Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Opera’

Week in Microsoft: browser ballot arrives, to go global?

Let’s look back at the week that was in Microsoft news. Here were the top stories:

Coding error leads to uneven EU browser ballot distribution: The distribution of browser choices on the EU browser ballot released this month to Windows users is uneven. Internet Explorer shows up in the right-most position 50 percent of the time for current IE users, an outcome that’s due to Microsoft attempting to shuffle the browsers using JavaScript’s sort function.

Microsoft rivals push to send browser ballot on world tour: The lobbying group European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), which is composed of many Microsoft rivals including Opera, is urging the rest of the world to push Microsoft into offering the browser ballot screen.

Read the comments on this post

Read the whole story…

How Random Is Microsoft’s Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?

After a lengthy legal face-off, Microsoft and European antitrust officials recently agreed on the implementation of a so-called ballot screen that will give European Windows users a chance to download rivals’ browsers – including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera – as possible alternatives to Redmond’s own Internet Explorer (see screenshot above or go here).

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft has agreed to provide a “ballot screen” to most European customers that will offer links to downloads of browsers offered by the company’s fiercest competitors when it comes to the Web browsing space, starting next week. The browser choice screen was designed to give all listed browsers a random order upon each new visit; antitrust regulators saw this as the right path to take to make European consumers more aware of alternative browsers to IE without favoring one over the other.

But how random is the presentation of the browser on that ballot screen, really?

That’s exactly what the good people behind Slovakian tech news site DSL.sk set out to discover, based on the current implementation and code found on www.browserchoice.eu. Their findings were quite interesting, as they seem to suggest that the selection isn’t really that random as one would imagine, and that Microsoft is not doing itself any favors at all, when in fact it may even be giving Google’s Chrome browser a bit of an edge.

It took me some creative Google Translating to figure out how the team got to its conclusion, but finally a Skype chat with one of the reporters at DSL.sk cleared things up for me.

The page on www.browserchoice.eu is static, running nothing but Javascript. The guys at DSL.sk basically automatically loaded that page tens of thousands of times, and they kept score of which browsers were shown in which order for each of those instances. And not only did they test this sufficiently on this page, but DSL.sk did the same for the core Javascript algorithm that triggers the random ordering.

The test were run using Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 machine, because the ballot screen will pop up in IE for users who install the relevant Windows Update and have set Microsoft’s browser as default.

More than once out of every four hits, the page would show Google Chrome on the far left, and Internet Explorer would only make it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads (scoring well below all four other browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page hits, Internet Explorer would come out to the far right spot of the five browser choices shown on the screen.

Here’s a table with the stats – the titles are in Slovakian but are simply indicating the order of the browser and its average position in the right column:

What’s most apparent is that Google Chrome scored ‘best’ out of five for all 3 first spots on the browser choice screen, and that Internet Explorer appeared on the far right way more than rival browsers. We should note that this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy going on – perhaps tens of thousands of hits are simply not enough to produce relevant results, or the results are skewed for a different reason. DSL, for one, claims the test results are quite stable and don’t seem to alter much when the number of loads keeps on increasing.

Be that as it may, it’s also worth noting that the ‘first spot’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the ‘best spot’ – eye movement research could well conclude that the middle, far right or any other of the spots is actually the most beneficial one.

For what it’s worth, the DSL team says they had to make two minor changes to the code in order to run their tests mimicking the real behavior of the page as closely as possible, so theoretically the results could end up being more random than they appear based on the results cited above when the browser choice screen actually goes live.

Also, different browsers produced different results, although it didn’t matter much whether IE6, IE7 or IE8 was used for testing. Tests were also run in Firefox, baring completely different results, although there was never an equal distribution between browsers whatsoever, so even then the ‘randomness’ can be questioned.

Do you think the selection on the browser choice screen will end up being completely random, or will more exhaustive research ultimately show that there’s a consistent pattern of browser selection happening here?

(Hat tip to Patrik Hornik)

Read the whole story…

TechCrunch, The Google Chrome Extension

I’ve enjoyed using Google’s Chrome browser ever since it was introduced back in September 2008, albeit using other browsers alongside for different purposes. With the launch of Extensions for Chrome, the need to occasionally fire up Firefox or Opera has diminished, and I doubt I’ll be using any browser other than Chrome much in 2010. Just to drive home the point that Google Chrome Extensions, though still in beta, is a crucial feature for the fledgling desktop browser.

And now self-proclaimed TechCrunch addict and student at Illinois Institute of Technology Viggnesh Kandasamy has hashed together a basic extension designed to let Chrome users stay on top of what gets published on here. More reason to love Chrome Extensions (and more reason to love our fans).

The add-on for Chrome is fairly rudimentary: installing it will add a favicon in the top menu that will open up a window displaying the last four articles published on TechCrunch when clicked. Clicking the headlines shows a short description before a ‘read more’ link, and you also get to share the link instantly on Twitter and/or Facebook. In addition, you get a box that allows you to run a search for companies, people and more who’ve appeared on this site or in CrunchBase.

What more would you like to see added to the extension?

Let us know in comments; Kandasamy will be reading them.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Read the whole story…

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records

In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has pipped Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You’ll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month — making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame.

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Computer World  |  Net Applications  | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Meet the 12 Lucky Browsers European IE Users Will Be Shown Next Year

As part of the European Union’s antitrust agreement with Microsoft, the company will be required next year to show a list of alternatives to Internet Explorer to any Windows user with IE installed as their default browser.

