Stuart J. Johnston

Microsoft officials confirmed that the latest version of the company’s market-leading browser, Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), will be released as a public download as of Thursday morning. “Tomorrow, we’ll make available the ‘release to Web’ version of IE8 in 25 languages,” James Pratt, senior product manager for Internet Explorer, told InternetNews.com on Wednesday afternoon briefing. […]

Microsoft Wednesday kicked off beta testing for Silverlight 3, the company’s competitor to Adobe Flash, and also released a preview of a major update to Expression Blend, one of its key Web design tools. The announcements came during the opening keynote at Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) MIX09 conference at the plush Venetian resort in Las Vegas. […]

Microsoft confirmed that its Windows Azure cloud computing platform was down for as long as 22 hours over the weekend, but said now that everything is running normally. According to posts on Microsoft’s Windows Azure community forum, the service became spotty about 10:30 p.m. Pacific time on Friday night and continued throughout most of Saturday. […]

Microsoft researchers demonstrated a Surface-type multitouch computer this week, one with significant additions to the device’s graphics and touch capabilities. But don’t look for them as new features on commercial versions of Microsoft’s Surface any time soon because Microsoft has no immediate commercial plans for what is a research prototype named “Second Light.” The demo […]

Microsoft is just weeks away from shipping the release candidate of Windows 7. In the meantime, the company’s developers are rushing to pack in a few more last-minute changes to the system, with the latest tweaks primarily affecting the system’s user interface. But the question remains whether all of the last-minute changes will derail Microsoft’s […]

Microsoft feels that Internet Explorer, especially upcoming version 8, isn’t getting the respect it deserves when it comes to talking about speed. So IE officials have done what any good Web-savvy netizen might do — they’ve made an online video demonstrating that IE8 is as fast as competitors. In the video, and in an accompanying […]

Microsoft’s share of U.S. searches last month fell to its lowest level in a year, according to Web tracking firm comScore. The latest data show that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) garnered only 8.2 percent of all U.S. search queries in February, slipping from 8.5 percent in January. The company had previously held a 9.6 percent share […]

At next week’s MIX09 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft officials plan show off the latest and greatest technologies and products for designers and website developers. Near the top of the list will be the first public demonstration of Silverlight 3.0, Microsoft’s streaming media technology. Other likely featured technologies include Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), and Windows […]

Microsoft still hasn’t shipped a public “release candidate” for Windows 7 – that’s expected next month – but another preliminary version of the code has leaked to BitTorrent sites. A release candidate, RC for short, is the final test version of the code before Microsoft releases the product to manufacturing and delivers the final product […]

Microsoft has revealed its terms for selling Windows Mobile applications via its iTunes App Store competitor, the Microsoft Marketplace for Mobile. In a statement released Wednesday, the company said it plans to charge developers an initial price of $99 per year to register. The registration will let developers submit five applications for certification and listing […]

Microsoft confirmed today that the European Commission’s (EC) competition bureau has granted the company extra time to prepare its defense against allegations that it illegally tied Internet Explorer to Windows in the European Union (EU). The case began in late 2007, when Norwegian browser maker Opera complained that Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) default bundling of IE […]

Windows developers take note: Microsoft has announced it plans to ship a toolkit for testing users’ applications for compatibility with Windows 7 next month. The news was in buried in an online Q &A posted Monday. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has had versions of its Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) for years. Now, as the company gets […]