Rubénerd!

This is good news, right?

Image of Detective Oreki and Chitanda by 紫木れゆ on Pixiv

It didn't used to be this way, Smithers

I've pointed out here before that Chrome didn't include Do Not Track, the HTML header that establishes a user's wish not to be tracked. I said it was unsurprising given Google is an advertising company, but it was still disappointing given how many people are using their browser.

(As an aside, the most common retort I read is that DNT won't block all tracking, so it's useless. If it was so useless, why was Google afraid of including it then?)

It wasn't all bad news though. When Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft were actively working towards a standard and implementing DNT in their browsers, Chrome users could install a plugin to do the job. I suppose, in the same way a user could install an ad blocker to hide Google's primary source of revenue. Again, you can empathise with Google's position.

To put this into context though

If you're worried about tracking, I'd question using a browser being pushed by an advertising company. Still, to Google's credit they've finally announced they're including Do Not Track header support in Chrome. I applaud them for this. Sincerely.

For some perspective however, Google's DoubleClick still requires users to store an opt-out cookie on their machine to prevent tracking. Plugins like Beef Taco can assist in keeping these persistent, or you can simply whitelist cookies only from sites and services you trust. Not logging into Google anymore has really helped with keeping their cookies off my machines!

That silly story that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than others may have obviously been a hoax, but even comical exaggerations need a kernel of truth to them to be funny, however small such a kernel is. A microkernel, if you will.

I see your Linux, raise you a Mach

For those who haven't seen the story, a report recently surfaced and went viral that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than those who use competing browsers. Opera users were graphed as being the most intelligent, and IE6 users the least.

The story had all the hallmarks of a successful viral campaign. The story exploited existing preconceptions about people who refuse to move to newer versions of IE or to more standard compliant browsers, and successfully played on the anger and frustration web designers and developers feel when having to bend over backwards to accommodate Microsoft's browsers. All the story needed to be perfect was a couple of quotes from a mental healthcare professional working in Minnesota.

Photo of the Mayo Clinic by Nephron on Wikimedia Commons

Wasn't Alexander Downer from Mayo?

As you probably did too, I didn't buy the story from the start, but it did get me thinking. We all know IQ is as effective at gauging intelligence as the BMI is at calculating your health (Adolphe Quetelet would probably have endorsed Atkins), but what does browser use say about the person using it?

Since IBM handed Microsoft their monopoly in the early 1990s, and since Microsoft decided to illegally leverage their clout to drive browser competitors out of business, most internet users accessed sites through a flavour of Internet Explorer. That's now changing, on three fronts:

1. Since Firefox (arguably) ignited the second browser wars and Microsoft realised they were no longer able to rest on their laurels and stifle the growth of online applications that posed a competitive threat to their expensive desktop software, most technically advanced users have jumped ship to Gecko and Webkit.

2. Windows, the system that Microsoft used to move people to IE, is under threat on the consumer desktop. The profitable, high end market has been secured by Apple now, and technically advanced users run flavours of [GNU/]Linux. Neither of these platforms run IE natively; at least not any more!

3. In the mobile space, the fleeting dominance Windows Mobile and Pocket Internet Explorer had is also over, and their efforts to break out of this rut are largely being ignored in the face of iOS and Android devices.

The slip is the dip

For all but the most die hard Microsoft fans, it's pretty obvious to us what's happening here. With the high end and tech savvy markets slipping away from them, users of Internet Explorer now mostly consists of those for whom the blue e is "the internet" because it happened to come with their cut throat priced beige box, or for those who have no choice on their business machines.

While Microsoft's sudden change of heart with regards to standards has convinced a few to move back, for others its too little, too late. It's hard to find a nerd now not running either Firefox or Chrome, and to a lesser extent Safari and Opera. Web stats on many high profile technical sites are all being reported as favouring these browsers. Not to put too fine a point on this, but those who claim otherwise are ignorant of this, wilfully or otherwise.

What browser a person uses now says nothing about their IQ, but its a safe bet it speaks to their technical proficiency (knowing of alternative browsers, running [GNU/]Linux) or income (Apple hardware), something advertisers might be very interested in.

Never before have I installed an extension so quickly! For Firefox and for Chrome.

For those who haven't been watching this narrative unfold since the mid 20th Century, Rupert Murdoch is an Australian/American media mogul who's far reaching worldwide holdings include the very best in unbiased, factual, journalistic endeavours. Still, if you want to spare yourself the delight of reading such wonderful material, here's how you do it.

For Firefox

From the Mozilla Add-Ons page:

MurdochAlert show a warning bar on Murdoch Family-controlled websites. This alerts users to the potential computer security risks of accessing Murdoch-controlled sites. Handy also for identifying the news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family.

