A reliability update has been issued by Microsoft to deal with problems a number of users have been facing with web browser Internet Explorer 8 (IE8).

Stability bugbears have been specifically addressed by the company as well as issues of compatibility with third-party extensions, many of which were causing IE8 to crash or freeze.

Herman Ng, the programme manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft, said the update would cut down on the registered 1.5 per cent of IE8 sessions which resulted in a crash.

The expert said that after one week of monitoring feedback from users, Microsoft felt that it had "reached a representative sampling of our customers".

Mr Ng continued: "We found that approximately ten per cent of customers who had downloaded the Windows 7 Beta had experienced some type of reliability problem in IE8."

At the top of the month, it was reported by Net Applications that Mozilla's Firefox browser had gained a three per cent market share of the web browsing market, with Internet Explorer dropping in popularity by seven per cent in one year.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.