Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement - Samuel Johnson
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Microsoft subverts the EU browser choice
SOFTWARE MONOPOLIST Microsoft's Browser Ballot page, designed to appease European regulators, popped up this week, causing confusion to some users, ire for some browser firms, and some raised eyebrows here.
The Browser ballot is supposed to make the process of choosing a web browser a lot easier for consumers and fairer for competing web browser firms. It shows Windows users a page with a range of browsers on it, along with information about them and the opportunity to install them.
At first glance it appears that there are only five browsers to choose from, all household names, but in fact there are twelve. The missing seven are hidden by a scroll bar at the bottom of the panel. But that's okay, because the agreement says that they should be shown in order of popularity, with a five and seven split. Thus, those on display are the popular Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE8, and Chrome browsers, and behind the fold, so to speak are the Avant, Flock, Maxthon, Slim, Sleipnir, Green and K-Meleon browsers, much lesser known options that will probably only suffer more from their placement.
In fact, the majority of them have petitioned the EU about the page, saying, "The final choice screen design leaves the vast majority of users unaware that there are more than five browsers to choose from." The firms added, "We are only requesting the simple addition of any text or design element, that would indicate to an average user that there are choices to the right of the visible screen." Just one of the firms not shown on the ballot splash page has not signed, and that is K-Meleon.
We cannot blame them for their anger. Anyone would say that it would make sense for all the choices to be shown in a vertical list, as this would allow all of them to be seen on the first page or would at least make it a lot clearer that there were more than the five.
However, it seems that for a couple at least, the petition comes after an earlier, more positive view on the EU Commission's Microsoft page.
In a blog post earlier this week, 'MaxthonGuy', wrote, "The agreement between Microsoft and the European Council calls for the five browsers that are currently most popular in Europe to be displayed in random order on the part of the Web ballot that first greets user. The remaining seven browsers are lurking, in random order, just to the right".
He added that this was fine with the chief executive at the firm, Jeff Chen. "Chen's race strategy is to gain what is now the fractions of a percentage point needed to overtake the fifth-place browser, Opera. Every six months the rankings of the browsers will be recalculated and the five with the highest shares of users will be shuffled onto the premier display space.That's why Chen likes to boast, 'We [are] No. 6! And we're proud to be No. 6!'."
Over at Flock, the rollout of the ballot screen was equally well recieved at first and was described as a 'banner day' for the firm. "As the ruling opens up access to the millions of Windows users in the European market, who have accepted the default browser presented by Microsoft without knowledge of available choices in the past," wrote the firm in a statement.
Microsoft meanwhile has followed up the choice, which puts its IE8 in the fifth position lurking on the edge of right scrolling obscurity, with an advertising push for its browser.
This week we have noticed on the television at least one advert for IE8, which shows us how easy it is to hide your browsing habits from the wife, as opposed to anything particularly handy.
Under the guise of 'buying a present', a man hunched over a laptop shows us how easy it is to switch private browsing on and off. All in, it looks a lot easier than clearing out your cookies, so it could spell the end of scenes in which husbands madly dash across the room to grab their laptop every time their wives mention checking their Facebook page.
Internet Explorer 8 was released last year and came with a range of supporting, and in some cases, amusing adverts starring someone who once played Superman (but only on the telly). Why then would it choose now to start advertising on the goggle box?
Cynics might suggest that the Vole is trying to push Internet Exploder back into the living rooms of home users, just when the browser ballot page might be luring them away from it.
So do we. µ
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@Ron White
Sorry, but Maxthon *is* just a reskinned IE. Sure, they've put some interesting features in that skin, but from an actual web browseing point of view, it's IE all the way down. That 30% of the code (according to you) goes to interfacing with the MSHTML control just goes to show how little extra there is.
Maxthon don't have the source code to Trident, and can't fix any rendering or JavaScript issues. A page rendered in Maxthon looks and acts identical to as in IE. They're susceptible to the same security issues as IE. They're missing the same HTML/CSS features as IE. They have the same performance issues as IE.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Chrome, while it uses (parts of) the WebKit engine, brings a completely different JavaScript engine (V8) to the party. Plus, it uses a different rendering API (Skia), which is faster but looks worse than the one used by Safari. There's code in common, but it's far from just a simple skin/wrapper.
