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seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."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