Details Emerge On EU-Only "Browser Choice" Screen For Windows

Simmeh writes "Microsoft have posted screenshots and details on their upcoming 'web browser choice screen.' Requirements include being in Europe, and having Internet Explorer set as your default browser. It comes with a few surprises, as the software automatically unpins Internet Explorer from your taskbar, and offers 11 alternative browsers."

Comments

More to come

[Anonymous Coward]

To be followed by Microsoft OS selection: choose between Windows, Linux and OSX!

Re:More to come

[iammani]

Actually OEMs should be forced to offer those, not Microsoft. Too bad it wont happen, as Apple will not take it up with EU. And Linux distors are not powerful enough to take it up.

Re:More to come

[shutdown -p now]

If you mandate OEMs to install it, should they also be mandated to support it?

Re:More to come

[RightSaidFred99]

Lol. "Forced" huh? Based on what moral or legal code besides the "I'm angry!" code?

Re:More to come

[RightSaidFred99]

Of course they should! Linux dweebs will help them with friendly, free online advise like "You're an idiot" and "Duuh, you don't know how to peruse /proc to find out which revision of your chipset you're using, you numbskull noob!?".

Re:More to come

[iammani]

The same whatever code used to force Microsoft to offer "Browser choices"

Re:More to come

[RightSaidFred99]

Ahh, the code of the corrupt bureaucrat. I agree, they could certainly use that one though since an OEM sells a product and doesn't manufacture one, it might be hard for them to come up with the appropriately sophist argument legitimizing this arbitrary rule.

Re:More to come

[iammani]

Mmm support should come from Linux Distros in my opinion. Besides do OEM support Windows installation? I though Microsoft directly provides updates to customers and not through OEMs. And regarding help on how to perform stuff, I dont believe either microsoft or OEMs provide them.

Re:More to come

[CannonballHead]

Uh, forced? For-profit private companies should be forced to offer certain software packages to their customers?

That makes no sense at all. Unless you don't particularly like companies being able to choose what they do and would rather mandate what they do in the name of "common good" and the like. Of course, then you get to figure out just who gets to decide what the "common good" is for everyone else.

Re:More to come

[shutdown -p now]

Support as in "computer doesn't work" phone support. OEMs provide first line of that for Windows on those PCs they sell at the moment.

Re:More to come

[Anonymous Coward]

I've only ever seen that attitude out of one community, the Fedora community. I've never seen it anywhere else, and I've been using Linux since about 1993.

The Slackware community is helpful. The Debian community is extremely helpful. The Ubuntu community is helpful, but there are lots of "noobs" there, so their advice isn't always correct. The OpenSUSE community is extremely professional and provide the best advice I've seen. The Gentoo community is always willing to provide help.

Re:More to come

[Anonymous Coward]

If installing a browser in Windows is as difficult for you as most would find grep /proc then you really are an idiot.

Re:More to come

[dan828]

I have to say, I've never had anything but helpful interactions with people in the Linux community. Though I did get laughed at on IRC back in 1996, when, after spending a week getting Linux installed on a Pentium 150 machine and getting my DSL connection to work with it, I asked if there was an "easy" way of installing apps. Guess I deserved that one.

Re:More to come

[ZERO1ZERO]

The Gentoo community is always willing to provide help.

But unfortunately they are still waiting for it to compile, so although willing, are currently unable.

Re:More to come

[sakshale]

The camel has put his nose into the tent. What next? Maybe Ford needs to be forced to install Toyota gas pedals in their cars to ensure that they crash in a politically correct manner!

Re:More to come

[Interoperable]

./ needs a "Gentoo takes a long time to compile" tag for comments; I don't think "Funny" applies anymore.

Re:More to come

[shaitand]

An oem manufactures the computer they sell...

Re:More to come

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I meant "sells THE product", meaning Windows. Bad sentence on my part.

Re:More to come

[Anpheus]

What I've found is that the communities are exactly as helpful as your question's accuracy. So educated people asking pointed, informed questions will find the community delightful and helpful. Newbies to Linux will find the complete opposite. Most communities will cater to the former just fine, far fewer for the latter.

Just thought I'd add some of my own broad generalizations.

Re:More to come

[Chief Camel Breeder]

I find this too. But, sometimes being the one providing the advice (for software other than Linux and Unix), I can see why it happens. It's not always snottiness on the part of the experts.

My ideal, as a potential provider of information, is a question that I can answer easily, in one short post, without research, and using jargon. I.e., I like to help but I'm lazy. It's tedious if I have to spend 20 minutes translating the jargon into something a beginner can understand. It's more tedious if the answer turns into a dialogue because the questioner doesn't understand the first answer. It's extremely tedious if a later answer in the dialogue turns out to need research (which the questioner can't do for himself) and where I feel obligated to look for him because I already engaged (mutter mutter).

Basically, answering questions well for beginners turns into writing good documentation for an unskilled audience. It's brain-meltingly difficult and no fun at all.

Re:More to come

[AmiMoJo]

As someone who deals with lay people at work I think the problem is that people simply don't know the language of computing. Most people know what the major parts of a car are called but when it comes to PCs there is a 50% chance they think the box is called a "hard drive".

The same applies to the things they see on screen. Half the battle is figuring out what they are actually talking about, especially over the phone (which is why we often ask them to being the machine in, if they can figure out which bit to pick up).

Re:More to come

[JWSmythe]

lspci -v
    lsusb -v
    dmesg

    So.. What's your good option for Windows.

    Well, click on start. Then right click on my computer. Select Properties. Click "Device Manager". Pick the category of the device. If you don't see the device here, it may be in another category. Look around for it. Right click once you find it, and select Properties. Click the Details tab. Select "Hardware Ids" under properties. Put those numbers into Google, and hopefully you'll find an answer, probably on a Linux message board.

    Lets look at how this looks. I'm comparing one of my Linux servers, to the Windows workstation I'm on.

Linux:

02:09.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5704 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 1644
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 24
        Memory at fc9c0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at fc9b0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Expansion ROM at fc9a0000 [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [40] PCI-X non-bridge device
        Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data <?>
        Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ Queue=0/3 Enable-
        Kernel driver in use: tg3
        Kernel modules: tg3

Windows:

USB\VID_050D&PID_705C&REV_4810

... and how do you like that. When I search Google for this piece of something that's attached, all the results I spotted were Linux, with actual details of what the device is, and what driver goes with it.

    If you were to really look at the options, rather than either looking at the anti-Linux slander, or going to 4chan for help, you'd see that there's a really excellent community. That is, unless you like to bitch all the time.

   

Re:More to come

[ZERO1ZERO]

I totally agree. "It's not working" is usually followed by a bunch of questions like "In what way is it not working" , "What is not working", "it looks working to me" Turn it on and say - "there it's working" etc

Post-ballot data

[RightSaidFred99]

Be interesting to see if this has any effect on browser usage statistics. Would be hilariously funny if IE actually gains traction. I doubt it though, I don't think IE8 is bad at all but even I use Firefox.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Wintywasthere]

Based on the recent bad press that IE has had...I really doubt it'll gain anything. To be fair though the people that see this and then haven't already made a browser choice probably haven't seen many recent press releases about browsers. I'm guessing they'll go with the (probably well presented) Microsoft option..

Re:Post-ballot data

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to present IE completely equitably with the other browsers. They show in random order with similar sized logos and all. In the Gizmodo screen shot, Google Chrome is first, followed by Firefox, then Safari, IE, and Opera. http://gizmodo.com/5475490/microsofts-impartial-antitrust+friendly-browser-ballot-screen. Doesn't seem like a slam dunk at all that people would choose IE from this.

Re:Post-ballot data

[drachenstern]

Bear in mind it only shows IE8 equitably. Even Microsoft would prefer to see people upgrade off IE6 or IE7. That's pretty big in and of itself, no? (ok, for security concerns obviously it's a great idea, but to pretty well force everyone to take notice that they should be running something other than IE6 or IE7 ...)

Re:Post-ballot data

[mister_playboy]

Bear in mind it only shows IE8 equitably. Even Microsoft would prefer to see people upgrade off IE6 or IE7. That's pretty big in and of itself, no? (ok, for security concerns obviously it's a great idea, but to pretty well force everyone to take notice that they should be running something other than IE6 or IE7 ...)

This ballot screen is for Windows 7, and neither IE6 nor IE7 have ever been available for this OS.

Re:Post-ballot data

[nmb3000]

Be interesting to see if this has any effect on browser usage statistics. Would be hilariously funny if IE actually gains traction.

Actually, it is much more likely that IE will lose market share from this when you consider that most users:

• are happy with what they have
• are not expecting a dialog box to jump at them
• do not understand the reason for such a dialog
• do not care what the dialog box says
• will just want the dialog box to go away

Most of them will simply click a button at random, all while wondering why their Windows is so annoying and hard to use. The most amazing thing is that some people still think this is a good thing:

"Millions of people who have never really thought about which browser to use will now be forced to make a choice," said BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones on his blog.

