glen-martin
Forget usability in the eyeball wars
posted Monday, 7 February 2005
The browser wars have been quiet(er) for a while. Yes, there is still a certain attention to browser market share, and some feature advancements that are lower key and neither too useful nor delibilitating, but we havent' seen as much of the rapid 'advancement' of HTML(ish) features in competing browsers that was causing web designers and users to pull out our hair a few years ago.
But it isn't that MS and their competitors motivations or behaviours have changed. I heard a report this morning on consumers' problems with media players. I've had this one too. You install a new media player and it quietly takes over responsibility for playing different media types. This is especially annoying when it can't even play that media type. I ran into that problem with the MS product, in which clicking on a file launched their media player which then said 'sorry'.
If you can't play it, why the heck did you steal that MIME-type away from the app that can? You jerks.
Well, we know why: because market share as measured not only in installs but in eyeball (ad viewing) time is what matters. Not customer experience.
Lately, Internet Explorer market share has been (reputedly) decreasing, in favour of FireFox (which is a pretty decent browser, by the way). Regarding which trend Jeremy comments:
Just what we need, the browser war back so we can fight usability on two fronts simultaneously.
But it isn't that MS and their competitors motivations or behaviours have changed. I heard a report this morning on consumers' problems with media players. I've had this one too. You install a new media player and it quietly takes over responsibility for playing different media types. This is especially annoying when it can't even play that media type. I ran into that problem with the MS product, in which clicking on a file launched their media player which then said 'sorry'.
If you can't play it, why the heck did you steal that MIME-type away from the app that can? You jerks.
Well, we know why: because market share as measured not only in installs but in eyeball (ad viewing) time is what matters. Not customer experience.
Lately, Internet Explorer market share has been (reputedly) decreasing, in favour of FireFox (which is a pretty decent browser, by the way). Regarding which trend Jeremy comments:
The IE team at Microsoft has to be busting their butts on the next version of IE.
Just what we need, the browser war back so we can fight usability on two fronts simultaneously.
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