Jeff “the Blog” Bonforte

As I was downloading the most recent version of Apple’s browser Safari 4 (beta), I had a funny/sad thought about the browser: I can’t think of any other piece of software, which is used to assist in switching to a competitor. Imagine the humiliation our poor browsers endure by not just witnessing, but assisting the us to replace it. It is like asking your girlfriend to help you get ready for a hot date…with the girl next door.

I can just imagine the horror of browser as I start typing in www.apple.com/safari, like I did this morning with Firefox 3. I can hear the browser saying, “Hey! What’s going on here? There’s no need for this…I can do better, I swear. She’s not even pretty!” Or maybe it is like that scene from Wizard of Oz where the wicked witch melts away as we all watch on.

Keep reading…

Hmmm. Where did that last 1% go?

I wondered how many software engineers have thought about a little easter egg to foil those oh-so specific downloads, a last ditch gasp of self-preservation. You can imagine a little bug that just misplaces those last few Kbs of the competitor installer leaving you with a frustrating 99% complete download each time.

Or maybe the engineers could have downloads from competitors mysteriously choke down to the download speed of a 300 baud modem (If you’re under the age of 30, you might have to look this reference up to understand its perversity).

I have been thinking about it a lot this year as I have been checking out first IE 8, then Firefox 3, then Google Chrome and this week Apple’s Safari 4. After a pretty boring last few years, it is great to see new blood and fresh energy in the browser space. And with all this fresh activity, more fresh browser humiliation.

The OS Cheers for the Home Team

And while we sadistically force a browser to watch and assist us to find its successor, both major OSes have their own way of preserving their home team browser: the “default browser” setting. Apple has moved this a few times. Everyone in the office I asked said, “Under the Internet settings in System Preferences.” And that would make sense. But in 10.5, they moved it to the Preferences pane of Safari! That’s right, to set the OS setting, you have to go into the Apple’s browser.

Default web browse? Nope, just IE

Windows is both better and worse. You can go to “Options” in the Tools menu of IE to change the default. Or you can go to Control Panels » Internet Options » Programs where you can “Set Programs” and select an alternate browser. But, of course, they had to give themselves a bit of an unfair advantage. So they also have one level up, and very prominently at the top an area called “Default web browser” where you can ONLY set IE as the default. Adding insult to injury, there is a box you can select to “Tell me if Internet Explorer is not the default browser.”

I guess the Justice Department didn’t inflict enough pain to cause a permanent scare, after all.

IE, I Like It When You Watch

Of course, I don’t always feel badly. As you can see above, one browser doesn’t seem to earn my sympathy. Each time I replace IE, I get this twisted pleasure surfing over to a competitor download page. “Mmmm, IE, I like it when you watch.” And I swear there are multiple times that I have made Firefox the default, only to have the setting mysteriously changed back to IE.

In fact, when I worked at Yahoo!, the Toolbar team got alphas of IE 7 and found that when we installed our Toolbar, IE barfed up the error reported “Someone is attempting to hijack your browser. Would you like to allow this?” Hijack? I guess that is one perspective. We were told it wasn’t intended for public consumption. Even if not, it shows a disturbing perspective, like that Internet Properties box above.

PS: Safari 4 doesn’t allow me to add a link in WordPress, so I am using FF 3 for this entry. Oh, the irony.