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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seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."
Hey! Where's Lynx?
Avant browser is nothing more than a front-end for IE.
It's basically a window surrounding an embedded Internet Explorer object.
I personally think its ridiculous that MS offers it as an 'alternative browser'
Y
Many of these are the IE rendering engine wrapped in a new user interface. They appeared in the days when IE development was dead and provided useful things like tabs and popup blocking, while staying compatible with the IE6-only websites that used to be everywhere.
Maxthon for one is very popular in China because it supports ActiveX which many Chinese banking websites rely on (bleh), and it is much nicer to use than IE6. I am not sure how it compares to IE8 though.
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. :-)
"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." .. just like there's no quality control for presidents and prime ministers I suppose, except the fact that they are the most widely-voted politicians in a given area .. draw your own conclusions as to whether it works, or more importantly if there is a better option.
The choice of IE8 isn't being removed from those users. They can pick whichever browser they happen to prefer, if that happens to be IE8 then that's their prerogative. If they're incapable of picking the browser they prefer from a limited subset then they have more to worry about in the online environment than usability. In reality if these browsers are hidden initially, they're unlikely to ever be picked.
I'm surprised that the twelve most commonly used browsers include several that I hadn't heard about (most of which are not that good, if one is to believe TFA) but do not include SeaMonkey. Perhaps it is too much like Firefox+Thunderbird for people to actually want to use it.
So what? This is about remedying anti-competitive practices. "Our product is better than theirs so they should be locked out of the market" is not a valid defense to an anti-trust lawsuit.
And it's not like any of those top 5 browsers are much worse or better than another (ok IE aside for us nerds). Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Safari are all good browsers.
It seems Opera has increased it's market share most. It's probably the best choice too, since a casual user doesn't need to go finding all the different addons and other things he or she doesn't have any idea about. People seem to love it and stay with Opera. It's just that they didn't hear about it before, as Opera doesn't have such zealots as Firefox yelling all around how good their browser supposedly is and spamming fox pictures all over forums.
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.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
A friend downloaded Firefox and installed it, then moan to me how Firefox looks and runs just like IE did and still does a bad job of rendering the web pages he looks at. I went over to investigate what he meant and the stupid fool was still double clicking the IE "E" icon on his desktop. When I asked why he was doing tjhis instead of the Firefox icon he said "But this is how I get the internet by click on the E" Doh
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!
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
For some reason, I was reminded of Legend of the Red Dragon when they mentioned:
Internet Explorer LOSES 10 CHARM!
Internet Explorer IS NOW KNOWN AS GreenBrowser.
I played that BBS game/MUD in my senior year of high school, though the sysadmin chose to "upgrade" me a few times for some reason.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
They ran it through one Javascript test (SunSpider), so that’s at least something, I suppose.
Their other “benchmarks” are woefully lacking in the usefulness department. They gave the startup time (in seconds)... I’m much more interested in how quickly pages load. They gave the memory requirement at startup (with Google loaded as the homepage)... I’m much more interested in how much memory it’s consumed after a few hours of browsing.
Not to mention that certain browsers (*cough* IE) take way longer to give you a usable browser than they do to just display the window. That’s just the same trick of showing your desktop while Windows finishes loading; it looks like it accomplished something, but you still can’t click anything yet.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Opera doesn't have such zealots as Firefox yelling all around how good their browser supposedly is
You’re kidding, right?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
a desktop link to http://www.browserchoice.eu/
have you been defaced today?
i wish i had mod points.. i dont care if you have to opt in to sending the data the fact that it even collects the data is what bothers me i dont trust google as far as i can throw them
I have had Opera for a long time and the thng is I just can not get comfortable with it.
I have been trying to move to Chrome for the extra speed and now that it has plugins I can get it working the way I want it to.
Truth is that I just can not kick the Firefox habit. I have the plugins I want and I don't have crash issues with it so it is in the Just works category.
The best plugin as far as making your browsing more stable? PDF download. Acrobat reader used to crash my system all the time.
PDF download combined with FOXIT seems to have fixed that little problem.
Opera is a good browser but so far it just hasn't been good enough to make me want to move.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."
One of them must be Internet Explorer. :)
Probably version 6. I know it's "dead" but like a JRPG boss, it will keep coming back until we kill the evil mastermind behind it.
Come up with one (single) instance of Google misusing customer data and I will henceforth refer to myself as a fool and stop using Google altogether. So will millions of others, I assume.
BTW, you know that Chrome's callback features can be disabled in the options menu, right? And if my memory serves, IE and Firefox also call home (less extensively).
now if Mozilla threw millions of quid at TV advertising...
It would be messy and constitute animal cruelty.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Although I still prefer Firefox, IE8 is actually more or less tolerable.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
You're kidding, right?
