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seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."

Comments

Testing?

[natehoy]

From TFA:

we installed each browser on the same Windows 7 computer and tested their speed in the SunSpider benchmark, their memory usage with the Google home page open in a single tab, and their startup times – measured from the moment we clicked the icon to the browser window appearing.

Expectation for any sort of consistency in the testing parameters has been set to zero. But, at least we get to see which browsers are most-liked and offer a nice user experience, right?

Then we asked seven members of the PC Pro team to abandon their favoured browser and switch to one of these alternatives. To say they were delighted to do so would be a lie: there was gnashing of teeth, wailing and screaming pleas for mercy. All these fell on deaf ears. We provide full reviews of each browser in the Reviews section, but for a helpful summary click through to the next page.

OK, expectation of any sort of positive review of any browser has been set to zero.

The only consolation is that the popularity of the top 12 browsers is re-examined every six months.

Which means PCPro will have a steady ad revenue from writing meaningless reviews cobbled from the barest minimum of testing where the browser used by the least whiny of the random-picked team gets top marks just because that person hates change the least.

In fact, maybe a PC Pro browser is exactly what the EU needs

If it's written with the same attention and care to detail as the articles, the first installed instance of it will crash the Internet and bring civilization to a smoking ruin.