Windows 7 - Get a browser with no browser

[Sysman]

Microsoft Legal's latest idea is that IE ships with Windows, and then users will be offered a choice of alternative browsers to install and use by default "Shortly after new Windows PCs are set up by the user" (unless they've already set up a non-IE browser as their default).

Thanks for the link. There was a flurry of articles about a "ballot screen" a few weeks ago but I thought the idea had died.

[d000hg]

Thanks for the link. There was a flurry of articles about a "ballot screen" a few weeks ago but I thought the idea had died.

Isn't it only that such a "ballot screen" version has to be AVAILABLE, rather than mandatory? Or is that incorrect?

[NickFitz]

Isn't it only that such a "ballot screen" version has to be AVAILABLE, rather than mandatory? Or is that incorrect?

It's a proposal Microsoft made as an alternative to not including a web browser at all. If you follow the link I posted, you'll see that the screen shot of the proposed format is running in an IE window. The idea is that users will be automatically offered the "ballot screen" (a really bad and misleading name, IMHO - this isn't an election, it's a selection) after setting up their new Windows installation, and said screen can also be returned to at a later date, given that it's a web page (and, hopefully, Microsoft will have learned how to create a meaningful and stable URI by then).

The European Commission has made encouraging noises about this being an adequate way for MS to address the possibly anti-competitive nature of bundling IE, but AFAIK nothing has been decided yet, and I don't think this concept is live. However, MS have said that it will also apply to new XP and Vista installations, if and when it becomes a reality.

Personally, I think it's an acceptable way for MS to offer users (most of whom don't give a flying fsck) the option of using a different browser. There will probably be at least some who, presented with this screen, vaguely remember being told by a mate that [Firefox|Safari|Chrome|Opera] is a better option, and choose to go for it.

As a web developer, I'd be happy for Microsoft to just get their browser up to scratch. I already have to test on them all (on most projects) and it would just be nice if IE's rendering was, as with the others, only a pixel different here and there, rather than looking like a bomb site. IE 8 goes a very long way, but unfortunately it only brings IE up to where the other browsers were three or four years ago. It doesn't even support XHTML (other than by treating it as HTML full of ignorable parsing errors), and one gets the impression they haven't even heard of SVG, version 1.1 of which has been a W3C recommendation (the W3C's word for "standard") since April 2003, and which has good to excellent support in every other serious rendering engine on the planet... including on the iPhone or phones based on Android.

MS have still got a long way to go in the browser wars. They are so bogged down supporting some crappy intranet applications that big corporations (who happen to be their biggest customers) made for IE 6 in the early noughties that they aren't anywhere near ready for where the web is going in the next year or two. I'm just hoping that Chris Wilson will be able to wield some influence from his new position, which is "sort-of" over and above the IE team. From what he said to me earlier in the year, he feels the same way, but he's still stuck with navigating the rocky waters of Microsoft's internal politics