Give us credit for getting quieter when the claims that FireFox invented everything good about web browsing died down.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
MS is simply doing as told and it appears to be bending over backwards to comply with what the EU thinks everyone wants. How is it MS's job to help you choose another browser...they offer the option to pick a different one after that your own your own.
Are you kidding? Merits of the browser aside, Opera has got to have the highest zealot-to-user ratio out of any mainstream web browser.
Seems like I hear about Opera all the time, but don't (actually) know a single person who uses it daily. I've used it a few times, and could never get over the weird UI... (it sure is fast though)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I can spy with my little eye something beginning with "all the google voicemail text where once indexed and made public"
Is why they are going after Microsoft exclusively and why only browsers.
Every OS on the planet has a list of software they have bundled with them.
Their is nothing wrong with this, sure I do not like using pretty much everything MS bundles with windows, but I would not want to spend huge amounts of time configuring it during installation and still only be offered the top X of the market share.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
That’s weird... it specifically said that users who already didn’t use IE as their default browser weren’t supposed to see the choices screen.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I think this setup is working. It is creating real competition. Sure, the seven browsers offered right now are crap, but before MS was forced to offer choices, these browsers would have zero exposure. There was little incentive to try to update any browser that wasn't backed by someone with deep pockets. So, no one tried. Most of these are simple pet projects. Now, developers might be interested. Investors have a way to inexpensively get software in front of millions of users. These choices will only get better. The barrier to entry has been lowered. Microsoft has been forced to compete with the little guy. Right now, the little guy is loosing, but these seven have nowhere to go, but up.
Score one for the EU. They had the balls to make change instead of just fining M$ millions of their billions.
For most its not a matter of if Google has played nice with their customer data so far, its the fact that they have all of it to start with. Some people are just uncomfortable with google having access to so much about them and see it as potentailly orwellian, if its not already.
Knows where you are.
Has access to your e-mail.
Has access to your medical records.
Stores your word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents.
Facilitates chat, voice and video conversations, as well as text messages.
Tracks what you search for and view on the Web.
Keeps track of your upcoming appointments.
Knows your contacts.
Knows what you read.
Knows what you buy.
And of course the tin-foil hat types will argue, how will we know if they are abusing it, they are in charge of the search engines most use to find out and we know they have no problems with censorship.
As for me I could care less at the moment, nothing to hide...but its still an encroachment on freedom and privacy, its not that hard to understand why some are concerned.
From TFA:
"The agreement hammered out between Microsoft and the EC simply stipulated the “12 most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows 7” based on usage share in the European Economic Area"
Sorry for my typo at the end. I meant IE not IR.
It's impossible to know if Google misuses or no the info that harvest from his users. And yes, spyware features can be disabled, but a big majority of users don't know that.
*Whoosh* to you too.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Except that the top browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera) are displayed on the first page, and these extra seven are on the second page. The order on each page is randomized, but the secondary list doesn't get mixed with the top five.
This is what Iron is for.
How is displaying 12 choices in an area that has a limited size that fits 5 of the 12 choices 'hiding' 7 choices?? I mean, that's like saying ./ 'hides' all but one comment. Oh yeah, there's this scroll-bar thingy, but that's for advanced users, right?
You’re kidding, right?
Of course he is. Everyone knows that Opera was the first web browser to have zealots - Firefox totally ripped that off.
Yeah, but Firefox totally did it better.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I'm not sure why the parent is modded Flamebait.
It is true - these other browsers (and I use that term loosely - some of these are just wrappers around the IE engine) may be interesting to nerds and geeks for a variety of reasons but they offer minimal value to the average user.
It is nice for them to have exposure, but why expose users to bad software? I have tried some of these other browsers myself, specifically Sleipnir, Maxthon, and Avant. Saying that they're "not as good" is an understatement. They have a combined market share of less than 1% for a reason.
Users really are far better off using ANY of the top 5 than the bottom 7, and that includes IE8.
Love sees no species.
Clearly you haven't been following this topic for very long. The top 5 browsers are always on the first screen; though the order is randomized. (Though they didn't do it very well as you can read here: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft-random-browser-ballot.html)
Essentially they have a list of highly popular browsers and a list of other browsers some people seem to use. They shuffle both lists then put the list of popular browsers first followed by the other list.
This is a very clever strategy to purposely have a large number of mostly crap alternatives, just to bury Chrome and Firefox.
It's not, because Chrome and Firefox are always in the first 5 slots (which are visible by default). For all those other browsers, you have to scroll right (and for that you first have to even notice the scrollbar!).
Microsoft are very clever to turn even this browser selector into something that is more not less likely to establish the incorrect opinion that IE is best overall and then have users who tried something else switch back to IR.
Microsoft does not decide which browsers go on the selector. It's the list of top 12 browsers by usage in EU, as determined by EU bureaucrats.