Love or hate the government intervention, it’s notable to see which browsers are about to get a big boost in user numbers. The EU says increased viability in the browser market will lead to more competition and more innovation. Here are the companies that will get a first crack at new levels of market viability in Europe.

Sponsor

On the Front Page – The Best Known 5

The first page of the Choice Screen, which users will be presented with when they first turn on their computers or when they click a link for it later, will feature whichever five browsers have the largest market share over the previous six months. Microsoft will begin showing the page to users in March, 2010.

Right now the top five will include, in the order listed on an EU page about the program:

• Apple Safari – that’s right, even for Windows!
• Google Chrome – so soon. If Chrome can grow so fast, it makes you wonder if government intervention is really needed. Of course, Chrome has been promoted prominently on Google pages. That could become part of the next antitrust issue.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer – gets better all the time, even with dominant market share. Couldn’t the EU just require people to stop using IE 6?
• Mozilla Firefox – the classic that’s most effectively challenged IE. In fact, it’s done so pretty effectively. Too bad Chrome now runs circles around its performance.
• Opera – loved by mobile users, loved by Europeans.

Below the Fold – The Smaller Challengers

Users will be able to scroll the Choice Screen horizontally and see the next 7 most popular browsers at the time. Here’s who the EU lists as those browsers today.

• AOL – chuckle if you will, but AOL is doing a lot of innovative work with social networks and lifestreaming these days.
• Maxthon – is a popular browser in China and has its sights set on beating Opera in Europe.
• K-Meleon – says it’s a super-fast Windows browser built on Gecko, the same layout engine Firefox uses.
• Flock – is a Mozilla-powered browser that integrates a whole lot of social features. It’s got such a great feature set that we recently asked Why don’t you love Flock?
• Avant Browser – says that it, in fact, is the browser that’s the fastest. It includes an in-line RSS reader and a number of other interesting features.
• Sleipnir – is a highly-customizable browser that says it’s big in Japan.

Slim Browser – a Windows browser focused on automating processes.

That’s the field, so far! Do you think this move will foster increased innovation? Do you think it’s needed?

Discuss

Read the whole story…

Microsoft reportedly randomizing browser ballots to appease EU, asks ‘are you happy now?’
Some might say that Microsoft just can’t catch a break. Others might argue that it’s getting exactly what it deserves. Whatever your take on the situation, it seems as if Microsoft may finally have the EU off of its monstrous back (at least momentarily), as a report has surfaced noting that said software giant is nearing approval for a new browser ballot screen demanded by the European Commission. As you well know by know, rivals Mozilla, Opera and Google all submitted change requests to EU regulators in hopes of having browser selection boxes randomized and not displayed within Internet Explorer. Purportedly, the all-clear will come down on December 15th (or earlier), and the antitrust case will be settled as Windows customers have a clearer choice when it comes to selecting a go-to browser from day one. ‘Course, said ballot screen wouldn’t be pushed out to existing users until early next year, but when it goes live users will be able to decide between Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari for their browsing needs. Huzzah!

Microsoft reportedly randomizing browser ballots to appease EU, asks ‘are you happy now?’ originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Slashdot  |  Computer World  | Email this | Comments
Read the whole story…

Google Dumps Gears for HTML5

It’s official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win.

Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn’t play nicely with Gears, Google has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn’t yet ready and isn’t supported by commercially available browsers. Oh, the humanity… or rather, the machinery.

Sponsor

In the mists of time, back when Gears first launched, we wrote, “We’ve written many times before about the need for offline web app access… And guess who is most at risk with this announcement? Yes, Microsoft. Google after all has many of the top ‘best of breed’ web apps now.”

This was before Google’s Chrome browser had hit the scene, and the Gears project was a collaborative effort between Goog, Opera, and Mozilla.

But in our coverage of last year’s Google I/O conference, we wrote of Gears, “We question whether offline access is even necessary. After all… in today’s world, you’re never too far from an internet connection. We concluded that offline access is important now, but less important with each passing day.”

Not only could Gears be used to take online data offline; Google had more in store for Gears users.

A few short months later, Google announced a geolocation API for mobile devices running Gears. We wrote, “We think that location-aware software is going to be one of the most interesting markets to watch in the near future and as as location-aware devices become more ubiquitous, we will hopefully see a lot of new and innovative services make use of them.”

But the party ended with Snow Leopard’s release. A change in the newest Mac OS prevents Gears from running on newer Mac computers. Whether or not the relationship is one of causation or mere correlation, Google is now abandoning Gears.

As one Google rep told the L.A. Times, “We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.”

Believe us Google, no one is looking forward to the cross-browser, cross-OS implementation of HTML5 as much as we are.

Discuss

Read the whole story…

New WebGL standard aims for 3D Web without browser plugins

The Khronos Group revealed this week that it will move forward with its plans to build a new 3D standard for the Web. Khronos, a technology industry consortium that developed OpenGL and a number of other prominent graphical standards, will devise new JavaScript APIs for natively rendering 3D graphics in webpages without requiring browser plugins. The effort is being undertaken in collaboration with Mozilla, Opera, and Google, indicating that it will receive broad support from prominent browser vendors.

Khronos first demonstrated an interest in bringing 3D to the Web back in March when it issued a joint announcement with Mozilla. At roughly the same time, Google was working on its own 3D Web technology called O3D. Google’s O3D is a high-level engine that can load and display models. Mozilla’s 3D Web prototype takes a very different approach and aims to expose the conventional OpenGL APIs through JavaScript. It was previously unclear how these competing visions would converge into a single standard.

Read the whole story…