Why not have it done with every combination and randomize the way it loads when this page loads to pick your browser.. that way any browser could be in any position? Not that this SHOULD be a big deal anyway. Whiny idiots. lol.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Safari for Windows Receives Prominent Placement on Microsoft's European 'Browser Ballot'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is why the government needs to stay out of people's lives...
Obviously, there's no way for this to be perfectly fair. No matter how Microsoft does it, somebody will be unhappy.
This brings us to a brilliant question... if Microsoft spends R&D money to develop Microsoft Windows and Microsoft wants to have their own Microsoft Internet Explorer featured as the default browser, why should anyone but Microsoft have anything to do with it?
Obviously, there's no way for this to be perfectly fair. No matter how Microsoft does it, somebody will be unhappy.
This brings us to a brilliant question... if Microsoft spends R&D money to develop Microsoft Windows and Microsoft wants to have their own Microsoft Internet Explorer featured as the default browser, why should anyone but Microsoft have anything to do with it?
If you think about they way we skim with our eyes, Safari is in the worse position, looks at the way placement is on shelves when merchandising... same thing. Safari will be mostly missed, Google partially and IE gets the main focus
as I remember, OS X also comes with Safari as a built-in web browser but I didn't see any action on it? lolz
I think because IE is integrated into the OS not just an app
Safari itself is not an integral part of the OS and can be removed and replaced by say FF. Webkit on which Safari based is a part of the OS, but this does not hinder you from choosing another browser.
The whole reason for the EU being after MS, was that IE was integrated with the OS and could not be removed and replaced, and the fact that the marketshare of windows was considered high enough to be regarded as a monopoly.
So technically Apple selling their computers with only Mac OSX on it is illegal in europe, because Apple has the monopoly on Macs, and no other OS's even have a chance
Seriously, that's a stupid law.
Here we go again. Seriously, you don't understand the law. And no, reading it (it's on wikipedia) doesn't mean you understand it.
edit: sorry, my sarcasm detector was broken too..
Who cares?
Even if the whole sort order mattered, I'd rather be in the center. Most people don't have a bloody clue what a browser is, never mind what it does. You give them a choice, they will want to make a non-choice. Pick the middle. I'm not saying that Microsoft put themselves intentionally in the center (whether you sort by company name or by browser name, they'd still be in the center... funny, heh?) but it sure is convenient.
The other thing that makes the whole thing completely irrelevant is:
most tech-oriented (or tech-savvy) people already have a preferred browser so they will pick that one. Most of the rest (who have little to no clue about the concept of browser) will try to find something familiar. The only thing they understand, is that the round blue e takes them to the internet. I believe they will pick that one.
All in all, it will have very little to no impact IMHO.
Even if the whole sort order mattered, I'd rather be in the center. Most people don't have a bloody clue what a browser is, never mind what it does. You give them a choice, they will want to make a non-choice. Pick the middle. I'm not saying that Microsoft put themselves intentionally in the center (whether you sort by company name or by browser name, they'd still be in the center... funny, heh?) but it sure is convenient.
The other thing that makes the whole thing completely irrelevant is:
most tech-oriented (or tech-savvy) people already have a preferred browser so they will pick that one. Most of the rest (who have little to no clue about the concept of browser) will try to find something familiar. The only thing they understand, is that the round blue e takes them to the internet. I believe they will pick that one.
All in all, it will have very little to no impact IMHO.
Please! Windows users would do well to consider Safari. I've been doing Web development for the last 10 years of my life and I have absolute confidence in saying that Safari is by far the superior browser in all respects to Firefox with the sole, albeit significant, exception of FF's plug-in architecture which has created a thriving ecosystem of cool plug-ins.
And that's it. There's nothing else Firefox beats Safari in. In fact, in some of the most important areas (launch speed, memory usage, Javascript execution speed, adherence to standards, rendering of animation, etc.) Safari kicks FF's ass around the block two-and-a-half times.
If this ordering encourages Windows users to download and try Safari, I say fan-freakin-tastic. They could do much worse.
This is why the government needs to stay out of people's lives...
Obviously, there's no way for this to be perfectly fair. No matter how Microsoft does it, somebody will be unhappy.
This brings us to a brilliant question... if Microsoft spends R&D money to develop Microsoft Windows and Microsoft wants to have their own Microsoft Internet Explorer featured as the default browser, why should anyone but Microsoft have anything to do with it?
Exactly this, your buying a Microsoft operating system so you'd expect all the features that Microsoft include, at the end of the day Internet Explorer is just another feature of Microsoft Windows. When are they gonna stop? Just provide a shell of an operating system and have a ballot for every application Microsoft bundles with Windows cause it's not fair?
lol. i highly doubt you have this supposed 10 years of experience in web development and would somehow pick safari over firefox. firefox is THE web developers browser. hilarious how you try to make the availability of firefox plugins to be a minor issue when it is clearly the biggest advantage firefox has. safari renders great. but so does firefox. and all of the web development plugins for firefox easily kill safari. the only reason to have safari (in the context of web development) is just to see what your page looks like in it.
