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Microsoft Giving Rival Browsers a Lift
gollum123 tips an article at the NY Times on the progress of the European Windows browser choice screen that we have been discussing recently. "Rivals of Microsoft's market-leading Web browser have attracted a flurry of interest since the company, fulfilling a regulatory requirement, started making it easier for European users of its Windows operating system to switch. Mozilla, whose Firefox browser is the strongest competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer worldwide, said that more than 50,000 people had downloaded Firefox via a 'choice screen' that has been popping up on Windows-equipped computers in Europe since the end of last month. ... Opera Software, based in Oslo, said downloads of its browser in Belgium, France, Britain, Poland, and Spain had tripled since the screen began to appear. Microsoft said it was too early to tell whether the choice screen might prompt significant numbers of users to change. The digital ballot is being delivered over the Internet with software updates, and it is expected to take until mid-May to complete the process. The browser choice will also be presented to buyers of new Windows computers across the European Union for five years."
Because having a javascript support is as essential as implementing the IMG element in a modern browser. If you want to surf web without javascript, you'll have to invent a time machine and go back to 1998.
It's politically incorrect to say it, but the introduction of Firefox and its subsequent growth in the market is what made the extra work. Web standards are useful but they haven't made web development easier, they just bifurcated the web site design process.
Except that Windows (and IE) are not a monopoly.
Windows is a monopoly in some jurisdictions and a market dominant in others, depending upon what they call it in their antitrust/competition law. IE is not a monopoly.
Yes, but there are alternatives (for those who really care, there's Linux), for everyone else there's Apple.
Linux has negligible share and Apple is not in the same market. MS's customers are Dell and HP and Acer and they cannot license OS X. You clearly did not bother learning anything about this issue before spouting off.
Unless you can prove that MS forces stores to sell Mac's for more money (they don't, Apple gladly artificially inflates their prices on their own), then you can't claim that Windows is a monopoly.
Unless you can prove bananas are purple you can't say Windows is not a monopoly. Seriously, just because make up some nonsense that has nothing to do with the legal definitions involved doesn't mean it has anything to do with reality.
IE is also not a monopoly since you can download a different browser any time you choose.
Since the EU never claimed it was, all your comment does is demonstrate you don't understand the law, the purpose for the law, or the particulars of this case. Why then, should anyone care about your ignorant opinions? Why would I bother reading yet another poster regurgitating the same ignorant nonsense because they're too lazy to read and find out what the hell they're talking about?