Actually, come to think of it, they probably just changed the default IE “start page”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
That is probably a good thing. I hang around on tech websites and I had never heard of most of the bottom ones, and in that respect I would be wary of recommending anyone install them on their PCs. In the long run it's probably better the user installs IE8 or FF than have them install some half baked bit of software thats not really used by anyone except the half dozen people who contribute to it. just cos it is open source doesn't make it good.
I have excellent Karma and I am not afraid to Troll it.
The article's review of K-Meleon stated most clearly what they were looking for:
"A browser that looks and performs like the software of yesteryear. Only an option for those running equally aged hardware."
Translation:
A browser that doesn't supply the flashy, cpu-maximizing eye candy that we like.
Of course, it's easy to understand that this is what's important to a lot of people. But those of us in the market for a sleek, compact browser that doesn't interfere with the important things that are also running on our machines, reviews like this simply tell us that we should find a different reviewer. Is there a review out there that compares these (and other) browsers on the basis of functionality, resource usage, and other more practical attributes?
(Of course, people like that probably aren't much using Windows 7, so maybe this article was a good review for most of the actual customer base. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
1- More or less... It knows what my ISP is and more or less my area
2- Yup... that's why I don't have anything important in my Gmail address
3- Not in my country, no.
4- No, I have my own computer and office suite for that
5- Yes, and I really appreciate the service
6- Yes, and I find it a reasonable trade-off
7- No, I do my calendaring locally.
8- Yes, but I don't think anyone could do anything nefarious with that info
9- No
10- No
No sig for the moment.
The best plugin as far as making your browsing more stable? PDF download. Acrobat reader used to crash my system all the time.
You need ap plugin for that?
All my browsers do that on their own, once I told them to.
Ok, ir might help that I don't use the bloated Acrobat Reader but Foxit Reader, yet still - you can tell browsers to download any kind of file, if you so desire.
What's sad is HOW TRUE THIS IS...
I've had multiple conversations with friends and family that can't distinguish between the internet and a application(namely the web browser).
"I use IE to get to the internet..."
Or they think their home page IS the internet application.
"I get to everything using Google" (of course they immediately click bookmarks icon on the Firefox browser).
No. The update is recommended for all computers.
The ballot screen itself is supposed to only appear when you have IF as your standard browser, and sure enough it didn't appear on any of my computers.
ie8 ftmfw?
Firefox is a great browser, but at the moment it seems to be stuck in a rut where it's talking about all these features coming out and none are available. There's no excuse for doing a home tab competition and then not putting out an extension that replicates the functionality. Opera has become a great browser with the release of 10.5, though I say that as a Windows 7 user who has a browser that feels like it fits my OS like a glove, and not one of OJ's. Chrome is a POS to me. It's ugly and usability is baffling. I have no idea how to see previous sites (i.e. pull down the address bar). But it's a good choice third browser.
... the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like.
The "other five" are there to make IE8 look good by comparison as well as infer that all alternative browsers are inferior while making Microsoft look magnanimous and unafraid of competition.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
I was ready to say the same thing, and had been for about a month. Then I realized that the ads plastered all over mainstream news sites are just as vulnerable to malware injection as anything. Firefox is just safer because of certain add-ons.
That must have been terrible for you. Are you sure you wouldn't like to appear on Oprah, and tell the world about it? I'm sure she will preserve your anonymity.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
RTFA, it was related. OP was responding to TFA's characterization of some of the ballot browsers being poor because they were outdated.
Microsoft is probably hoping that the large number of browsers will confuse people so much that they'll stick with IE.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that Chrome really is spyware.
Did you not notice that the spyware is OPEN SOURCED?!?!?!?!
Grab the source, and recompile it. Take the spy out of the spyware, distribute it as "Spyless Chrome" or whatever you want to call it, and everyone is happy.
Oh - wait - it's already been done! Looky heah: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php
Now stop whining. You have available to you the best of Chrome, without the parts that you object to.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Maybe I am not aware of the incident you are referring to, but if it is this you will note that it was user error (choosing to make messages public) not a bug. In other words you should have said "google voicemails which users chose to make public were indexed and made public", which is hardly "misusing customer data".
If you are talking about something else, excuse me; A quick google search didn't immediately turn up any other incidents.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
The big problem with that list is they are mostly rebranded or "wrapped" browsers, meaning they take the Trident or Gecko rendering engine, put their own chrome around it and pass it off as their own. Maxthon and Avant, for example, were at least slightly more popular back in the days of IE 5/6, as they offered tabbed browsing, enhanced ActiveX security and a few other creature comforts long before IE7 was ever announced.