When did forcing users to make a choice they don't really understand become good design? Oh, that's right, it never did and this whole thing is a farce.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Endo13]

Well, the button-clicking probably won't be purely "random" for most of them. Although, their "logic" for which they click probably may as well be.

I'm guessing Opera will actually gain some marketshare because of this.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Low Ranked Craig]

IE8 is a baby step in the right direction, but it still exhibits some non-compliant CSS behaviors that FF, WebKit and Opera get right, and still requires some hacks. Not major stuff like in IE6 and 7, but still, annoying shit that shouldn't be there.

One that I ran across recently are random double margins in certain situations. I could not find a pattern, and had to use padding instead of margins... luckily in this case that wasn't a problem.

Re:Post-ballot data

[icebraining]

When did forcing users to make a choice they don't really understand become good design? Oh, that's right, it never did and this whole thing is a farce.

By reducing the market share of the browser that supports less features and suffers from most attacks, we reduce the number of botnets and delays for feature support like HTML5.
And if the user is so clueless he can't decide one of the browsers for himself, what does he have to lose anyway?

Re:Post-ballot data

[keeboo]

Seems to present IE completely equitably with the other browsers. They show in random order with similar sized logos and all (...)

I'm impressed.

I was expecting Microsoft to manage to fool the European Comission presenting a "technically correct" solution which, somehow, still favoured Internet Explorer.
That's really weird. There must be a loophole in all this.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Blakey Rat]

If the other browsers aren't well-presented, that's their own fault. All the copy/images was submitted by the browser team, it wasn't created by Microsoft.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Patik]

Except that most people think that blue E is literally "the internet", while the other logos (besides Google's name) will be somewhat alien to them.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Your.Master]

Nope, it's for Vista and XP too (from TFA).

Re:Post-ballot data

[TheLink]

Microsoft would be very stupid to do that.

The EC will just find a way to smack them even harder. They could get a bunch of independent or "independent" experts to give their opinion on whether the "technically correct" solution favoured IE or not, and present their conclusions.

Microsoft can get away with lots of stuff in the USA, but they're not considered an EU company like say Airbus.

If they hadn't already found Microsoft guilty then Microsoft could use technicalities and debate interpretations of laws to convince them that Microsoft is innocent. But Microsoft has already been found guilty.

If you want to stay somewhat unhindered in foreign countries, you don't piss off their governments and then try to weasel out of doing what they already said they want you to do.

Technicalities won't save you. Those Governments are unlikely to lose votes or support when they crush you (a foreigner) for misbehaving despite you trying to use some loophole. And the US Government is unlikely to burn any political/diplomatic capital to help Microsoft in this.

Re:Post-ballot data

[the_womble]

I wonder how many people will choose Chrome because they do not know the difference between a browser and a search engine?

Seriously, as 10 random non-geeks what web browser they use.

Re:Post-ballot data

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'm willing to bet that IE does gain share over this. Think about it, is a user that is so clueless that they need a "help me!" screen just to install a browser, gonna go with anything they haven't heard of? Hell they don't know squat, so they will go with what looks familiar, and that is the big blue E. They won't know what its called, but they will recognize that the big blue e was what they had last time, so that is what they will go for.

Personally I'll be more curious to see what happens when Opera STILL doesn't gain any share. I bet they'll scream about the order the browsers are presented in or something. To me this is just one more stupid hoop for MSFT to jump, just like that stupid Windows N crap. If folks didn't want Windows they'd go buy a Mac. And it isn't like installing a browser is rocket science folks. Those stupid enough to not even be able to install a browser without a ballot box will just choose IE anyway. All in all just another completely pointless exercise thought up by bureaucrats. Why am I not surprised.

Re:Post-ballot data

[moronoxyd]

Those Governments are unlikely to lose votes or support when they crush you (a foreigner) for misbehaving despite you trying to use some loophole.

Why do Americans think that the EU is only crushing American companies?
They apply the rules equaly to European companies as well.
Last year a German and a French energy company where fined half a billion Euros each for violating antitrust laws: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/09/1099

Re:Post-ballot data

[B2382F29]

Why do Americans think that the EU is only crushing American companies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_(psychology)

Re:Post-ballot data

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do Americans think that the EU is only crushing American companies?

Because America is built upon paranoia. Their government has convinced its people that everyone is against them and they must do everything to protect their paranoid delusions and self containment.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I'm willing to bet that IE does gain share over this.

That is impossible. I thought this was only being presented to people who run IE. All it takes is for a few thousand to choose something else and they start losing market share. They cannot actually gain market share unless this screen is presented to all users despite the browser they run!

Re:Post-ballot data

[legio_noctis]

This is true, but they won't just click on a random browser: they'll just close the ballot window and ignore the fact that it keeps popping up.

I see people every day open Internet Explorer and immediately close the 'please set up your browser' window, completely ignoring it and utterly oblivious to the fact that they could change that search bar at the top right ('oh, that's a search bar?') to something useful instead of Bing. When you tell them that they should probably just click through the extremely easy set of setup screens they look at you as if you're completely insane. I have also seen somebody installing FarCry on Vista, who, having ticked the DirectX9 box even though I told them not to, when presented with a message saying something along the lines of 'Um, you can't do that', had already ejected the disk and closed the installer by the time I could open my mouth.

This can be condensed into the first rule of interface design: people ignore everything you tell them, even if it is blindingly, patronisingly obvious. Yet, somehow, they still manage to click on adverts to install Zwinky.

Re:Post-ballot data

[xaxa]

Except that most people think that blue E is literally "the internet", while the other logos (besides Google's name) will be somewhat alien to them.

Perhaps this explains the timing of Google's massive advertising campaign for Chrome in the UK. Many busy London Underground stations have a massive advert for Chrome on the platform, they advertised on the entire front page of the UK's largest free newspaper, and have outdoor adverts. as well as banners on general websites (newspapers etc).

Re:Post-ballot data

[nutshell42]

Would be hilariously funny if IE actually gains traction. I doubt it though, I don't think IE8 is bad at all but even I use Firefox.

Most people who know what a browser is and who have an interest in another browser have jumped ship by now. The rest's gonna choose IE because MS were the only ones with enough brains to put "Internet" in the browser name. Internet Explorer is self-explanatory, Mozilla Firefox isn't.

That said its impossible for IE to gain traction from a ballot screen that only appears for those who already have IE as default browser.

Re:Post-ballot data

[jonbryce]

I think the name people are going to recognise most in that list is Google, and Google have had lots of poster ads for their browser recently.

Re:Post-ballot data

[jonbryce]

Because EON and Gaz de France are not household names in the USA, so their local press isn't interested and doesn't cover it.

Re:Post-ballot data

[jonbryce]

They tried that already, and the EU sent them back for another attempt.

The first attempt had the top five browsers ordered by market share. It had to be five to include the Norwegian company who complained about it in the first place. Now it is the top five in random order. Hopefully the Windows eqivalent of /dev/random isn't weighted in favour of Internet Explorer.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Spatial]

There are other reasons. In America, corporate fines happening in other countries are not generally reported in the news unless the fines are being applied to an American company. To the casual observer it creates the illusion that only those companies are being fined.

In short, be aware of just how insular the news is, or you will be severely mislead.

Re:Post-ballot data

[dotancohen]

Be interesting to see if this has any effect on browser usage statistics. Would be hilariously funny if IE actually gains traction.

Actually reading the choices and the explanations on the Browser Choice screen, if one were to ignore the names of the browser I'd chose IE8. The Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari text sound like cheap spam advertising, while the IE text sounds honest.

Re:Post-ballot data

[hairyfeet]

Nope, it will be presented on first run of new OEM builds there, just like you get when you have to set up your user account. I have heard they are gonna back port it and release it as a "security" update, one more way to use autoupdates incorrectly, but again if someone is soooo clueless that they can't even install a browser except with the help of a ballot box, well they will go for what looks familiar, and that's the big blue e.

Believe me, working PC repair I know of which I speak. I have had to argue for a good 30 minutes with a lady that thought because you had the big blue e you already HAD the Internet, like the Internet was a product you boxed up and installed OEM. You give a customer like that a ballot box all they are gonna do is look at the pictures and pick the one that looks familiar, and that'll be IE.

Re:Post-ballot data

[Jedi Alec]

Ehmm, in the previous situation your typical clueless user had no idea there was such a thing as an alternative browser and thus among this specific group use of IE was 100%. Care to explain how presenting them with a choice will increase that number?

Re:Post-ballot data

[wvmarle]

US compang0ies fined by the EU is (big) news in the US, MS being fined half a million euros probably makes the evening news.

