So I’ve been following the developments of Opera vs Microsoft vs the EU browser war and as far as I understand it this is what’s happened so far
1) The EU has been concerned for sometime that Microsoft has bundled Internet Explorer and wants it removed as a default installation
2) Opera has complained to the EU as well
3) Microsoft has developed a special version of Windows 7 just for the EU which doesn’t have Internet Explorer installed
Now could someone just explain to me for a minute, if the web browser is not installed by default, how the hell are you supposed to get a web browser running without installing IE from the Windows Disk. I don’t know about you but I don’t tend to keep a resource of Web browser installers lying around.
Next comes that, did anyone bother to ask users what they wanted? I didn’t get asked and I don’t really mind IE being installed… I’m not forced to use it and I don’t have to use it if I don’t want to. It’s not like Microsoft prevent you from installing other browsers.
Now I read this morning over at The Register that Microsoft have proposed a browser ballot screen when you install Windows asking you to pick which browser you want installed. Apparently this is the mock up they provided.
To be honest, that screen seems perfectly fine to me, it’s clean, it’s relatively straight forward and offers the most popular browsers around. Now of course you can’t realisically expect Microsoft to put every web browser in existence on the screen either, there are far too many, so who decides who makes the grade?
However I read in that same article that Opera are not happy with that either
Lie has reportly said that the use of icons in the ballot screen could result in a natural bias towards IE. The sticking point could be that the IE logo has become synonymous with Windows.
“The blue ‘e’ has become so associated with the Internet in general, due to the bundling with Windows. We think using the blue ‘e’ might not be such a good idea,” told TechFlash.
My only response is ‘Opera just stop moaning’. Just because your browser is rubbish and no one wants to use it doesn’t mean that you have to go out of your way to make things harder for users. Heck, the Google logo there is highly recognisable so I’d imagine quite a number of users will actually click on that instead of IE.
I’m sure Opera won’t be happy until the screen says do you want to install Opera or if you want to install another click on the little button, type in the URL to a .exe for some other browser… oh and IE is now renamed to ‘FE£RG245wvf”%s TGE£%”V’
Indeed which Opera might have a higher Acid 3 rating than Internet Explorer I’d still rate IE8 above Opera in terms of a better product. If I’d move the logos around in my personal preference I’d only move Internet Explorer and slot it in nicely between Google Chrome and Opera.
However when the next version of Windows comes out I don’t want to buy a cripled version from the EU, I’ll try to find a legal way of getting the US version thank you very much… much like the unused N versions without media player.
