What Does Your Browser Say About You?
21
August
At the moment, the DayDreamer’s girlfriend is currently off in New Zealand. She works in IT and is currently at Microsoft’s TechEd in Auckland. (Think of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference just held in San Fran and you get the picture). Now the company she works for is… well… loved… by Microsoft. Now it seems that the product that they produce will only work effectively with IE. Using Firefox. Why? Have a Mac? Forget about it! It seems that ‘corporates’ only use and are interested in IE. Now before I go on… settle down BGE! Your rant will probably come from the same direction that mine did! I was told that in the “real world”… I think this is code for men in suits, the only people that matter?!?…, that people only cared about IE. Corporate Barbie indeed! Now regular readers of all our blogs will know of our collective disgust at Microsoft and their products. Whether it be on Idle Thoughts, in the Carpark, over at Brand Kudos or indeed in the BEEZHOUSE, we haven’t been shy about launching into the giant from Redmond.
Having had my cross Tasman chat with Corporate Barbie about web browsers, I settled down in front of the computer. I then happended to come across a most interesting post about web browsers and what they say about your personality. How fortuitous I thought to myself! See below to see what your browser says about you:
IE 6.0: You probably don’t know what a “browser†is and you think Internet is IE. You have no clue about technology, and you are generally afraid of computers. You also use your machine only for IM, chat, email and myspace. Your friends keep telling you about that “Fried Fox†thingy but you don’t really understand this stuff and never really had time to look into it.
IE 7.0: You consider yourself to be on the cutting edge of technology. You think that Microsoft is the greatest company on the earth, and that this evil “Lenoux†operating system is made by terrorists. You have a poster of Steve Ballmer on your wall, and you want to be like Bill Gates when you grow up. When you think about Vista you get goosebumps and shiver with excitement.
Firefox 1.x: You are most likely a little bit geeky and proud of it. You are a strong supporter of the Open Source movement, and you think that RMS is “the manâ€. You really don’t care if FF is faster, or safer than IE - you would use it even if it performed 10 times worse. You are just happy that you have a free, open source browser with a huge community that is supporting it. At any given time you have installed at least 7 extensions that you couldn’t live without.
Opera: You really don’t care for the Firefox hype. What you want is the best browser there is - and for you that’s Opera. You actually used to pay them when the browser was add supported. If a Firefox fanboi starts talking smack about your browser you quickly shoot him down by proposing the ACID2 test. You know what you want (a fast, standards compliant browser) and you know where to get it. Browser wars do not interest you at all, although you kinda hope that Firefox wins so that fewer web developers make IE only pages.
Flock: They might as well call you Mr. Web 2.0. You are all over flickr, del.icio.us, youtube and dozens of other websites, and your browser reflects it. You think that Firefox is OK, but it does not include all the blogging, photo sharing, tagging and bookmark sharing tools right there at your fingertips. You wish you could get a chip implanted in your brain so that you would stay connected to the web and be able to moblog 24/7. When the small minded people tell you that Flock is just a fork of Firefox you dismiss them saying they are not seeing the big picture.
AOL Suite: You most likely either still use AOL as your dialup ISP. Either that, or you somehow figured that you still need AOL even after getting broadband connection. Someone told you you can actually use the internets without starting AOL but you haven’t figured out how is that possible. It seems really difficult though, and you suspect it might be illegal.
Safari: Congratulations! You are a Mac user with all perks and benefits that title offers you. You love OSX, and you would never use Windows. It just seems ugly and kludge stricken to you. You like the simplicity, and clarity that Mac offers you, and Safari is a browser that just works for you. You never really bothered to look for another one, because you are fully satisfied with what you have and you wouldn’t change it for the world.
Konqueror: You are a linux user, and a geek at heart. You think that KDE is the best desktop environment out there, and you despise Gnome. You love the fact that your browser is also file manager, a ftp/scp client, smb share client, a PDF viewer and many other things. You like to show off KDE’s network transparency to your friends by scp’ing to your web server, editing HTML file, saving it, and then refreshing the modified page without ever leaving the browser. Most of the applications you use on a daily basis have names starting with a k (Kmail, Kontact, Kdevelop, Koffice etc..)
The one comes from Terminally Incoherent via Will.
Need evidence that Firefox rocks. Even aliens use it. Check out this amazing crop circle found in Oregon.
1. Princess | August 22nd, 2006 at 14:57
Well, my my my. Obviously I left the Daydreamer a little more wound up than I gave myself credit for! Go Corporate Barbie!!
To answer some of the above accusations…
1. Microsoft doesn’t ‘love’ our company, as they don’t make any money out of us (usually the only reason one corporate loves another). They gave us a very prestigious award for one of our products which is bloody good for our marketing and sales, and something that we should, as an IT company, be proud of (see point 5).
2. Like Microsoft or not, they are still probably the most influential company in the PC and Server software space. To be on their good side for our marketing purposes is very good for us(see point 5).
3. Why spend large amounts R&D money developing a version of our browser interface that works with every concievable web browser product when 99% of people who will use it will be running IE.
4. I don’t believe I said corporate people only cared about IE, I believe I said that 99% of corporations run IE, as they run Office, and most likely Windows Server solutions, and have PC’s over Macs. I never said one was better than the other, just stated what we work with. As a side note here, even IBM, who OWN the Lotus Suite of products, run Office.
5. NEVER Bite the hand that feeds you.
6. I don’t believe that corporates are the only people that matter, but unfortunately money talks in the business world, and rightly or wrongly, if companies are going to make/save money from something they are more likely to buy/use it.
For the record, I used to run Opera on my home PC a couple of years ago, and my companies web interface ran fine on it. Just Firefox doesn’t work.
In reference to your survey, see above point, but now run IE6 as, quite frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck what browser I use as long as it gets me the information I need, fast, to enable me to do my job to fund my nails/hair/makeup/clothes/shoes etc, as, afterall, I AM Corporate Barbie… ; )
2. Oz | August 22nd, 2006 at 21:05
Ouch - barbie packs heat!!!
Are you trying to tell me that security isn’t your greatest interest in using Firefox? It’s the sole reason I don’t use IE, even though I bleed OSX and have never had security concerns.
One can only hope the world will get over the Windex operating system and if it can’t, at least kick IE to da kerb where it belongs.