European companies fined by the EU are an internal affair and will not be in the US papers. Well a short bit in the business section maybe.

So basically, from the US consumer pov, all fines issued by the EU for misbehaving companies are to US companies. It is the media bias that is reflected here. A totally understandable media bias, as they target a US audience, which of course is not interested as much in EU internal matters as it is in US related matters.

/.'d already?

[drachenstern]

The link isn't working, taking way too long... did we really /.-effect a Microsoft server? Too funny. Although, it's most likely not on the main Microsoft cloud.

Re:/.'d already?

[drachenstern]

Wow, I started getting the article to pull up, wanted to see the images (which for some reason weren't loading) so when I clicked on one, I got:

The image “http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/clip_image0024_thumb_01FF3E3A.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Intriguinger and Intriguinger.

Oh, and the comments on the article are somewhat lol. somewhat.

Re:/.'d already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why the hell is it so slow? Is it in the process of running Windows update?

Re:/.'d already?

[Jorl17]

/.? No, it's a mental hallucination. Go back to sleep and it shall be reborn.

Re:/.'d already?

[Holmwood]

I'm using Ubuntu as a guest OS on Windows 7. Doesn't work. Going there directly via IE8/Win 7 (Host OS) it doesn't work either. (TFA is fine; it's the post on microsoftontheissues.com that won't load).

It would be pretty amusing if Microsoft designed a website hosting a blog that discusses browser choice to not function properly with Linux-hosted browsers.

Re:/.'d already?

[trapnest]

Good job modding troll what is clearly a joke.

Re:/.'d already?

[Mr. DOS]

That's the default error Firefox displays when it fails to load an image accessed directly (it's usually due to either a connection or server timeout). The actual JPEG's are kosher when they finally load.

      --- Mr. DOS

11 browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

11 browsers? how many of them have >1%market penetration? This is going to confuse the less versed users and I bet one ballmer's chair this is intentional, divide et impera

Re:11 browsers

[drachenstern]

11 has been long known in this space. The above comment is a nonquestion.

Re:11 browsers

[dave562]

I challenge you to name the top 11 browsers off the top of your head without searching for them. Go. 11 browsers. Other users of "this space" are waiting.

Re:11 browsers

[CannonballHead]

Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, K-Meleon, Konqueror, SeaMonkey, IceWeasel, and that's about all I can name.

Of course, IceWeasel and SeaMonkey are forks of Firefox I guess. On the whole, I agree with the GP - offering 11 browsers is ridiculous. Unfortunately, that was probably the only way to be "fair" to everyone... except the end user.

I would have rather had the EU tell Microsoft "You can keep your browser but you have to get it up to current standards." THAT would have accomplished something good.

Re:11 browsers

[wisdom_brewing]

IE 1
IE 2
IE 3
IE 4
IE 5
IE 6
IE 7
IE 8
Firefox
Opera
Safari

Re:11 browsers

[dave562]

You did much better than I could. I know Firefox and IE because those are the two browsers that I can manage via GPO on my network. I know Safari because that is the default OSX browser that some people in the design department use. Beyond that I know about Opera and Opera-Mini through friends and because O-Mini is what I use on my Blackberry. Do SeaMonkey and IceWeasel even work on Windows? I only hear Linux users talking about those. Of course there is Chrome. It's pretty much impossible to not know about Chrome.

Re:11 browsers

[CannonballHead]

Well, I used K-Meleon and Konqueror on Linux. There's the Gnome one but I forgot what that is.

I don't know if seamonkey and icweweasel have Windows builds. I actually preferred it to Firefox on slower boxes that I installed with Linux... they both actually worked fairly well.

Opera is actually kinda nifty, but I still prefer Chrome at the moment :)

Re:11 browsers

[CannonballHead]

Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, AOL, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant Browser, Sleipnir and Slim Browser.

Ah yes, AOL... good thing that's an option! Much better than IE.

I've heard of Avant and Flock. I've never heard of Maxthon, Sleipnir, or Slim Browser. I've used Avant and disliked it.

This seems remarkably ... pointless, as someone else said.

Re:11 browsers

[dave562]

You went back that far, but didn't mention Mosaic? Come on now..

Re:11 browsers

[drachenstern]

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2009/07/28/browser-ballot-screen-isn-t-just-for-windows-7.aspx

who has time to do that? I'll just point to something that's more than 6 months old (albeit this one mentions just 10, other sources shortly thereafter were mentioning 11 or more such as
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/18/0210240/How-Europes-Mandated-Browser-Ballot-Screen-Works
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142416/FAQ_How_the_IE_ballot_screen_works
which listed:

The first five are Apple's Safari, Google's Chrome, Microsoft's IE, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera. On a second screen, the ballot will list AOL, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant Browser, Sleipnir and SlimBrowser.

so ...)

It also would appear as though Microsoft wanted to do a "top ten" http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jul09/07-24statement.mspx so I believe that they are using the "top ten" plus IE8, thus making 11.

Also, it's important to note that three or four of these browsers (at a minimum) are rebranded IE experiences, using the IE rendering engine. A couple are rebranded Firefox builds.

Also:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1927255/Microsoft-Agrees-To-EU-Browser-Ballot-Screen?from=rss

Re:11 browsers

[mr_lizard13]

It would be better if they just made the most popular browser the default.

Re:11 browsers

[BeeRockxs]

SeaMonkey is not a fork of Firefox, it's the old Mozilla suite evolved.

Re:11 browsers

[dunkelfalke]

Iceweasel is a strictly Debian fork, Seamonkey is the good old Mozilla browser and it was always multiplatform.

Re:11 browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

11 has been long known in this space. The above comment is a nonquestion.

Score:-1, Dick

Re:11 browsers

[Golddess]

11 has been long known in this space.

In base-4 maybe...

Before today they've only ever mentioned five browsers. The first link won't load for me, but from the second link...

Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera are the alternative browsers that people will be offered.

Not among the alternative browsers, the alternative browsers. Meaning those four, plus IE, and no more.

Re:11 browsers

[guyminuslife]

We are offering a choice of 11 different web browsers with new versions of Microsoft Windows, including:

Microsoft Browsers:
Internet Explorer 6
Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 8

Non-Microsoft Browsers:
Lynx
w3m
Mosaic
Safari (Macintosh only)
Netscape Navigator 4.08
Image Xplorer
Emacs
The browser from the online tutorial code for beginning KDE programming

WARNING: If you choose any of the non-Microsoft browsers in the above list, please be aware that they are THIRD PARTY applications that are UNSUPPORTED by Microsoft Corp. Microsoft makes no guarantees as to the functionality or features of any non-Microsoft browser, and disclaims any responsibility for viruses or other malware that unsupported browsers may or may not contain.

Re:11 browsers

[Simmeh]

actually, I posted 11 *alternative* browsers, making it 12 including IE.

Re:11 browsers

[keeboo]

Iceweasel is a strictly Debian fork, Seamonkey is the good old Mozilla browser and it was always multiplatform.

I'm not sure Iceweasel could be even called a fork from Firefox (in the usual sense at least).
Here you may read about.

Re:11 browsers

[FreakyGreenLeaky]

You seem to be missing the point of choice and the whole reason behind theEU requiring this. By your logic, just make windows the default, ms office the default, ie the default, etc, etc.

Re:11 browsers

[DirtyCanuck]

As the white haired 70 yr old man is about to die, with his last breath he whispers to his grandson.....

Net....Scape...

To this day his grandson is confused as to whatever his grandfather could be referencing.

The tearful ending is that his grandfather is Jim Clark.

Re:11 browsers

[Ja'Achan]

I use SeaMonkey on Windows, it works well for me.

Re:11 browsers

[dunkelfalke]

I know about the rebranding issue but since there are were also some source code modifications to fit Debian better (and not just different icons), you can safely call it a fork.

Re:11 browsers

[Shimbo]

11 browsers? how many of them have >1%market penetration? This is going to confuse the less versed users

Well they say 11 but it's 5 + 6 really. That is, they are randomly placed but in two groups - the big 5: IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Firefox are the only ones visible without scrolling. Most people aren't going to look at the 'below the fold" browsers.

Re:11 browsers

[jonbryce]

In the order presented on my cheat sheet:

Safari
Chrome
Internet Explorer
Firefox
Opera
AOL
Maxthon
K-Meleon
Flock
Avant Browser
Sleipnir
Slim Browser

Some of those get into the top 11 because they are popular in China and Japan.

Re:11 browsers

[jonbryce]

Firefox is actually a fork of Seamonkey.

