The latest edition of our browser updates brings another piece of news for Firefox 4, a monstrous security patch for IE, a new Chrome Developer version as well as Opera’s plan for world domination.

The big news today was Microsoft’s announcement that a cumulative security update is now available for IE. 1 for IE5.01 SP1, 1 for IE6 SP1, 5 for IE6, 10 for IE7 and 12 for the current IE8. If you haven’t diligently downloaded every patch for IE already, it’s a good idea to go ahead with this cumulative update now. It’s an extremely fragmented update that not only affects different browser versions, but also 14 different Windows versions. All but one patch affect remote execution vulnerabilities. You can get the update here.

Mozilla’s Robert O’Callahan announced that Mozilla has learned that Google’s VP8 source license was GPL-compatible, which makes it possible to bring WebM support to Firefox. It is unclear whether Mozilla will integrate WebM into the upcoming version 3.6.4, but we now know that Firefox 4.0 will get WebM support. Mozilla previously published 3.7a5 versions with WebM support for testing purposes. Firefox 3.6.4 is still slated for an “early June” release, while 4.0 Beta is planned for a June 24 launch. You can try a nightly build of Firefox 3.7a5 to get an idea of some of 4.0’s features. Firefox 3.7a5 does not include the promised GUI update.

Google plus along with developer version of Chrome 6 at a fast pace. If you have downloaded Chromium 6 before, you now see your Google Chrome browser being updated to 6.0.x versions on a frequent basis. The current iteration 6.0.427.0 for Windows Mac and Linux includes a handful of bugfixes. It is still unclear what Google in fact has changed in version 6, other than slight Javascript speed improvements. A member of the Chrome developer team told commenters that Google will talk in a few months what “warranted the version bump.”  Rumors currently included improved search performance through a smart connectivity feature when you type search terms in the browser’s URL bar.

An interesting bit of news comes courtesy of the san Jose Mercury News with an article about Opera, which has the second fastest browser on the market but the smallest market share of the top 5 browsers. Opera now apparently aims to gain much more share in North America and get a slice of the IE pie, as long as Microsoft can’t stop bleeding market share.

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