Windows ballot screen browsers get tested

Internet Explorer users within the EU recently received an update from Microsoft to inform them about alternative browsers. This ballot screen includes popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Opera, but also seven lesser known alternatives like Flock, Maxthon, GreenBrowser, and Sleipnir. PC Pro tested all seven of them in a new browser roundup, which you can read over here. The site concludes some of these browsers, like Flock and Sleipner, are quite capable, but found out that others turn the EU's move to break Microsoft's browser monopoly into a farce due to their shockingly low quality.

Our overall conclusion? Some of these browsers are surprisingly capable; we’d pick out both Flock and Sleipner as being of interest to power users. But others are shockingly low quality, either due to low-quality programming or sheer age, to the extent where the EU’s seemingly sensible move to break Microsoft’s monopoly turns into farce.

The only consolation is that the popularity of the top 12 browsers is re-examined every six months. As such, we beg of some entrepreneurial developers to design their own browser so that the weakest of these browsers can be knocked off the list and people can be offered a better choice. The good news is you won’t need much market share: the bottom seven between them account for only 0.68% (according to Net Applications). In fact, maybe a PC Pro browser is exactly what the EU needs…