Re:11 browsers

[AmiMoJo]

The split is somewhat uneven when you look at it by rendering engine:

IE (Trident) based:
- IE
- Maxthon
- Slim Browser
- Avant Browser
- AOL

Switch between IE (Trident) and Gecko:
- Sleipnir

Gecko:
- Firefox
- Flock
- K-Meleon

Webkit:
- Safari
- Chrome

Opera:
- Opera

What you have to keep in mind though is that Maxathon and Sleipnir are both confined almost exclusively to one country (China and Japan respectively). Slim Browser seems to be mostly a German thing too. The point is that anyone outside those countries is unlikely to give them serious consideration, where as most of the non-IE browsers have world wide appeal.

Webkit's influence is much greater than that list suggests too. Most mobile/embedded browsers use it so web developers do well to make sure their pages work in it. Now that IE6 is dying off rapidly and IE8 is at least half way standards compliant the old "write one page/stylesheet for IE, another for everything else" problem is mostly redundant now too.

Re:11 browsers

[mr_lizard13]

Whooooooosh.....

Re:11 browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know is why my crappy browser with three buttons (forward, back, refresh) isn't included! It's only fair, right?!

Re:11 browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

I have'nt got 11 browsers on the top of my head.

Mirror....

[ZiakII]

The site with the picture did not load for me, I found the image on The Register with story listed here.

Re:Mirror....

[sloomis]

I liked this from the register article
Still, it's interesting to note that in Microsoft's posting, Explorer has been discretely pushed to almost the end of the list.
Please, here is the code they used to get IE in that place

11 Browsers?

[Hasney]

I honestly didn't know there were that many constantly update, up-to-spec browsers for Windows.

Please God don't let any of them be Netscape.

Re:11 Browsers?

[Nadaka]

Please God, let one of them be a telnet terminal.

Re:11 Browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

or gopher? i hear it's losing popularity as of late?

Re:11 Browsers?

[martin-boundary]

I honestly didn't know there were that many constantly update, up-to-spec browsers for Windows.

See? That's the benefit of having a totally professional system with an ultra-stable, totally dependable and unchanging set of system DLLs, so the programmers can totally concentrate on the specs of their browsers.

Re:11 Browsers?

[DigiShaman]

By default, Windows 7 does not have a Telnet client installed. I found this out when attempting to troubleshoot SMTP for a mail server. It can be enabled if you don't want to bother with PuTTY.

To enable it go through Start --> Control Panel --> Programs --> Programs and Features --> Turn Windows features on or off -- Telnet Client.

Re:11 Browsers?

[StikyPad]

One of them better be LYNX.

Re:11 browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, I have[1] more than 11 browsers on a UFD[2]; including all but flock and IE from the ballot-list plus a few other rarer ones - not all of them even listed on 'list of browsers' on wikipedia nor not all available on evolt browser archive.
Easily more than two dozen browsers if you count different major versions of one browser.

[1] Some run directly off the UFD, some as self-extracting 7z archives, none downloaded from portableapps.com and like such as, uh, portablefreeware.com {1}

[2] Usb Flash Disk (actually a Sandisk SD Plus)

      {1} Caitlin Upton reference

Re:11 browsers?

[0232793]

About half of them use Trident from IE, so what's the point in testing them specifically?

Re:11 Browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is it not installed? Or turned off? There's a difference.

Re:11 Browsers?

[cpicon92]

That's what I thought, so I went and tried the ones on the list that weren't the "Big Five." Interestingly they were all custom shells for the IE Trident rendering engine. Let's see how many years until I bother to uninstall them.

Re:11 browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would be a really useful option for my mum. Numbnuts. If you're testing websites in different browsers, I'd hope you're savvy enough to download those browsers, run the installer and...click install. It's not rocket science.

Re:11 browsers?

[Infernal Device]

The point of the selection screen is not to provide a lab-testing box - it's to fulfill a requirement by the EU that they offer alternative browsers to non-professional consumers.

Air France here I come!

[WillAffleckUW]

Might as well pick up some nice laptops while I'm there ...

Re:Air France here I come!

[Cili]

Don't. They are ridiculously expensive here, when compared to USA.

I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[dave562]

Microsoft agreed to use Windows Update to provide a browser choice screen to Windows users in Europe who are running Internet Explorer as their default browser.

Who wants to bet we are going to see posts here after this feature is rolled out from users who don't have IE configured as their default browser? They will be complaining about not being presented with a choice of alternate browsers, even though they have already selected one.

Furthermore, the article states that the top browsers (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, IE) are going to be presented in random order. I can't wait for the whines from people who happen to see IE as the random first choice.

Here, I'll come up with one for you guys.

"Whaaaa!! IE was first on the SO CALLED RANDOM browser choice list. Obviously Microsoft weighted their algorithm to give preference to IE. My mom and third cousin also both had IE show up first. It's a conspiracy!"

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I got IE first too! It made me click on it, because I wanted the "internet". Microsoft has brainwashed me.. We should class-action sue them to oblivion for that too. Come join us, it's lotsa fuun (for the whole family! ;-)

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Mutant321]

The random order makes sense, and I've seen it used in other similar situations (like the list of domain registrars on the NZ domain name commission site). But I wonder how this randomness (and potentially other aspects of the ballot screen) are verified by the authorities. Is the code turned over to them? Or do they have to black box test it? If the latter, then maybe MS have fudged it so IE *will* appear towards the top more often.

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you actually looked at the page?

IT USES JAVASCRIPT.

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whaaaa!! IE was first on the SO CALLED RANDOM browser choice list. Obviously Microsoft weighted their algorithm to give preference to IE. My mom and third cousin also both had IE show up first. It's a conspiracy!"

 
You kid, but I've heard people accuse Microsoft of picking the Windows XP kung-fu display picture as their login picture because they had an asian name.

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[hanabal]

this is a good theory apart from the detail that the browsers are in a horizontal list, so no one is at the top. Now if there is a user preference for picking left side or right side or middle I'm not sure

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I'm in. Microsoft ruined my life so I want to do them. My girlfriend saw Clippy wink at me, accused me of having an affair and left me. And the Wizard raped my dog. :o(

Re:I can already anticipate the ignorant posts

[Anonymous Coward]

IE8 came up 5th on my list. So, no, it's not a conspiracy. And let's remember that a compromise was reached AFTER Microsoft volunteered to do this......,they was'nt MADE to do it, at all. I don't see what's so 'evil' about bundling your OWN software with your OWN operating system. Bloody good business sense, to me.......I use IE8 cos' it's made by Microsoft and I use the Microsoft operating system. Perhaps Google, Firefox, Opera and Safari should be forced to supply the updates for IE8, as they're SO keen on a level playing-field.

(Keep sending the cheques, Bill)

Pointless

[Sir_Sri]

Lovely, so now a bunch of tech savvy people are going to be getting calls asking how to make these screens go away and never come back.

Users don't want choice, they don't want complexity, menus are complexity. Even that stupid setup menu on IE when you first install it scares the hell out of people and they just have to keep clicking 'not right now' or whatever it is EVERY time they start the application because they don't know how to make it go away. They want shit that does its thing that they don't have to think about and for whatever they're doing IE already does that. If you have enough know how to not use IE already, you don't. If you don't have the know how sticking some other choice for you there is just going to break stuff and confuse people. I feel bad for people who will accidentally choose google chrome or safari and then not have a clue how to use it, and not have a clue how to immediately revert the system to what they did have that let them do whatever they were doing.

Not a bad concept in the 'when it's installed' sense, and on purely legal basis it makes sense, but it's not the sort of thing you want to be pushing out to live OS's that people are actually using right now. Even then putting anything other than IE8 on tends to be risky, everything is designed to work in IE, less so with firefox and way less so with any other choice, that's going to hobble people who suddenly have a new browser and no idea how to make it work.

Re:Pointless

[alvinrod]

Personally I think MS should have completely removed the browser from the operating system and not used this system. If for no other reason than to comply with the regulation while giving the other browser manufacturers a big middle finger. They could have left it up to the hardware manufacturers to put a browser of their choice on it. Considering the amount of other crap that they usually put on PCs it probably won't be a big deal. Then MS could just pay them to include IE as the default.

Re:Pointless

[Kocureq]

Oh this "welcome to new IE8" window is annoying as hell. Try to setup multiple virtual machines - servers, clients, whatever. You HAVE to click through those options on every new VM you setup. It's a pain in the back.

Re:Pointless

[Animaether]

Personally I think MS should have completely removed the browser from the operating system and not used this system.

They tried that - although probably as a bluff - and the EU denied MS that approach.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

So an iPad would be perfect?

Re:Pointless

[mr_lizard13]

everything is designed to work in IE, less so with firefox and way less so with any other choice

Whilst I think that's not really the case these days (5 years ago perhaps), I really can't see how people will find a browser like Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc any more difficult to use than IE.

They all have navigation buttons, some sort of address/search bar, tabs, etc etc.

They all work very well. They all work with all the important plugins. And they all look and function more or less the same.

Some would argue that they function better than the leading browser, too.

