Being a decision maker - Part Two

In my last post I was exercising my search engine choice for kicks.  Choosing a search engine is easy,  you type in the URL and get directed to the home page of your favourite search engine's site.  If you prefer one and want it to be your default search engine,  Firefox has a handy pull down menu where you can manage your search engines and set your engine of choice.

This is just one of the many ways that Firefox, and Mozilla, promote choice. Another way we do it is by providing the world's best browser in over 70 languages, and on multiple platforms.  We give users the choice of a browser that is built with them in mind.  For security, accessibility, and extensibility users can count on Mozilla's Firefox to be doing its best to improve the areas that make the open web work.

The Microsoft Browser Ballot screen has started to roll out this week and there are people who are most likely not expecting, nor informed about what it means to make a choice as it relates to the web browser.  It's important that we not forget that many people don't know what a web browser is.

I recently posted about how I suspect the design of the ballot screen will scare away people before they even get a chance to make a choice.  For those that make it to the second screen (where you are presented with the 5 top browsers by market share) there is another obstacle: lack of information.  The screen doesn't tell you why choosing your browser is important.  It doesn't tell you which browsers are more secure, which ones work with screen readers, which ones can be extended to add custom functionality.  These are important factors in making a choice.  Otherwise "choice" is really "pick the pretty logo and see what happens".  Or perhaps "choice" is "stay with what you know, cause change is scary".

Which web browser you use may seem trivial thing at first but when you look under the hood - it matters that your know the browser you choose will work with your assistive technology. It matters that your identity is safe, that a site's legitimacy is explorable before you make an online purchase, and that you can customize your web browser to maximize your efficiency.  I've had several academics tell me they rely on Firefox add-ons to help them cite, bookmark, and make notes in the browser as they prepare class materials.  Your browser can make viewing the web a comfortable, seamless, and efficient experience.  Don't you want to have the information to help you make the choice that's best for you?

I hope that John Lily's letter,  and other blog posts in the coming weeks will reach a wide audience and help supplement the lack of information that the ballot screen contains. Just as it would be odd to let a stranger pick your car out for you - with no information about your driving habits, family size, gas budget, style preferences - you should try as much as possible to make an informed choice about the tools you use on your computer to do your work and live your digital life.

It really does matter. Have fun exploring your options.

Being a decision maker - Part One

While helping a friend with a wordpress site, I googled for image gallery plugins and was met with:

I've never seen this before so of course I started to search for the site in other search engines:

Interesting, kind of suggests that this site also uses Yahoo.  That's impossible. Now how about Alta Vista, Dogpile, Lycos, and Ask.com?

 

Nope, no special greeting.  I saved the "best" for last, Microsoft's Bing:

Ok, wait a minute.  Decision maker?  Why is everything else just a friendly greeting? Decision maker makes it sound like I've done something radical by using Bing.  I'd love to know if Technically Personal is generating this box or if it's coming from somewhere else.

Browser Choice Screen slight of hand?

Just reading over Microsoft's "What to Expect" post about the upcoming browser choice ballot. I tried to imagine I was a windows user seeing this for the first time.

Two things about this screen bother me right away. One is that the "Ok" is just a link, not the usual, and obvious call-to-action BUTTON. It's also on the left and I usually look to the right (or center) for things like "OK", "Next", "Continue", or "Agree" type action buttons. I notice that on the next screen (the actual choice screen) "Select Later" is also on the left so maybe it's just my own habits and not a mind-game Microsoft is playing with me.

Second, they 'unpin' IE from your task bar and then the last line of screen 1 is "Before proceeding, please confirm that you are connected to the internet." If I didn't know for sure that I was connected to the internet, I'd probably want to open IE to check. I find this user experience confusing and wonder how much work Microsoft's team did in trying to make it intentionally so. The scenario I picture is my friend's mom Janice. Janice still saves web pages to her desktop instead of bookmarking them so I don't think she's the majority use case here, but I thought of her anyway. I think she would fairly represent a certain group of computer users that are competent at doing daily tasks on their machines but are nervous about making changes to their systems.

I imagine that Janice sees this screen and has no idea about the ballot's history so she takes the time to read the first screen. What? Features? What is a feature for a browser? I connect to the internet with IE, what features do I need? You've unpinned my shortcut to IE? Where do I go to open it now? I need to be connected to the internet? How can I check that? How do I open IE now that you've taken away my shortcut? Janice clicks on the "here" link to find out how to re-pin IE to the taskbar and who knows what happens next (Microsoft's post doesn't show this) but I suspect that browser choice is put aside and this screen will not be run again.

What has Janice learned about browsers, choice, security, compliance, open standards? Nothing. She unfortunately is now maybe more afraid of running a Windows update than before, and life goes on.

Anyway, it's just one scenario that came to mind. I know we're going to see some really interesting stories, comments, and choices being made as this ballot reaches more and more people. I'm looking forward to watching this all go down.