It was big news early in the year when the Mozilla Firefox browser hit a 5% market share vs. the dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer browser. Firefox was billed as a safe alternative to the malware-susceptible IE, for which Microsoft often needs to release security patches on a weekly basis. Then Firefox discovered a vulnerability of its own.

The latest Firefox release addressed the security issue, and it's now reported  that Firefox has an 8 percent share of the browser market. Microsoft IE has dipped below 90 percent, and additional smaller inroad is being made by Norway's Opera 8. The granddaddy of them all, Netscape Navigator, continues to have its fans and a small percentage of market share, although the browser's latest release (by  now-parent AOL) has been plagued with trouble.

The latest Firefox share figures were reported by Netapplications.com, which said it compiled browser data from over 40,000 websites monitored by its HitsLink.com service. Opera 8 had reached 4 million downloads as of May 20, according to company spokesperson Eskil Sievertsen, who adds that "we've seen great interest for Opera 8, and the 'browser wars' are indeed  heating up."

"We have a lot of exciting things happening, not only on  the desktop, but in mobile and home media as well," Sievertsen said.

• Browser as Operating System Microsoft-Style