December 2016

The past week or so was filled with user reports stating that Internet connectivity was dropped on their Windows 10 machines.

While I'm usually not affected by those, I experienced the issue first hand on my mother's laptop which lost Internet connectivity via Wifi.

The issue seemed to be related to the release of the cumulative update KB3201845, but it turned out later that it was unrelated.

Microsoft released an update for the built-in Photos application for Windows 10 yesterday that brings editing, drawing, and interface enhancements.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released their anti-tracking extension Privacy Badger 2.0 for Firefox, Chrome and Opera yesterday.

The extension is designed to prevent online tracking which is fundamentally different from how ad blockers operate.

Microsoft released a batch of updates for company products today as part of the company's monthly Patch Tuesday event.

The December 2016 overview of Microsoft's Bulletins provides you with detailed information on all bulletins and related information.

This includes, among other things, a list of all security bulletins and their severity rating, information about affected operating systems and other Microsoft products, update download information, and a list of non-security updates released by Microsoft since the November 2016 update.

Microsoft announced yesterday that the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update will support the delivery of game drivers with Store games.

Opera 42, the new stable version of the web browser by Opera Software, ships today with a built-in currency converter and other changes.

The recent Microsoft OneDrive update to version 17.3.6720.1207 ships with a new flyout notification system.

If you use OneDrive already on a machine, you know that you can click on the icon in the system tray area to display status information.

OneDrive lets you know if files are in sync, or displays sync progress information if they are not. It furthermore displays a link to the OneDrive folder right there that you may click on to open the location on the local system.

Microsoft's updated Windows Trends statistics indicate that the Windows 10 operating system is doing well. Third-party services like Netmarketshare beg to differ.

Microsoft updated the Windows and Store trends page that is full of statistics for developers with new data that covers the time period between September 2014 and August 2016.

Mozilla plans to launch a change to the display of tab titles in the Firefox 53 web browser that gives title more room than it is currently the case.

I like Firefox's tab behavior better than that of Chrome. The core reasons are that Firefox won't reduce tabs to an unidentifiable mess when you reach a certain threshold, and that Firefox allows me to customize the display of tabs.

I have set a custom minimum width value for open tabs in the browser, and changed the general layout as well for instance in Firefox.

Microsoft revealed a couple of days ago on Technet that it plans to change the Windows Update supersedence on Windows 7 and 8.1, and Windows Server 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2.

The company started to publish so-called rollup updates for the mentioned operating systems in October.