I understand what you mean though about menus and choices adding complexity. But really, this ballot screen ain't that hard to figure out. Computers have to present the user with a choice from time to time. They're not appliances. At some point, the user will have to make a choice about something.

Not ideal, but better than letting IE get a free ride. The web gets better for everyone the more choice there is, even if that means confusing a few million people.

Re:Pointless

[headbulb]

While I agree that Microsoft's IE is bloated and shouldn't show that dialog on start. I strongly disagree that somehow users that chose another browser like Chrome or safari will be confused. Those two alternative options are much easier for a user then the default IE.

Re:Pointless

[Sir_Sri]

They all work very well... for people who know what address bars and tabs are.

Seriously, you're setting the bar way higher than the average user.

Plugins? What's a plugin? Why is this asking me to download something? How do I install something? Ever tried to install flash in firefox? You have to download and run an executable, it terrifies people, they don't know if the site they're getting it from might be hacked, the usually don't know how to find the file they've downloaded to run it. If it doesn't just run on it's own it's too hard for the average user.

Firefox and opera certainly function better on sites *I* visit than say my 70 year old father and his wife. The websites I visit are built for people with the assumption they might not use IE. But my dad's wife manages to find these odd flash game sites that never work right in anything other than IE. And they run their computer on a 20 inch monitor in 800x600 mode because well, it makes everything look bigger, so they can read it better. Good luck getting webpages designed for the young tech savy firefox user to behave nicely in 800x600 (except google).

To anyone capable of reading, the menu screen shouldn't be hard, but it is. It causes regular users to panic and look for a 'get me the fuck away from here' button. It's how all the phishing/internet security 2010 type attacks succeed unfortunately. People want appliances. They're scared of choices they aren't capable of making in an informed fashion.

Like I say, it's the sort of thing that makes sense on a new computer. People *expect* and accept that on a new computer they will have to learn a new of way of doing things and learn new stuff. On average even my first year university students panic when something shows up with different settings than they're used to. If they expect it to be the same they don't want new. And even then, when presented with the choice, they aren't going to want to rock the boat.

Re:Pointless

[daveime]

Meh, I'm just waiting for the first malicious website popup that looks *exactly* like the browser choice screen to appear.

You're using IE8, visit a website, all of a sudden a window pops up asking you if you want to install a different browser. Download and instant box pwnage.

You think Granny is going to know the difference, especially after her grandson explained "this is normal, and lets you choose other things to use" ?

Congrats EU, you've done a fine job in making people trust popups and increasing the botnet population.

Re:Pointless

[Wayne247]

It's really something to witness. I was next to a coworker that was telling me about the damn window that popped up everytime he launched IE8 and didn't know what to do about it. I tell him "Read it?" he goes "okay fine", he reads it skipping every other word, then goes "Well? I don't want anything so waht do I click?"

As an IT administrator, I would like to tape iPads in front of user's screens. This is going to be so simple they can't do it wrong.

Re:Pointless

[martin-boundary]

As an IT administrator, I would like to tape iPads in front of user's screens. This is going to be so simple they can't do it wrong.

Sorry to disappoint you, but we all *know* they'll just tear the iPads off and use them as mousepads.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for Ubuntu to get nailed with antitrust for distributing FIrefox with every new installation.

Re:Pointless

[DavidRawling]

Yes. You must force people to choose between the one we force you to install and therefore support, and others we force you to make available to the user. While I know this is because they are "a convicted monopolist" it doesn't necessarily make it right. You know, the old two wrongs thing.

Re:Pointless

[DavidRawling]

Oh cry me a river. I'll help you out. It's not like the very first link gives you a viable solution now is it?

Re:Pointless

[Kocureq]

right... so after setting up a VM I can either click through this window or apply registry hack / GPO change? How "viable" is that? and what difference does it make?

Re:Pointless

[c-reus]

Canonical is not the author of Firefox

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Base your VMs off an image where you have already clicked through the screen?

Re:Pointless

[hkmwbz]

giving the other browser manufacturers a big middle finger

Yeah, throwing childish tantrums would be just the icing on the cake for Microsoft. Great idea!

You realize how moronic you sound when suggesting something like that? It's like saying that a bank robberer should throw the money he stole into the fire when he gets caught just to give everyone else the middle finger.

LOL.

They could have left it up to the hardware manufacturers to put a browser of their choice on it.

Microsoft has a history of bullying hardware manufacturers into not doing that.

Re:Pointless

[hkmwbz]

Since you know everything, why didn't you send them suggestions on how to do it? You can't come whining after it happened if you think you are so clever you know what they should have done.

By the way, are you saying that throwing kidnappers in jail is wrong? Since, after all, locking people up is generally not a good thing. But the government does it. Why is it right when the government locks a guy up for locking someone else up? You know, the old two wrongs thing...

Re:Pointless

[Spatial]

The average user would be a hell of a lot less retarded if there were actual computer education in mandatory schooling, as opposed to what they have now: Microsoft Office training.

How good would you be at mathematics if you were taught how to solve a single equation? Never given a glimpse into general problem solving? That's computer education right now. Worse than useless.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

That is what they should have done 10+ years ago, these days a browser is an expected part of an OS, so that isn't a reasonable solution.

Re:Pointless

[Jesus_666]

Problem: What if I do a clean install of Windows and I don't have another computer nearby to download a browser? There needs to be something in the OS that lets me access the web, even if it's just a menu that allows me to choose between various browsers. Yes, in theory my computer vendor might have given me a CD with a browser on it but that's not a real alternative. Those things get tossed or lost or people install the three years old version of Firefox on them and never bother to update.

Re:Pointless

[mr_lizard13]

They all work very well... for people who know what address bars and tabs are

I agree that these things can be complex for an average joe, but don't all browsers have these things? How does this make the browser ballot screen a bad idea, especially if all the choices come with tabs and address bars?

Seriously, you're setting the bar way higher than the average user.

Plugins? What's a plugin? Why is this asking me to download something? How do I install something?

Again, all browsers use plugins, don't they? If I visit a site in IE that needs the silverlight plugin, won't I be prompted to download it, just as I would if I visit the same site in Firefox, Opera, Safari etc? I'm not sure how IE is any easier here.

Ever tried to install flash in firefox? You have to download and run an executable, it terrifies people, they don't know if the site they're getting it from might be hacked, the usually don't know how to find the file they've downloaded to run it.

Agreed - it's things like this that make the web overly complicated. Now, I don't know what it's like to download flash in firefox (or IE, or any other browser), but from what I can tell browsers other than IE tend to do a better job of helping people find the file they've downloaded. Firefox has a download window, and Chrome seems to go one better with a download bar at the bottom of the screen.

That doesn't stop the whole episode being a shambles though. But again, I really don't see how IE is better in this regard.

Disclaimer: last used IE about 5 years ago, feel free to correct me into oblivion

Firefox and opera certainly function better on sites *I* visit than say my 70 year old father and his wife. The websites I visit are built for people with the assumption they might not use IE. But my dad's wife manages to find these odd flash game sites that never work right in anything other than IE.

OK, that's fair enough point, but that does sound like that site should be shut down. It must be designed pretty horrifically. There's absolutely no way that the vast majority of the web doesn't work in non-IE browsers.

And they run their computer on a 20 inch monitor in 800x600 mode because well, it makes everything look bigger, so they can read it better. Good luck getting webpages designed for the young tech savy firefox user to behave nicely in 800x600 (except google).

Doesn't a site look the same in IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome etc in 800x600 on a 20" monitor? How does IE perform any better and more user friendly in this situation?

To anyone capable of reading, the menu screen shouldn't be hard, but it is. It causes regular users to panic and look for a 'get me the fuck away from here' button. It's how all the phishing/internet security 2010 type attacks succeed unfortunately.

You're absolutely right.

People want appliances.

And appliances they should have. Unfortunately, computer's aren't appliances. They just aren't.

They're scared of choices they aren't capable of making in an informed fashion.

Like I say, it's the sort of thing that makes sense on a new computer. People *expect* and accept that on a new computer they will have to learn a new of way of doing things and learn new stuff.

I thought that this was only going to be rolled out on new computers, I didn't know it would be forced onto existing ones. I agree with the thrust of your comment completely- it would be wrong to make this screen appear for existing computers, and I hope they decide against this.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference it makes is that the registry "hack" / GPO change is trivially automated across all VMs.

I don't see why you scare-quote "viable". Of course it's viable.

Re:Pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Fkn A !!!!!!!

Now, how do I stop this goddam' screen running, every time I turn on my PC??????????????????

Re:irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey retard, Windows update has been out of IE for a while.

Why don't you take the time to learn something about the products that you're ranting against instead of looking like a total asshat? Or is that too hard for you to do?

Re:irrelevant

[RightSaidFred99]

Ding ding ding, you win the dumbest post of the thread award so far!