I installed the extension, and sure enough I was presented with a warning when going to The Australian and to Fox News. Which is a relief, because I wouldn't want people to know I've been to such sites. Or Andrew Bolt... but that's another topic entirely.

Firefox-tan is happy ^_^.

For Chrome

I don't use Chrome or Chromium other than for testing, but it didn't take long for an extension in a similar spirit to MurdochAlert to be issued for it, in the form of Murdoch Block.

What does this app do?
- Blocks websites owned and operated by Newscorp

Which websites are blocked?
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_News_Corporation
- The default list is only news and publication sites but that can be customized on the options page.

How is a site blocked?
- When the user opens a blocked site, a warning is displayed and the user is given an option to continue to the site.

Granted MurdochAlert has a more urgent sounding name that successfully conjurers up images of warning sirens, but I give kudos to these people for coming up with a term that rhymes.

Despite being released during the last ice age, Internet Explorer 6 is still choking innovation and standards on the web, perhaps just as Microsoft intended. We need to get Internet Explorer 6 users off the net and onto newer browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari or if they're okay with companies calling home then Chrome might also be feasible. Heck even Internet Explorer 8 or Windows Internet Explorer 8 or Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Home Premium Online Edition 2009 would be a start.

Fortunately there is a way to encourage users on corporate computers who aren't allowed to install or modify the software on their machine and inexperienced users who don't know how to install or modify software in the first place to move over to a different browser, and it's so breathtakingly obvious I'm kicking my left shin with my left foot for not coming up with it myself.

By going to Twibbon you can add an Internet Explorer 6 must die badge on your Twitter profile and let the entire world see it! I suspect once such a movement reaches critical mass even the companies still on Windows 2000 will start to take notice and upgrade.

Okay I admit it, I was being sarcastic (no, really?) but the truth is we do need to get Internet Explorer 6 off the net. Even if only one person changes their browser in response to seeing my Toblerone nose that happens to have an indecipherable graphic that I assume is a tiny Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer Home Premium Online Edition 2009 icon with a strike through it, then I know it was worth it.

So The Googles have just come out and said they're releasing an operating system dubbed Google Chrome OS. Cool. This part is my favourite:

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

I use FreeBSD as well as Mac OS X on the desktop and while it does have some nice features, X11 is kinda kludgey. I'll be really interested to see what Google does as a graphical front-end instead.

The other question on my mind is: will Google Chrome OS run Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird? :)

When I initially moved back over to Firefox on my Mac so I could use Greasemonkey to make Google Reader usable again, I had no idea that in a matter of weeks I would become a Firefox addict again. Not necessarily because of the interface (on Mac the Firefox 3.0 interface is quite clumsy and certainly not as streamlined as Camino or Safari), it's because of the extensions.

For example, yesterday CNET announced that Google's Chrome browser would be made available for Mac OS X and Linux at some point in the next 100 years:

Showing signs that it's working to meet requests for new developments to its Chrome browser, Google on Friday said it hopes to release versions for Mac OS X and Linux by the first half of the year, and it released a new version Wednesday that paves the way for the most requested feature: extensions.

While I was impressed initially with the Windows version as I wrote about last year, I soon yawned and moved back to Firefox. As someone who used to use KDE constantly I appreciated the fact that WebKit was being so well endorsed by being used by another vendor's browser, but I couldn't really see the market it was attempting to fill other than perhaps the idea that each tab is a separate process.

The fact such a large web company is also producing it does scare me a little too.

But back to extensions, now that I've read a few reports that Chrome will include extension abilities I'm somewhat appeased, but what I'm more immediately concerned about are the extensions themselves. While I value a few themes which make Firefox look more Mac like, I've become so used to using a handful of security extensions that moving to a browser that doesn't either have similar built-in functionality or the ability to extend the browser to do the same thing would make me feel unsafe using the web.

This is probably more paranoia than anything else, but I've become so used to blocking all the JavaScript, suspect advertisements and cookies loaded on a page and keeping meticulous whitelists that the alternative of allowing essentially a free-for-all scares me. Which is ironic, because less than a year ago I didn't have problems with this at all. I'd also miss the ability I have now to scrub URLs to remove unnecessary redirects, and being able to check whether or not secured certificates are using MD5 or not, or whether super cookies are active... the list goes on. This will be the topic of an upcoming post.

Who knows, perhaps Chrome will finally release versions for other OSs and allow extensions which will generate enough interest as to create replacement extensions for their equivalents for Firefox. Unfortunately this will take time, and to be honest I think Firefox and Chrome target two different groups of people, the latter of which perhaps aren't as security obsessed. I guess time will tell.