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seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."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

Lynx?

[sunderland56]

Hey! Where's Lynx?

Re:Lynx?

[icannotthinkofaname]

It's in the repositories, like everything else.

Re:Lynx?

[somersault]

Hey wait! I just noticed that the name is a pun. It only took 8 years..

Ho ho ho.

Re:Lynx?

[pla]

Hey! Where's Lynx?

Oh, look at Mr. Fancy-pants with his text all neatly positioned on the screen for him!

Real men use Wget or Curl. Bonus points for doing it all with netcat.

Re:Lynx?

[sopssa]

You kids with your fancy computers. In my days we used to serve web pages to each other with letters and postal mail!

Re:Lynx?

[Toze]

Skin! In my day we dreamed about having skin! We walked around everywhere holding our insides in with our hands. Didn't have blood, either- we hand to pump oxygen into our cells by hand, and that was no easy task, let me tell you. Gripping an oxygen atom without skin on! And web pages, hah! We had to wait for our elders to die and arrange their corpses in pictograms! Those were the days. "Corpse-lying-on-its-side-with-one-arm-outstretched, corpse-half-buried-upside-down, corpse-with-fingers-up-nose. I see the Joneses have been accessing our network again."

Avant browser == front-end for IE

[Yuioup]

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

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[petermgreen]

I don't think it's up to MS. They just include the browsers the EU tells them to. The EU supposedly base the lists on "market share" though I haven't seen any reference as to exactly what they mean by that.

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[commodore64_love]

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

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[Jason Levine]

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.

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[thelexx]

Not to worry, we still have plenty of real facts upon which to base our hatred of MS.

Oh, I forgot, none of those count when you're whining about people bashing poor little unloved MS.

We're just whoring for karma, yeah, that's it.

I don't need /. karma to hate, hate, HATE MS. Trying to use COM objects from Java is enough.

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[dn15]

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.)

Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE

[tixxit]

I personally think its ridiculous that MS has to offer alternative browsers at all. An operating system is not just the kernel, but all the software bundled on top. IE8 is just a value add on top of windows; one you can easily replace. That some users are so incompetent (I say this with love) they could not install another browser is a testament to the reason why MS even bundled IE8 to start with. Windows is usually bundled with lots of software that have alternatives; from games, to notepad, to web servers. Why not give users a choice of Apache, Lighttpd, IIS, etc. when installing Windows? I say this as a guy who has been using primarily using Linux, both at home and work, for the past 8 or 9 years. I think I'd be very annoyed if Ubuntu required me to choose amongst alternatives for each large piece of software it installs by default.

IE engine with a new GUI

[TorKlingberg]

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.

Re:IE engine with a new GUI

[Eskarel]

To be honest, there are currently only 4 rendering engines worth talking about, I believe their used to be five(I think that Konqueror used to have it's own rendering engine though I was never a KDE man, so I may be wrong) so looking at a list of 12 you're going to see a fair amount of overlap. Add in the fact that to the best of my knowledge only Opera uses Presto and the overlap becomes even more extreme.

IE has caused me huge amounts of dramas and still continues to do so, it is probably the one thing I will never forgive Microsoft for, but what else would you have put in the other 7 slots(8 if you want to make sure that a rendering engine is only represented once). Once you've put in the big 5 and a few of the moderately tolerable gecko ports what have you got left. Especially since they have to run on Windows. 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. I don't know who decided that the number had to be 12, but with that large a number you're really bound to have some pretty awful stuff in there. Rendering engines are complex beasts, which is why there are really only 4 of them. Javascript engines are even more complex which is why there are only 4 of them(I know that Safari and Chrome have different Javascript engines even though they have the same rendering engine and I'm counting those, but IE's is so godawful it doesn't count). It takes a large team of programmers years to come up with something halfway decent, and that requires serious amounts of money or trying to snag open source developers when most of the people with the right skill set are already likely to be working on Gecko or Webkit.

Re:IE engine with a new GUI

[cheesewire]

I believe their used to be five(I think that Konqueror used to have it's own rendering engine though I was never a KDE man, so I may be wrong)

That would be KHTML...which is what Apple forked to create WebKit

Re:IE engine with a new GUI

[Randle_Revar]

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.

This won't make the user happier

[Advocadus Diaboli]

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. :-)

Re:This won't make the user happier

[quantumplacet]

if you actually got confused by this 'invasive dialogue' then you have no business helping anyone with any computer, and might want to think about wearing a helmet on a regular basis.

QC

[bunkymag]

"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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[delinear]

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.

Missed the point

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:SeaMonkey?

[Pojut]

"Hey Sea Monkeys! It's time for the 'I Hate Marco' Show!" ::high-pitched female choir:: "IIIII Hate Marco! Hate Marco! Hate Marco and his mailbox head!"

Re:SeaMonkey?

[SlappyBastard]

Or the EU felt that Seamonkey was too close a derivation of Mozilla to count it a separate browser.

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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[ElSupreme]

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!

What manner of testing is this?

[clone53421]

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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[clone53421]

Opera doesn't have such zealots as Firefox yelling all around how good their browser supposedly is

You’re kidding, right?

Re:SeaMonkey?

[Pojut]

"Hey Sparkplug, did you see the ratings? Number eight, baby!"

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You're kidding, right?

Give us credit for getting quieter when the claims that FireFox invented everything good about web browsing died down.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[clone53421]

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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[grapeape]

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.

Re:SeaMonkey?

[Jer]

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.

Re:What I do not understand

[Ma8thew]

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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[shutdown -p now]

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.

Re:And thus the folly is proven

[clone53421]

Yeah, but Firefox totally did it better.