

Hey Microsoft: What if you gave Windows 7 the power to run multiple browsers really well? - technologizer
http://technologizer.com/2009/02/25/one-windows-multiple-browsers-bundled-i-like-it/

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makecheck
I really never defend Microsoft, but this is a legitimately hard problem to
solve.

One challenge is that even today, many users (even really smart users) don't
distinguish programs well. I know an engineer who mentioned features of
"Vista" she didn't like, that turned out to be exclusive to the new Office
ribbon. Any XP user who upgraded Office would see the same issues, but to her,
this was _Vista's_ fault. Microsoft would surely start fielding phone calls
from customers displeased with some "feature of Windows 7" that turns out to
be an oddity in Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera. Forcing Microsoft to
_ship_ alternatives is the wrong decision for support reasons. It may be more
sensible to just give users _links_ to browser vendor web sites, I don't know.

Then there's the question of how to implement OS features. Both Windows and
Mac OS X have standard HTML help systems, for instance, and it would suck if
they had to shoehorn in the user's preferred browser as the renderer for a
simple pop-up help window. What you care about here is not the specific
browser, but whether or not it is _sandboxed_ properly. IE is "good enough"
for actually rendering OS features, the problem is that as soon as a help file
visits the wrong web site the system can still be trashed (when it should be
protected). Microsoft has to clean up IE's ties to the OS, simply having IE
present is not the problem.

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suhail
Or...how about just 1?

