Chrome Go Green Theme

In less than two weeks since Google Chrome was released, die-hard fans and users are already customising the browser. ChromeSpots Google Chrome Themes forum has plenty of themes to choose from already.

Theme’s resembling Apple’s Safari, to Mozilla’s Firefox, and even deviantART have all been created.

Once you download a theme you will need to install it. The install path is as follows:

Windows Vista
C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\[current version]\Themes\

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\[current version]\Themes\

To install the theme simply copy the default.dll you have just downloaded to the above directory. I strongly suggest that you backup your current default.dll file before doing this. Unfortunately, for the time being, there is no way to manage multiple themes. However, this is definitely a promising start form theme developers. I look forward to seeing what’s to come.

With the release of Google Chrome, John Resig has performed JavaScript benchmark tests on a wide variety of browsers on both Windows Vista and XP. These browsers include:

• Chrome 0.2
• Safari 4
• Safari 3.1.2
• Opera 9.5.2
• Firefox 3.1
• Firefox 3.0.1
• IE7
• IE8 Beta 2

Testing, using three benchmarking tools; SunSpider, V8 Benchmark, and Dromaeo, has produced some interesting results. Results show that Google Chrome is ahead in all but one benchmark test – very impressive for a browser that is still in its early beta stages. It shows the performance of the new V8 JavaScript engine and the power of the WebKit rendering engine found in both Chrome and Safari.

You can read the full JavaScript Performance Rundown article to see the other (not-so)surprissing results.