No, Apple is not in that position that it can abuse their powers to disrupt the whole market. Microsoft can and has shown in the past that they are willingly to do so. Companies (European mostly) are getting slapped with fines (thank god for that) when they are using their position to disrupt the European market. It's not because of their position that they are getting penalized, its when they are misusing the powers that comes with that position.
I don't have my book "Universal Design Principles" by hand, but there is a principle (with research backing it up) that the strongest position in a list are the first and last couple of items. So to be honest I really don't understand why the Mozilla foundation is complaining.
Chrome is faster.
Is it?
She doesn't work for Mozilla, so "Firefox" is not the one complaining. Google isn't complaining but they should in my opinion - have you seen the lame description under the Chrome heading?
And anyway, I believe Opera filed the original complaint that brought all of this about in the first place.
Opera 10 passes it too.
IE8 scores 20% and earlier versions score even less. The majority of the functions being tested are not in use on mainstream websites and will never be used until Microsoft catches up.
Also, some of the tests are worthless in the real world, like the one that tests whether a browser pays attention to a favicon that returns an image instead of a 404 page. It's nice to be compliant but that test is not really useful or noticeable to most users. Acid3 is a marketing point, that's all.
The Firefox people have to stop complaining about everything. This system is perfectly reasonable. Maybe if they made a better browser people would choose it over IE.
Nope. It hasn't been for quite some time.
As for the points about ACID tests, etc, the reality is that outside a small part of the tech community nobody cares - the first question any commercial web developer will ask is "how do I make this compatible with IE" because that's where the market share is.
And that's exactly why it's so popular and why I use it on both my Mac and my PC. You can't claim Safari is superior when it doesn't have that killer feature. Sure, it might do some things quicker but it doesn't have the toolset FF has.
It's not about developing, our spending R&D money. Nobody is complaining about the fact that Microsoft has developed a browser. It's about ABUSE.This brings us to a brilliant question... if Microsoft spends R&D money to develop Microsoft Windows and Microsoft wants to have their own Microsoft Internet Explorer featured as the default browser, why should anyone but Microsoft have anything to do with it?
Microsoft has abused it dominances of it's operating system as an unfair advantage to get a monopoly in other markets... . IE didn't become the dominant browser because it fought its competition on the ground of quality. It's quite simple really.
And being a commercial webdeveloper I can write a book about Microsoft abuse with regarding the web. Their technology isn't developed for making our lives easier or better, no there whole web philosophy is about how to get their grip on the web stronger and introduce vendor lock in .
Have you ever asked a commercial web developer what there feelings are towards IE ? When I think at the countless hours I have spend making things compatible in IE (A world where logic doesn't exist) I get spontaneous headaches. I was so fed up with Microsoft tactics that a year ago I made the switch to Apple.
I wouldn't downplay the importance of Safari (and thus correct markup) because most big Ecommerce sites that I have worked for had the idea that Apple users are more wealthy and thus would spend potentially more money.
gee, a company selling its brand is abuse?
and how much market share does apple have to catch up on before they're considered 'abusive' for having safari installed by default?
as I remember, OS X also comes with Safari as a built-in web browser but I didn't see any action on it? lolz
No, it's because Apple's OS market share is almost insignificant and they are in no position to monopolise the browser market by installing Safari by default.
Make no difference?
I don't think this will make any difference at all. People who like and know about other browsers will have downloaded them themselves anyway and for consumers who just about know how to email, word process and go on their facebook page they are going to go straight to IE because that's what they know.
I'm willing to bet that most of the average PC users who don't know about the other browsers will just choose IE because they feel safe with that, with the mindset that they want to be able to go on websites and you need Internet Explorer to do that.
I don't think this will make any difference at all. People who like and know about other browsers will have downloaded them themselves anyway and for consumers who just about know how to email, word process and go on their facebook page they are going to go straight to IE because that's what they know.
I'm willing to bet that most of the average PC users who don't know about the other browsers will just choose IE because they feel safe with that, with the mindset that they want to be able to go on websites and you need Internet Explorer to do that.
I'm not that sure. To be honest I don't see a surge in Safari users, but I can imagine that Google Chrome will get a lot of new users. Google (brand) is popular and people seem to have a lot of trust in them.
But it really doesn't matter because with regards of standards its Microsoft versus the rest. Safari users/Apple will also be able to harvest the benefits if an other "standards compliant" browser gets more dominant especially with regards of web standards. It will force Microsoft to adopt them instead of releasing MS equivalent number xxx.
Now you have sometimes 2 code paths (standard compliant and IE) which introduces a lot of extra work. In a ideally world you would develop your stuff using 1 standard and it should work in all browsers.
No single official EU language does. There are however official languages who use the Cyrillic alphabet.