A few things.

a) It doesn't.

b) Why would anyone care that it does? Updating the OS is an OS function, if they choose to use IE to do it that's not depriving you of "choice" any more than if they wrote a custom GUI app to do it.

No longer true!

[MonTemplar]

Windows Update has been separated from IE in both Vista and Windows 7 - and apparently it will be backported to XP at some point in the future.

-MT.

Article Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a “Web browser choice screen” to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission. Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now. We’ll begin a limited roll-out externally next week, and expect that a full scale roll-out will begin around March 1, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. If you are an Internet Explorer user in Europe, here is what to expect.

First, a little background. In December, the European Commission and Microsoft arrived at a resolution of a number of long-standing competition law issues. Microsoft made a legally binding commitment that PC manufacturers and users will continue to be able to install any browser on Windows, to make any browser the default browser, and to turn access to Internet Explorer on or off. In addition, Microsoft agreed to use Windows Update to provide a browser choice screen to Windows users in Europe who are running Internet Explorer as their default browser. This browser choice screen will present a list of browsers, with links to learn more about them and install them. The design and operation of this choice screen was worked out in the course of extensive discussions with the Commission and is reflected in the commitment that Microsoft made. Users who get the choice screen will be free to choose any browser or stick with the browser they have, as they prefer.

External testing of the choice screen will begin next week in three countries: the United Kingdom, Belgium and France. Anyone in those countries who wishes to test it can download the browser choice screen software update from Windows Update. We plan to begin a phased roll-out of the update across Europe the week of March 1.

The browser choice screen software update will be offered as an automatic download through Windows Update for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The software update will be installed automatically, or will prompt you to download or install it, depending on which operating system you are running and your settings for Windows Update. If you do not have automatic updating enabled, you can get the choice screen by going to Windows Update and clicking on “Check for Updates.”

If you are running Internet Explorer as your default browser, here is what you will see after the software update is installed. An introductory screen appears first. In the screen shot below we added a few comment bubbles to point out certain features. The introductory screen provides context for the next screen, which shows browser options.

Windows 7 users can “pin” frequently-used programs to the taskbar (shown along the bottom of the screen, above.) If Internet Explorer was “pinned” to your Windows 7 taskbar, the browser choice screen software update will automatically unpin it, as shown above. (Note that unpinning a program does not remove it from your computer.) Once you have selected your preferred browser, you can easily pin that browser to the taskbar just by right-clicking on the browser icon in the taskbar anytime it is running and selecting “pin this program to taskbar.”

If you have any trouble finding Internet Explorer after it is unpinned, just click on the Start icon at the lower-left corner of your desktop and type “Internet Explorer” in the search box above the Start flag. (You can find any program in this way.)

The browser choice screen, shown below, will present you with a list of leading browsers. In keeping with our agreement with the European Commission, this list is presented in random order. You can also scroll to the right to see additional browsers, which are also presented in random order. The browsers that are listed and the content relating to them will be updated from time to time. The screen provides three options: Click on “Install” to install one of the listed browsers. Click on “Tell me more” to get more information about any of the browsers. These links (and the br

Re:irrelevant

[CannonballHead]

Right. They shouldn't have any sort of internal displaying method for their OS.

I'm afraid most of the world doesn't care that they use IE when they use Windows Update. And those that care as much as you appear to probably don't use Windows ;) :)

Re:irrelevant

[mister_playboy]

Windows update has been separate from IE since Vista's launch.

Re:irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope he/she/it doesn't use windows. There are enough clueless bitches using windows as it is.

Re:irrelevant

[TheThiefMaster]

I had to install IE again the other day, or else the "Microsoft Update" link in Windows 7 wouldn't do anything. IE isn't actually required to use Microsoft Update once you've installed it, as far as I know. I needed it for a link.

"Microsoft Update" is an upgrade to Windows Update that works on all MS software you have installed, in case you hadn't noticed it. I wanted it to keep Visual Studio up to date.

Also, any applications that use the IE activex (like steam) won't let you open any links outside them (e.g. steam's screenshot gallery) without IE installed.

For now, I suspect I'm going to keep finding little reasons I can't get rid of it, even though I don't use it as my web browser.

Does IE "security" sabotage Firefox download?

[chriscorbell]

Has anyone recently tried to use IE to download firefox? Does IE adopt "security" policies to make it harder to download and install Firefox? I was experimenting with a fresh 2008 Server instance in EC2 the other day and needed to download some open-source packages to install. I found that IE was super paranoid about any download, especially from a mirror site, and would put up a security warning, make me click OK to whitelist the site, and then go back and try the download again. I went through all the settigns dialogs I could find trying to turn off this "feature" to no avail. Turns out if you download Firefox from the mozilla site it will redirect you to a different mirror each time - meaning you can do this dance repeatedly and never actually satisfy IE's bizarre "security". The workaround is to delve into one of the mirror sites and navigate to the download you need. I'm not a paranoid type but I find myself questioning whether this wasn't a deliberate "how can we make it a PITA to download Firefox" move by the IE crew.

Re:Does IE "security" sabotage Firefox download?

[dan828]

IE on a server install is locked up tightly. You know, to let you know that you shouldn't be surfing the web on your server anyways, what with security issues and the like. Do a google search for "2008 server as a workstation" to find some helpful tutorials for turning that security off.

Re:Does IE "security" sabotage Firefox download?

[ActionDesignStudios]

It's not an intentional pain in the ass because of the existence of Firefox -- IE on a server has almost always been a pain in the ass. It's a server, they harden the browser so you can't be doing stupid things on the Internet and end up compromising your server (although I think if this is really an issue, you shouldn't be administering a server in the first place).

Re:Does IE "security" sabotage Firefox download?

[ashridah]

This is actually a feature, as other posters have pointed out. It's called Internet explorer Enhanced Security or somesuch. You can disable it as a feature in Win2k8/Win2k3 via various means if you really want to use win2k8 as a desktop. Basically, it's the server's way of telling you you shouldn't be browsing the web, and if you try to, it's going to pester you about everything you visit.

It's a reasonable "duh" saftey net, imho, and sufficiently annoying enough to remember to minimize the RDP session and use your desktop.

Re:Does IE "security" sabotage Firefox download?

[cbhacking]

I'm trying to figure out how he didn't see the Enhanced Security warning screen... you know, the one that pops up the first time you start IE (and subsequently, if you don't turn off the warning) and tells you various things (including that downloading is restricted and security settings are very high). It also tells you how to turn off this feature, if you want to...

the 11 choices are

[rarel]

Mario

Luigi

Princess Peach

Wario

Yoshi

Toad

Donkey Kong

what...?

ooooh, browsers... ok, nevermind!

Re:the 11 choices are

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant

Ludwig
Lemmy
Roy
Iggy
Wendy
Morton Jr.
Larry

and possibly Bowser Junior.

11 is a crafty choice by MS

[dalhamir]

There's a decent amount of research (although, somewhat controversial) suggesting that providing too many choices may actually impede our ability to make rational choices, and would be less likely to experiment with an unfamiliar browser. Overview of some of the research can be found on the Freakonomics blog: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/is-the-paradox-of-choice-not-so-paradoxical-after-all/

Re:11 is a crafty choice by MS

[cynicist]

From the article,

The average of all these studies suggests that offering lots of extra choices seems to make no important difference either way. There seem to be circumstances where choice is counterproductive but, despite looking hard for them, we don’t yet know much about what they are. Overall, says Scheibehenne: “If you did one of these studies tomorrow, the most probable result would be no effect.” Perhaps choice is not as paradoxical as some psychologists have come to believe. One way or another, we seem to be able to cope with it.

Re:11 is a crafty choice by MS

[wvmarle]

Limiting the number of choices would give rise to many "how about me!" browser-maker complaints. The easiest choice is between two options. The biggest are now IE and FF. Do you want to favour them so much and exclude all competition? If not then you have to provide more options. Idealistically with space for any browser vendor to have their product "advertised" that way, but then again that would really give a too long list.

All in all seeing the screenshots it looks quite reasonable how they present the first five with their official short description, with choice for some more obscure choices as well.

The link

[ivonic]

You could just visit the browser ballot page directly.

For reference, the browsers listed are IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Flock, FlashPeak, K-Meleon, Avant, Maxthon, Sleipnir & GreenBrowser

Re:The link

[The_PHP_Jedi]

You could just visit the browser ballot page directly.

I was surprised none of the articles I've seen have provided a direct link... I saw the screenshot from the Microsoft blog, and figured the site was already live.

+1 Informative

Re:The link

[Anonymous Coward]

Maxthon is no browser, but an IE interface

Re:The link

[davek]

www.browserchoice.eu is an alias for prod.bswh.glbdns.microsoft.com

WTF? I thought the EU decision only required that the user is able to install windows w/o installing IE automatically. I did not know that MS is now legally required to provide free advertising to their competitors. I'm not a microsoft fan, but I didn't realize it had gone this far...

