Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Entire countries adopting Mac OS X? That's something I have never heard about.

The fact that Brazil or China is pushing Linux doesn't change a bit. If there is one Linux distribution that could change something that's Ubuntu, and even Ubuntu is built "ass backwards" (to use james's suggestive expression). Why? Because the GUI sucks. The visual experience is so much below Vista or Tiger/Leopard that there is no comparison. And people like beautiful toys. Plus there is the learning curve.

Right now, most of the people who use Firefox do it for security reasons. Many of them don't have their systems up-to-date, because they have a pirated version of Windows (that's why you see those huge FF numbers in Eastern Europe), or because they are lazy to download and install SP2 and other (big) patches, or simply because they believe the FUD. As somebody said above: if you don't visit disreputable sites, you probably won't have any security problems, not even with IE. (By the way, I have been running the IE engine for ages, and never got infected with anything. Maybe it has something to do with my up-to-date genuine Windows XP.)

FF is a good browser, with some great extensions, but do you know why I use Avant on top of IE, instead of FF? Because Avant looks great, and offers 95% of what I need. I don't even care if pages break; I use IE 7 beta 3 (which has never crashed on my PC, btw) and some pages do break. But the reason I don't use FF is the visual part. There is still not a theme that is both as pleasant and professional as Avant or even IE 7. Still the out-of-the-box experience is much worse than of any other browser (and I am LAZY enough to hate looking for extensions and customizing my browser for hours, plus there is no real incentive for me to use FF). Opera looks good, but it still FEELS different from browsing with IE.

Back to standards. The main problem with the open-source community is the "You want a feature? Why don't you submit a patch?" mindset. Many open-source products (like FF and Linux) are completely disconnected from the mindset of regular Joes. They are creating products for nerds. They are nothing like Windows XP/Vista or OS X in end-user experience. Just look at OpenOffice and compare it with Office 2007 or iWork.

There is a well-known fact in sales: give customers too many choices and they will buy much less. By pushing the customization side, FF does exactly that. People don't care that much about customizing (except for geeks). They just want a SIMPLE thing that works and that's exactly the same on every computer. (Why did MS come out with the ribbon interface in Office 2007, if not to hide the complexity?) Same goes for "standards".

I am already repeating myself. :)

Short version: People don't care about idealistic "standards". People care about a good Web experience, which means pages designed for IE first, anything else second. And no, the solution is not Flash.