@ W.-
@ Ron White
The Internet is about sharing opinions but this can also be done in a civil and intelligent manner. Ideas are better received if expressed in a respectful manner.
Comments like "you are a great candidate for retroactive abortion, IMHO" may add some spice, but...actually I LIKE the sound of that comment. YOU SHOULD BOTH WRAP COATHANGERS AROUND YOUR NECKS AND...ohh, there...see what problems flaming can lead to? Please accept my most humble apologies!
Hey ron 'white', you are an offensive twat and I think the world would be a tiny bit better if you at least didn't share your thoughts.
When is this browser selection page being rolled out into OSX?
Oh, it's not?!
I can easiliy understand the commenters who describe as "whinning" the complain by the seven browsers hidden off-screen. They're acting like Rosa Parks when she was told she had to ride in the back of the buss. Do you also call Ms. Parks a whiner?
And I sincerely hope I'm not whinning when I correct commenters such as "Cynic," who calls the banished browsers "skins" for I.E. In Maxthon, for example, the Trident rendering engine, that's also used by I.E., accounts for only 30 percent of the code. The rest of the code is responsible for new features and innovations, many of which you don't find in other browsers. And BTW, since Chrome and Safari use the same rendering engine, is Chrome a sking for Safari or is Safari a skin for Chrome? Or is simply that your comment is a skin covering a closed-minded, ignorant grouch?
MaxthonGuy
How many web browsers does the world need? Really?
I just tried 4 of those hidden browers to see how they performed.
All of them struggled to get past 12 on the Acid3 test and two of them looked like the same browser with a slight colour change.
The public are not missing out.
Last I heard the order was suppose to be random, but even so, to in effect say 'the vast majority of users have never seen a scrollbar nor can they figure one out' seems a bit extremely extra deluxe farfetched, and frankly if that were true then they are not the people you want to use your software and come knocking for support..
Next is making the choices small then the farsighted can launch a campaign that they cannot read it.
But I'm guessing this whole story was made up by some EU hater, or some hired 'blogger' of MS itself, or one of those insane yanks who think the EU is out to harm their bodily fluids when the EU asks international companies to play fair.
The United States Department of Justice already found Microsoft guilty of being a monopolist. It is also what the European Union found. This is why Microsoft must be controlled.
It only develops its own I.E (Internet Evil) web browser so that it can subvert W3C web standards, and the only reason it does that is so it can control the internet. The I.E. browser is continually proven to not adhere to web standards. It must be stopped, or Microsoft will eat away at the very fabric of our society.
"...much lesser known options that will probably only suffer more from their placement."
Why on earth would they suffer MORE? They should be considered lucky ones since they at least got the place in the list... I for one have never heard of most of those anyways, it's unequivocally free marketing for these others. Period. Sometimes things should be kept simple.
Those unheard browser compilations have now much greater chance to be adopted by some clueless computer user, even by accident.
They only look odd bunch only to us who knows something about these things. If you think about average consumer whom this ballot box is made, it does not hurt those browsers at all, they are just freaking options in ballot box!
Avant - reskinned IE
Flock - reskinned Firefox
Maxthon - reskinned IE
Slim - reskinned IE
Sleipnir - reskinned IE or reskinned Firefox, whichever you prefer
Green - reskinned IE
K-Meleon - reskinned Firefox
Overall, they don't really add much to browser ecosystem, so I don't see any problem with them being pushed back into a less-visible ballot area.
Just how has Microsoft subverted the EU's approval of the ballot screen? The title of this article is totally misleading. Yell at the EU Commission, not MS. I'm not a MS fanboi but have to stick up for them against silly articles like this one.
Just change the text with "select one of the 12 browers shown here."
In what order?, who's fastest? ... ad infinitum. Research it, try a few, see which one does what you need it to do. Consider it a test drive if you will. Non event made worse by coverage. Lately I've been working with K-Meleon and finding that's working really well for what I need, they seem to have been able to leave the "bloat" behind and Secunia shows zero exploits. Imagine.
The fact that Microsoft even had to do this in the first place is exhibit 589,345,068 of the EU's idiocy.
Since when is it Microsoft's responsibility to provide consumers with knowledge of and links to alternative browser choices?
Enjoy your constantly growing nanny/police state and shrinking freedom, wankers.