Try it out

[SoonerSkeene]

Here it is if you want to view the real thing:

http://www.browserchoice.eu/BrowserChoice/browserchoice_en.htm

Re:Try it out

[aflag]

It's funny how IE always shows up first and, only then, they are randomly reodered (at least on firefox.)

Re:Try it out

[SoonerSkeene]

Wow... so I bet if you turn off scripting, you see IE first every time. But then, only a very techy person would have done that, and they already installed firefox and know how to get what they want.

Re:Try it out

[Lulfas]

You do :D I visited the site with no script, and it didn't randomize anything. Always Microsoft/Firefox/Opera/Chrome. Funny way to do it...

Re:Try it out

[SoonerSkeene]

Why did it take Microsoft this long to create this choice page? It's 5 minutes of coding. The fact that this took this many months to be put together really shows how slow anything at Microsoft moves.

Re:Try it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Legal BS, probably.

Re:Try it out

[legio_noctis]

Even worse, s!

It's 2010, and this was created by a company with $58bn revenue.

How on earth did this get past all the 'legal BS' (to quote AC below)? Accessibility?

Re:Try it out

[legio_noctis]

Slashdot swallowed my tag.

11 browsers?

[jc42]

My first thought was "Can I tell it to load all 11 of them?" If so, it could make the Windows box useful for real web testing.

I do most of my actual testing on my Macbook Pro, because I have 9 browsers installed there. I also have a linux box with 5 browsers installed. My wife has a Windows XP partition on her iMac that has 3 browsers. For most of these, we had to download them and install them ourselves. A working package of 11 browsers could be really handy, especially when it comes time to reformat and reinstall, which happens quite often with "lab" testing machines.

Anyone know if MS's browser installer has an "All of them" choice?

Re:One of the menu choices is missing

[shutdown -p now]

It's the one with the blue "e" logo.

Why not the direct link?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.browserchoice.eu

Unless I'm mistaken, thats the link that'll be used.

Missing Option

[rlp]

So where's Lynx?

Re:Missing Option

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny...

Irrelevent

[pavon]

The 5 most popular are shown when the window first opens (in random order), you have to scroll over to see the rest. Furthermore, it can't be an evil scheme by Microsoft as it wasn't their choice - the idea, the criteria for browser selection, and the ordering of the browsers were forced on them by the EU

Obligatory...

[wickedskaman]

Great! Because this is the year of the Linux Desktop! :-)

Re:irrelevant

[daveime]

You know it's funny, because the exact opposite happened to me. I wanted AdBlockPlus and DownloadHelper, I downloaded the addons from the website, and could I get IE8 to install them ?

Maybe now you'll realise the ridiculousness of your post ? ActiveX doesn't work with non-MS applications ... well no shit, Sherlock.

Re:irrelevant

[Draek]

Most of the world doesn't care to use Windows Update in the first place, hence all of Windows' security problems.

Still waiting...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for when the EU will level the playing field and REQUIRE Apple and all flavors of linux to do the same.

javascript randomness

[crispi]

random my ass!

only appears to be random if you have javascript working (thanks noscript!) - Otherwise IE8 appears first on the list, on the left.

Re:javascript randomness

[TheLink]

If you already have javascript disabled (partially or totally) and can actually see that page then:

a) You have already chosen a non-IE browser
b) You have javascript disabled and you know what you are doing (and have as many different browsers as you want)
c) The organization that provided you the computer system has already chosen the browser for you.
d) The organization that provided you the computer system has disabled javascript and you're not supposed to enable it, much less change the browser.
e) You're using the wrong computer - go use your own PC.
f) You're some really fringe corner case.

Re:javascript randomness

[Akral]

There's one more problem.

While the page is loading and the Javascript has not yet run, you can see the IE being first and then it jumps to the required place.

Re:javascript randomness

[cbhacking]

Why use server cycles for an effectively static page? That site is probably going to see a lot of load, running even a simple PHP (or ASP.NET, it being MS) web application seems like a lot more overhead than some static HTML page with an embedded script that uses the client to do the work.

Re:javascript randomness

[Zxern]

If you're smart enough to run with noscript then you don't need the browser selection hand holding to begin with. 

Where are...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Arora http://code.google.com/p/arora/

Amaya http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

QtWeb http://www.qtweb.net/

Lunascape http://www.lunascape.tv/

Lynx http://lynx.isc.org/

SRWare Iron http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php

Chromium http://www.chromium.org/Home

ChromePlus http://www.chromeplus.org/

You didn't include them Microsoft? Unforgivable!

Pet peeve:

[Mr. DOS]

...people who confuse “the Internet” with “the web”.

Not like I'd expect Microsoft and their Internet Explorer (which has always targeted web browsing, barely supports FTP, and doesn't support anything else beyond handing it off to a helper program) to know the difference...

      --- Mr. DOS

Re:Pet peeve:

[Spatial]

My pet peeve is people calling the Internet "My Internet". I always ask them how they could afford such a thing. :)

Re:Pet peeve:

[Mr. DOS]

*ducks*

I'll admit I am guilty of that every time “my Internet” (access) drops. It feels like a natural abbreviation. That's probably due to excess exposure to stupidity, though...

      --- Mr. DOS

I forgot Midori

[Anonymous Coward]

Midori http://www.twotoasts.de/index.php?/pages/midori_summary.html

Shame on me.

You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU only punishes successful American companies ;)

Apple choice?

[farble1670]

is Apple required to do something similar, to offer an alternative to Safari?

Re:Apple choice?

[DavidRawling]

No, because Apple is not a monopolist in that space. The fact that they force a browser on the device they sell (Safari) and didn't permit others, for a long time (has anyone seen competing browsers in the app store?) is completely different from Microsoft shipping their browser as part of the OS and the default browser, and permitting the user to install new browsers for the past 14 years.

Re:Apple choice?

[itsdapead]

(has anyone seen competing browsers in the app store?)

Let's see:

Perfect Browser 3
Mercury web browser
Privately - Web browser
Full Browser
Mango Browser
Atomic Web Browser
Show 18 more

Admittedly, they're probably all using the same browser widget from the OS. Also, AFAIK, we've yet to see whether Apple are going to raise any objection to Opera Mini...

Meanwhile, on your Mac, go to Apple Menu, "Mac OS X Software" to get the official Apple software downloads page and Firefox is currently #5 on the "Top Downloads" list. They don't exactly make it difficult...

is completely different from Microsoft

...with over 90% of the desktop OS market...

shipping their browser as part of the OS

...starting back in the day when OSs didn't routinely include web browsers, and a market in third-party web browsers was developing nicely...

and the default browser,

...while telling the antitrust hearings that it was totally impossible to change this...

and permitting the user to install new browsers for the past 14 years.

...a bit like Apple have always done on their computers (the EU ruling isn't about phones), you mean?

Stop being dim

[Anonymous Coward]

The EU didn't choose the number of browsers they had to offer. That was one area where Microsoft were left with some choice, and inevitably, they did what they could to work the system against the user's best interest and for their own.

Re:Stop being dim

[Anonymous Coward]

The terms of the EU agreement did not give Microsoft a choice. It had to show those five prominently (equally prominently, on average, on an unmodified system), and a bunch more less prominently.

If Microsoft were given a choice, there would probably be *fewer* browsers, just because that statistically makes them more likely to hit IE. Or else they'd give *ALL* browsers they could think of, to really flood the choice list.

The layout engines

[Anonymous Coward]

IE, Maxthon, Sleipnir, Avant, GreenBrowser, Flashpeak: MS Trident
Firefox, Flock, K-Meleon: Mozilla Gecko
Chrome, Safari: Webkit/KHTML
Opera: Presto

Re:The layout engines

[baka_toroi]

Sleipnir uses both Trident and Gecko.

Re:irrelevant

[TheThiefMaster]

I think you completely misunderstand. The "IE ActiveX" I am referring to is a version of IE designed for embedding inside other applications, not an addon for IE.
The "IE" ActiveX works perfectly happily in a non-MS application, in this case Steam. It even works without "IE" installed. However, when you click a "new window" link, it insists on trying to launch actual IE instead of your default browser, even if you don't have actual IE installed.

Fabolous reasoning.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most browsers have less thna 1% penetration because of abusive monopolistic practices that break the law, so why should the abusive monopolist be punished?

Honestly, how some of you manage to get out of bed without being overwhelmed by your flawed thinking?

Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people around here really think that people are brain dead.

In any case, that is beyond the point. People may want many things, but those things may be against their own interests, or may abate the illegal behaviour of a third party.

I am sure people want free game consoles for example, but if they are provided by a thief that stole them first beofre giving them away, that does not mean people are entitled to have them.

