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The default browser of Windows 7 and roughly a third of the web
Internet Explorer 8, bundled with Windows 7, was the single most-used browser version of 2010. It had tabs, a separate search box beside the address bar, Accelerators, InPrivate browsing and a...
Hardware acceleration and HTML5, in a minimal new frame
Released on 15 September 2010, the IE9 beta was Microsoft's answer to Chrome: a stripped-back interface with tabs beside the address bar, GPU-accelerated rendering, and real HTML5 and CSS3 support....
Nine years old, still used by millions, hated by developers
IE6, released in 2001, still had a meaningful share of browser use in 2010 (around a tenth worldwide, concentrated in China and corporate offices). Google dropped support for it in Docs and Gmail in...
Nine years old and still the most-used OS on Earth
Windows XP, released in 2001, was still the most common desktop operating system in 2010, running about half of the world's desktop web traffic. Its green Start button and rolling-hills wallpaper...
The Windows people actually liked, one year old
Windows 7 shipped in October 2009 and by the end of 2010 ran roughly a quarter of the world's desktop web traffic, while Windows XP still ran about half. Its Aero glass window borders, the new...
Yahoo, Google, Ask, AVG, MyWebSearch... stacked five deep
Toolbars were the plague of the 2010 browser: bundled with Java updates, antivirus software and free downloads, they stacked below the address bar until the page was a slit. The Ask Toolbar, Google...
Write less, do more: the JavaScript library on most of the web
jQuery 1.4, released in January 2010, was the JavaScript library almost every site used to animate menus, load content with Ajax and paper over browser differences, especially Internet Explorer's....
The plugin that ran YouTube, FarmVille and every banner ad
Flash Player 10.1, released in June 2010, ran the YouTube player, Hulu, Pandora, FarmVille, every browser game and most animated adverts; Adobe said it was installed on about 99 percent of...
The browser that made feature-phone internet bearable
Opera Mini compressed pages on Opera's servers before sending them to the phone, which made it the most-used mobile browser in the world in 2010, especially on feature phones in India, Indonesia,...
The tiny BitTorrent client on every second PC
µTorrent was the lightweight BitTorrent client most people used in 2010 to download Linux ISOs, and everything else. Its green-and-white window of progress bars, seeds and peers was as familiar as...
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