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The Seven Hidden Browsers In the Windows Ballot
Barence writes "Two weeks ago Microsoft started rolling out a Windows update within the European Union, giving every Internet Explorer user the option to switch browsers. As well as the five big names, anyone who scrolls the ballot window to the right will find seven further browsers, none of which is exactly a household name. There's no quality control being offered, either — they're simply the '12 most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows 7,' based on usage share in the European Economic Area. But what are these unknown browsers actually like? To find out, seven PC Pro staff installed a browser each, used it exclusively for a day, and ran a variety of tests. The browser-by-browser verdict on the hidden seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."
See Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice. Got to help someone with his Windows-PC lately and got seriously confused by this invasive dialog. :-)
Chrome is SPYWARE! It is a horrible browser, it phones everything home to Google.
Sure it is good at browsing the web, but as a program it sucks!
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I re-read the summary. I don't see any place where the EU Government *mandates* MS display the top 12 most-popular browsers. My reading of the summary doesn't tell us who made that decision, and I initially assumed it was Microsoft itself.
So I googled it: "The EU said Tuesday that European users will be asked to choose in a Web browser bake-off among 12 free Web browsers." - http://www.crn.com/software/223101178
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Maxthon, GreenBrowser and SlimBrowser are IE Front ends also. It means that 4 of the 7 (with Avant) are just IE Shells. One that is an IE/Gecko shell (Sleipnir). One that is essentially a FireFox offshoot (Flock) and K-Meleon.
Not that I have anything against Maxthon. Back when I was an IE user, it was my stepping stone to FireFox (though I didn't realize it at the time). I used it instead of IE6, the most current version of IE at the time, and was impressed by the tabbed browsing, pop-up/ad blocking and other "cool new" features while not having to completely abandon my IE-comfort-zone. Of course, I grew accustomed to having these features so going on a plain-IE PC turned into a chore. Then, one day, I decided to give FireFox a chance. It was a bit of an adjustment, but not as bad as I thought it would be. So while I wouldn't install Maxthon now, I do appreciate how it helped me transition from IE6 to FireFox.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Here's a link to the answer given by Robert Kaiser - who I believe is probably the same Robert Kaiser that is the Seamonkey project coordinator.
Quoted in full:
"I repeatedly get questions why SeaMonkey is not on the browser ballot, and of course I keep telling those people that only one browser per vendor is allowed and Firefox and SeaMonkey are regarded to be from the same vendor, Mozilla."
There you go.
The reason for 'why Microsoft' is that they have a monopoly on the operating systems market, and there are special laws governing monopolies. The reason for 'why browsers' is that web browsers is an area the EU has deemed that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly.
To be the devil's advocate, there are lots of browsers that share rendering engines, but that doesn't mean they don't count. Also on that list are Safari and Chrome (both using WebKit) as well as Firefox, K-meleon and Flock (all using Gecko.)
That would be KHTML...which is what Apple forked to create WebKit
Konqueror still uses KHTML by default, and it is still in active development (and it has pulled some stuff back in from Webkit), although there is increasing momentum for switching the default to the Webkit Kpart (built on the Webkit that is now part of QT).
>I suppose one of those slots could have gone to seamonkey, but as a browser it's identical to firefox so there's not much point.
No, the SeaMonkey browser is not "identical to Firefox". SeaMonkey has a sidebar and a <link> bar built-in, the URL bar and search bar are one and the same, they haven't combined the reload and stop buttons, and there are more options without going to about:config (and the options are better laid out). Until about FF3, it was more stable too, but FF finally caught up.
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