Same way with browsers: people may want to forget about them and have somthing that just works, but the abusive illegal behaviour of a company has forced the EU to find contermeasures that at this point will inconvenience the public (that is what noramlly happens when somebody breaks the law: the public is inconveneinced, but that is not normally the fault of tha authorities, look at the people that think that can get away with anything ...).

Now, if you have a better idea to promote competition and curb illegal or abusive behaviour from some companies, you are very welcome to suggest them. I for one can't see what is the unsurmountable inconveneince in clicking an icon to select a web browser.

MD5 and filesize comparsion

[dvh.tosomja]

MD5sum
858058d87188a12f72029d1028ffd4e6 Firefox Setup 3.6.exe from microsoft
dc78b7241e2b23672b680ef1f86a5130 Firefox Setup 3.6.exe from mozilla.org

8652600 bytes - Firefox Setup 3.6.exe
8674624 bytes - Firefox Setup 3.6-ms.exe

I wonder what are those additional 22kb...

Other practises of bundling

[janwedekind]

The question is where does the manufacturer's choice stop and where does the customer's choice start. But there are many more examples which clearly don't have a technical justification:

• OEM deals, pre-installed Windows Vista on a PC (without installation media, with backup partitions taking up the whole hard disk)
• Microsoft site-license and campus-license
• Pre-installed MacOS on Apple computers
• Contract phones (and netbooks), SIM-locks
• Apple iTunes tying music and books to a certain device
• Microsoft XBox and Windows Live
• Apple iPhone and AppStore
• Amazon Kindle, eBooks

Re:Other practises of bundling

[itsdapead]

The question is where does the manufacturer's choice stop and where does the customer's choice start.

Don't forget the monopoly/antitrust issue. If you have over 90% of the market, you have to live by different rules.

• OEM deals, pre-installed Windows Vista on a PC (without installation media, with backup partitions taking up the whole hard disk)

That's a decision by the individual PC maker - its not impossible to buy a PC without Windows.

• Pre-installed MacOS on Apple computers

Well, it was established in the Psystar case that Apple having a monopoly on Apple computers wasn't an antitrust issue. Meanwhile, Apple even bundle a utility to let you install Windows on your Mac...

• Contract phones (and netbooks), SIM-locks

The EU already have this in their sights (OK that's from 1996, but so was the browser bundling issue...)

Apple iTunes tying music and books to a certain device

Well, that's history with music, since Apple went over to DRM-free iTunes Plus and Amazon, Play.com etc. started selling DRM-free MP3s (and remember - iPods might not do .ogg but they can play .mp3 and unencrypted .aac from any source).

With books, true, but it needs sorting out for every DRM-encumbered ebook format, not just Apple. My solution: don't buy ebooks until they are (a) DRM-free and (b) somewhat cheaper (esp. for older books).

Re:Other practises of bundling

[janwedekind]

The question is where does the manufacturer's choice stop and where does the customer's choice start.

Don't forget the monopoly/antitrust issue. If you have over 90% of the market, you have to live by different rules.

Yes. Rules like this probably reflect the difficulty of the issue. And when Microsoft was under scrutiny in the US, they claimed that the "browser is an integral part of the operating system". I.e. they put technical reasons forward.

• OEM deals, pre-installed Windows Vista on a PC (without installation media, with backup partitions taking up the whole hard disk)

That's a decision by the individual PC maker - its not impossible to buy a PC without Windows.

But the decision is artificially constrained by the exclusivity of the deal. It's anti-competitive.

• Pre-installed MacOS on Apple computers

Well, it was established in the Psystar case that Apple having a monopoly on Apple computers wasn't an antitrust issue. Meanwhile, Apple even bundle a utility to let you install Windows on your Mac...

Yes. Under current law they can argue that they don't have monopoly on the computer market. If they ever achieve monopoly, I bet we will see them arguing "MacOS is an integral part of the Apple computer".

Apple iTunes tying music and books to a certain device

Well, that's history with music, since Apple went over to DRM-free iTunes Plus and Amazon, Play.com etc. started selling DRM-free MP3s (and remember - iPods might not do .ogg but they can play .mp3 and unencrypted .aac from any source).

With books, true, but it needs sorting out for every DRM-encumbered ebook format, not just Apple. My solution: don't buy ebooks until they are (a) DRM-free and (b) somewhat cheaper (esp. for older books).

There are still major restrictions such as the AppStore. My solution is to use free software (i.e. GNU/Linux, Amarok, Okular, Gwenview, ...). This also allows you to be creative without getting taxed for it (e.g. LaTeX, Gimp, recordmydesktop, VIM, GCC, Ruby, ...).

Re:Other practises of bundling

[itsdapead]

Yes. Rules like this probably reflect the difficulty of the issue. And when Microsoft was under scrutiny in the US, they claimed that the "browser is an integral part of the operating system". I.e. they put technical reasons forward.

Except there was a bit of wool-pulling there: the html rendering and http components may have been integral to the OS, but removing the IE "front end" - which is what competes with Firefox, Opera et. al. - is a cinch.

But the decision is artificially constrained by the exclusivity of the deal. It's anti-competitive.

...but that's not a problem with OEM bundling per se. PCs have come with bundled operating systems since the year dot. If a particular OS producer says to PC manufacturers "we won't license our OS to you at a competitive price if you also offer bare PCs or competing OSs" then you're back to antitrust law. (IANAL but I'm pretty sure that's never been legal - the problem is getting it enforced!)

If they ever achieve monopoly, I bet we will see them arguing "MacOS is an integral part of the Apple computer".

Well, it is: Windows minus IE is still Windows; a Mac minus Mac OS is just a generic PC in a designer case.

However, if Apple wanted a Mac monopoly they'd probably have to unbundle somewhere along the line anyway in order to offer a comprehensive range of hardware choices: their current bundling strategy makes perfect sense for a niche premium-priced laptop, SFF & workstation market. Currently, they seem happy there.

There are still major restrictions such as the AppStore.

The AppStore may be restrictive, but its also bootstrapped a largely new arm of the software industry. Its certainly not very Free As In Speech but it seems to have given a lot of small developers easy access to a huge market. Anyway - I see the App store as a temporary measure while mobile internet connections evolve: once you have dependable, always on mobile internet, browser-based "cloud" applications make so much more sense. Currently, if I want to run my own software on an iPhone, the best bet is to write it in AJAX and host it on my home server (which probably means it will work on Android, Palm, Nokia...).

My solution is to use free software (i.e. GNU/Linux, Amarok, Okular, Gwenview, ...). This also allows you to be creative without getting taxed for it (e.g. LaTeX, Gimp, recordmydesktop, VIM, GCC, Ruby, ...).

Until the EU demands that linux distros have a choice screen... "Do you want VIM or EMACS?", "Do you want to use LaTeX, DocBook, nroff...", "OpenOffice or KOffice or ABiword", "Amarok or Rhythmbox", "PHP, Perl or Python..." :-)

(Yes, that's silly for all sorts of reasons, but be careful what you wish for because the EU and the DOJ are not particularly strong on common sense...)

Forget Lynx...

[Alien1024]

... where is telnet?

Re:Forget Lynx...

[Spatial]

Yeah, it isn't in Windows 7. That tripped me up the other day...

The 50kb executable was just taking up too much room in the 12GB install, I guess.

why

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't understand why the EU is making microsoft do this. hopefully it doesn't happen in the usa. anyway somebody has already started a petition to microsoft to not do it:
http://www.petitiononline.com/t647lf75/petition.html

Rendering Engines

[Anonymous Coward]

The rendering engine used by a browser has a large impact on its support for web standards. Below is a breakdown of the rendering engines used by the twelve browsers that are being offered. Can you guess which rendering engine (which happens to be the worst at supporting standards) is represented the most?

___Trident___
Avant
Greenbrowser
Internet Explorer
Slimbrowser
Sleipnir*
Maxthon**

___Gecko___
Flock
K-meleon
Mozilla Firefox
Sleipnir*
Maxthon**

___Webkit___
Google Chrome
Safari
Maxthon**

___Presto___
Opera

*Sleipnir allows users to switch between Trident and Gecko. I do not know which is used by default.

*Maxthon supposedly was able to switch between Trident and Gecko in its 1.x series, uses Trident exclusively in its 2.x series, and will be able to switch between Trident and Webkit in its upcomming 3.x series. I cannot tell which version of Maxthon is being offered via the browser selector page.

Huh... the site's already online...

[netsharc]

I just noticed the URL in the screenshot: www.browserchoice.eu, and the site is already online!

On the first load, it gave me the choices in the order similar to the screenshot, interestingly enough.

Browser selection: for all platforms

[Anonymous Coward]

Should a browser selection option not be obligatory for all platforms, not just for Windows? BrowserChoices.info lists many browsers for multiple platforms. Everyone should have the same freedom regardless of what platform they use.