Delicious LiveJournal Links for 2-23-2010

[andrewducker]

• How Does Homeopathy Work? A simple explanation.
  (tags: healthcare homeopathy skepticism)
• Microsoft release their new "Choose what browser you want to run" page.
  I like the way that the options change order randomly each time.
  (tags: browsers microsoft windows)

Comments

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Most of my friends now seem to know what a browser is. I remember as recently as 2005 that wasn't the case -- people who used the internet went blank when you said 'Internet explorer' or 'web browser'. But I still think there's an army of users out there who still have no idea and who will just look at this screen and go 'gaaaaa'? Especially as, how are you meant to decide? They all say 'I am REALLY good'. If I hadn't used all of them, I would be utterly confounded by the choice presented to me. I can see this is what MS had to do to satisfy the EU, but I can't help but think it's going to be wasted -- or worse -- on most people.

And Opera is still shit.

[andrewducker]

Well, if people don't know and don't care then we'll end up with 20% market share for each of the top five. Win!

Not a fan of Opera on the desktop - but it's tbe best browser on my phone.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It kind of goes against the idea that computers should 'just work' though -- that users shouldn't be faced with choices that are not relevant to them.

[andrewducker]

I'm all for giving people basic functionality - but MS deliberately attempted to squeeze other browsers out of the market, and was found guilty of abusing their monopoly to do so. This goes some way to redressing the balance.

Obviously it would be better if they just issued all new copies of Windows with Firefox rather than IE, but I don't think they were going to go for that :->

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Is it really about the browser though? Unless I am missing something, Microsoft have little to gain financially from people using IE. It is essentially given away free - as are most other browsers. The value presumably lies in the ability to default all IE searches to Bing, to maximise the ad revenues they then get from people clicking on adwords or paid search results.

Firefox and Chrome both select Google as the default search engine on installation, something I am surprosed Microsoft have not pointed out and objected to.

[andrewducker]

This is the end(ish) of a 15 year battle. Microsoft was terrified that the web/internet would make the operating system irrelevant, because everything would happen online. Internet Explorer was part of the strategy for keeping people on Windows, because by including more features than anyone else you could make sure that developers would code applications to match your browser rather than anyone else's.

You can still see some of the side-effects from this with large companies that are having problems migrating their web browsers away from IE6, because they have internal (or unsupported bought in) apps that were coded for a browser rather than general standards.

[simont]

That's a lovely idea in principle, but rather falls down as soon as you have companies who have a vested interest in people making an 'irrelevant' choice a particular way. I doubt you could get computers to 'just work' in that way unless you had all software produced (or approved to stringent criteria) by a centralised authority and called by perfectly generic names instead of brands. And that would have its own set of unacceptable disadvantages too, of course.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

You seem to be describing Apple! ;)

[simont]

That hadn't actually occurred to me while I was writing that description, but it did occur to me shortly afterwards :-)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

*strokes his just-works iMac*

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Me at work:

Person On Phone: So I'm trying to [x thing while building a webpage in our CMS] and it's throwing up [x error]. Can you tell me what I do? How do I log this bug?
Me: Are you using Internet Explorer?
POP: Yes. I know I'm supposed to use Firefox, bu- [beeeeeeeeeeeeeep...]


(Sorry, somewhat OT, but I'm at work and get to constnantly tell university workers to stop using IE to edit their webpages. It's kind of fun!)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Well at least they know what they're using!

What are their reasons for using IE though?

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Usually it's just that they don't understand why Firefox would be better, and it looks different which is scary, so they just don't bother. It's on the managed desktop and everything.

This of course being only one of the myriad problems with the principally lovely idea of having a CMS user friendly enough that every administrator in the institution can theoretically be taught to use it.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, for that you need people to want to do it, and to take an interest. Technophobes don't do so well.

Also, I bet most of them can't write.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

They get put on training for that, too. Although it only moderately helps. But then, that's what QAs are for.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

PS: PSSST I GOT AN INTERVIEW FOR THE ZOO JOB!

[andrewducker]

YAAAAAAY!

PENGUINS FOR EVERYBODY!

[princealbert.livejournal.com]

Hehe, which cage did you apply for?

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

hahaha :D