Web developers know the importance of testing web sites and blogs on the different web browsers available. A site/blog can look great on one browser, but if you try to access it on another one, it can probably look garbled. It’s a hassle checking a web site/blog on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.

The debate rages over whether open source browsers such as Firefox and Konqueror provide better zero-day attack protection than proprietary browsers such as Microsoft's Latest News about Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and Opera Software's Opera browser.

As browser competition continues to heat up, 2010 looks like the year when the market was repeatedly disrupted. Internet Explorer has not managed to gain share for a third month in a row. Firefox is leveling out while Chrome and Safari continue to grow. Opera? It's hanging on to relevance. Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June's or July's gain.

These days, you have a broader choice of Internet browsers, despite the attempts by Microsoft to drive all the other browsers out of the space over the past decade. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser with a 65.9 percent share, but Mozilla’s open source Firefox has been showing a lot of strength in the past two years.

I must say that I think Opera is doing a great job supporting its browser on Linux. Even though it's closed-source, it's still one of the most powerful web browsers out there, and each release comes with packages for every major distribution out there.

The new wave of browsers -- Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome (in just about all its incarnations) -- all compete with each other fiercely to be the best possible delivery mechanism for the web as an app platform, in four basic areas:

First came Netscape. Then came Internet Explorer. Then Netscape was reborn as Firefox, the new star of Web browsers. Now there is Chrome, a completely new browser from Google. The Web is the new battleground for 2010.

Google Chrome is a warning shot over the bows of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Google's Chrome browser is gaining ground fast while Internet Explorer slides. Google's Chrome browser is now well established as the third most popular browser and its ascendency hasn't stopped yet. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, is clearly in decline.