Flock is a Firefox wrapper with a bunch of (proprietary) addons for social media sites. Now, I'm not too big on social media so I can't really offer valid critique, but the idea seemed a bit goofy and the whole project seems like a weak attempt to cash in on the MySpace/Facebook buzz. YMMV
So in the end, you really have four choices, each with a few trim options: IE, Firefox, Webkit, Opera. No one really has the patience to write a new engine anyway, the web is such a clusterfuck of broken standards and copy-paste web "designers" that it's near-impossible to get anywhere by starting from scratch.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This plug in also give you an option to see it in HTML and some other nice functions. hacked Firefox so that i opened PDFs in the viewer and not in a browser window which also helped a lot but this plug in is just too handy.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I am sure Opera is great. But is isn't so much better than Firefox that I am willing to give up all my plug ins. In a way Opera reminds me of an Apple product. They believe that it does exactly what it should do and how it should do it. The user can not change that and it is for their own good.
I am not even saying that they are wrong but it just doesn't fit me as well as Firefox with my few plugins do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I completely agree with everything in this post up till "its still an encroachment on freedom and privacy".
How is this an encroachment of freedom? Google is forcing me to do nothing. They don't even have a practical monopoly on most of these services; I can easily choose to use another email provider, or search engine, etc. And it isn't an encroachment on privacy as long as I'm choosing to use their services, and as long as they respect their own TOS. (If they start giving advertisers direct access to my email, without publishing this change in their TOS, then yes, that would be an encroachment on privacy.)
So yeah, I can certainly see how it is worrisome that so much (semi-)private information is held by one entity, and how the possibility that that entity could be somehow compromised is very troubling. But I don't see how google's current activity can be construed to be an actual "encroachment on freedom and privacy", as opposed to an opportunity for such an encroachment.
Mod points: Guaranteed to remove your sense of humor.
Side effects may include gullibility and temporary retardation
If some of you are feeling left out, because you are using Linux or MacOS X. Here are sites listing alternative web browsers for your platforms:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers_for_Unix_and_Unix-like_operating_systems
- http://www.pure-mac.com/webb.html
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The ballot screen itself is supposed to only appear when you have IF as your standard browser, and sure enough it didn't appear on any of my computers.
You are the first person I know with IF installed. How's it run?
Well "Chrome" is sypware. It is and well it isn't open source. Chromium is open source and well is basically the exact same as "Chrome" but different. I won't appologize for it, it IS SPYWARE. It does give you benefit but it reports almost everything home.
As for SRWare Iron. I use it. It is great. But you don't get SRWare Iron when you click on the Chrome button. SRWare Iron is a good browser, Chrome is NOT.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Just having all that information in one place and easily accessable makes it dangerous. And how would you know they haven't given stuff over to anyone you wouldn't like?
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Firefox didn't invent the features. It just did them better than Opera did.
Ah, that's why nobody saw the humor in your joke. You don't know what you're talking about. Why do you think Opera zealots like me even exist?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I'll be happy when people stop claiming Firefox invented Add-Ons, when IE has the same damned thing for ages, by a slightly different name.
Comment of the year
Uh... what exactly are you having problems with? It worked for me just now. Direct link to the executable.
Nope, you can just disable using a plugin for PDFs, or use a different plugin.
For me, the main problem with Opera is the sites that give you popup windows saying they don't support Opera. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a 1-time message or an additional line of text. But they actually give you a popup window or make you click through an additional screen. The biggest problem with Opera is website designers who think IE and Firefox are the only good options. Also, right now I think Opera stands out as an e-mail client. The way it sorts mail, using bayesian filtering, gets really good after you get used to it.
I remember using that when it first came out. Quick history: Netscape 2 and 3 we good browsers with a decent news & mail reader. Then they were all like "Hey, let's make a suite!" and that was Netscape 4. Then Netscape went open-source and eventually released a suite that was SLOW AS HELL. (New, unoptimized code, and that suite had everything but the kitchen sink.) People started saying "Hey, you should strip all the crap off and make a lean little browser." They did, and that was Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox. But before that was out, there was K-Meleon, a standalone browser with Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine. Good stuff, for a very short while. I used it for a bit but when Phoenix came out (I started using it at 0.2) it was pretty great right away and the rest is history.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
They are just Trident or Gecko, wrapped in a minimal different UI.
Which in case of Trident (IE’s “engine’) is very very bad.
Avant, Slimbowser, GreenBrowser, Maxthon do. They are basically just IE with a different look. K-Meleon and Flock use Gecko. (But Flock has a pretty different purpose, and therefore might be considered legitimate.)
Sleipnir does them both.
You can even use Firefox with the Trident engine, by installing the IEtab add-on.
So there will be no shortage of IEs an sheep’s clothing anytime soon.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Corey Doctorow approves this message
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Has access to your medical records
How?
I hear what you're saying about Opera, you only need to look at the fact that they refuse to support Yahoo Mail for evidence of their attitude.
Users I know don't open options. Other open it only if they want to change something, but not to see it. Also, many of them don't understand that you are sending info to Google. They think of it just as a feature embedded in the program.