The Seven Hidden Browsers In the Windows Ballot 246
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the hanging-chads-need-not-apply dept.
from the hanging-chads-need-not-apply dept.
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seven: two are worth a look for specific reasons, the other five are only likely to give an internet novice a horribly outdated idea of what web browsing is like."
This won't make the user happier (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And thus the folly is proven (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:And thus the folly is proven (Score:3, Informative)
Sure it is good at browsing the web, but as a program it sucks!
Re:Lynx? (Score:3, Informative)
That's nothing! In my day we had to listen to the town crier describe web pages to us!
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:4, Informative)
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 [crn.com]
What it is actually (Score:3, Informative)
a desktop link to http://www.browserchoice.eu/ [browserchoice.eu]
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:5, Informative)
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:IE engine with a new GUI (Score:3, Informative)
You're wrong, though. (for two reasons, one being less important the other) The main thing is that while yes, Safari and Chrome both use WebKit, their implementations can actually be different. Any changes should head upstream, but Chrome can use a newer release of WebKit than the latest version of Safari, for example. (Same with Gecko implementations.) And of course, don't forget things like extensions and whatnot. But, anything implementing Trident can only use Trident and change the window chrome because it's closed source, as well as be stuck with whatever version of Trident is installed on the machine.
My other, lesser point is that Konqueror and Safari do not use the same rendering engine. Konqueror uses KHTML, and Safari uses WebKit, which is derived from but not the same as KHTML.
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the usage share in Europe from one year ago (Q1 2009). I'm trying to find more recent data:
IE 67.7%
FF 25.3%
Safari 2.6%
Opera 1.4%
Chrome 1.0%
Re:And thus the folly is proven (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:2, Informative)
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/decisions/39530/final_decision_en.pdf [europa.eu]
6.3.82.a-d
Next time, do your own research.
Re:SeaMonkey? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link to the answer [google.com] 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 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Very clever strategy (Score:3, Informative)
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 [robweir.com])
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.
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:3, Informative)
QUOTE from the settlement: "The five main web browsers with the highest usage share, ordered alphabetically [later changed to randomized] according to the vendor's company name, would be prominently displayed, and seven additional web browsers, also ordered alphabetically according to the vendor's company name, would be displayed if the user scrolls sideways." - http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/decisions/39530/final_decision_en.pdf [europa.eu]
- The top 5 are the most popular.
- The remaining 7 are apparently random.
It appears MS picked those browsers that are least usable (or outdated), and that might explain why SeaMonkey and Netscape 9 were not included even though they are probably the 6th and 7th most popular browsers in EU.
I'm glad the EU politicians wasted a couple million of my dollars on this. Well, not MY dollars, but somebody's dollars (european taxpayers' euros).
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:4, Informative)
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:IE engine with a new GUI (Score:4, Informative)
That would be KHTML [wikipedia.org]...which is what Apple forked to create WebKit
Re:IE engine with a new GUI (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Avant browser == front-end for IE (Score:3, Informative)
Ooops. Forgot to include the link. Sorry about that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#ADTECH_.28Europe.2C_2004_to_Q1_2009.29 [wikipedia.org]