No, it’s not Explorer. Microsoft wanted first to order browsers from left to right, in order of market share. That meant Explorer was going to go first, then Firefox, then Safari, Opera and Google’s Chrome. The EU objected, so Microsoft complied and offered the only possible option: Alphabetical order.

That puts Apple Safari in the number one position, followed by Google Chrome, Microsoft Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Looks good enough to me, but Jenny Boriss—a Firefox user experience designer—disagrees:

This ordering is about the worst option possible. Microsoft wrote in their proposal that ‘nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser’, but this is exactly what the current design does. Windows users presented with the current design will tend to make only two choices: IE because they are familiar with it, or Safari because it is the first item.

“The disproportionate advantage to Safari is what really makes this design poor,” she said, citing several studies that claim first position in a ballot gives an advantage, in part because Western voters scan from upper left to lower right when they read.

She goes on and on and on about this, but her basic message is: If Firefox is not first, this design is BAD. She timidly proposes a random order every time the selection screen opens, but she argues that this is bad because it “unfortunately does not provide users with any information about what browsers are preferred”.

Then she shows her true colours, proposing the order according to market share—what Microsoft proposed—but excluding Explorer from that ordering and leaving it to the last position. Wouldn’t that be unfairly helping Firefox and putting Safari, Chrome and Opera in a bad position? And why discriminate Microsoft Explorer too?

Finally, she also proposes probability ordering by market share excluding Internet Explorer, which again gives Firefox the advantage over the rest 50 per cent of the time.

In other words, Microsoft and the EU should help Firefox to become the new monopolistic browser, no matter what. Jenny, please: Stop. Saying. Words. [Boriss' Blog via Computer World]

The Samsung Instinct HD has been officially outed as a $US250 (after rebate) addition to Sprint’s line, with a lean spec sheet that matches up with previous rumours: it has have a 5MP camera with HD video recording and TV-out—Samsung’s using Microsoft’s definition of “HD”, evidently — that it runs a proprietary Samsung OS, and that it is, well, an incremental upgrade to the popular-but-underwhelming Samsung Instinct. On top of that we now know it’s got a 320×480 screen, Wi-Fi, the fantastic Opera 9.7 browser and GPS — none of which are overly surprising. The release date confirms prior suspicions as well: It’s set for September 27.

It’s announced, it looks decent and it’s about what we expected — so what’s wrong? For one, it’s inexplicably been tagged with a higher price than Sprint’s Pre and their Hero, two phones that are objectively more capable that the Instinct HD. And why is Sprint being so cagey about specs? We don’t even know how much storage this thing comes with, or what the quality of the HD video is. It’s a bizarre way to launch an utterly un-bizarre phone which, mind you, could still be a nice handset. It’s just gotten off to an inauspicious start. [Sprint]

The idea is to mirror the desktop version as much as possible. Open a new tab and you’ll see the visual speed dial thumbnails, which you can also customise based on your browsing history. The new version can also be set to store login details on your phone.

As with Opera 4.2, YouTube videos will play via your phone’s native media player, and there’s still no Flash support. What also sucks: This beta won’t support Skins and Opera Link, though both should be reintroduced as development continues.
[Opera: Full Website | Mobile version]

Seeing as laptop users have a browser open pretty much at all times, AnandTech ran exhaustive tests on Windows machines, Intel and AMD, netbook and notebook, to see if switching browsers made any difference in how long batteries hold out. And hey, it does! In some tests, there was a 30% advantage between the worst browser—always Safari—and the best—Internet Explorer 8. Seriously.

In fact, Microsoft’s browser came in front across the board, even inching out Firefox with Adblock by a few percent. It’s hard to say why IE8 is so power-thrifty, but the most processor-intensive operations a browser does, outside of running Flash content, are in rendering Javascript, which IE8 kind of sucks at. So, mystery solved, maybe! Firefox, Chrome and to a lesser extent Opera held up fine, but depending on what kind of laptop you’re running, and how willing you are to ditch your browser, there are quite a few sweet battery minutes up for grabs here. Full breakdown at [AnandTech]

The deal, according to ElectricPig, is as follows: If you never dropped those 500 Wii Points on access to the Internet Channel, you can now download it for free. If you for whatever reason had, you’re entitled to free access to “a Virtual Console NES title worth 500 points”, which, despite the vague phraseology, is pegged with an October release date. In other words, it’s a specific game, instead of a simple 500-point credit, or at least a range of titles.

To be fair, they didn’t have to give users anything, and no matter how marginally useful the browser is, whenever it was free, it felt like a nice value add. [ElectricPig]

The latest build was missing Flash and Gears, but Opera Turbo—speedier page loading with some help from Opera’s servers was there. Hopefully it’ll have the other two in place by the time it hits Android, where it should provide some decent competition to the default WebKit browser, which is already pretty damn good. [App Scout]

The concept is somewhere between a personal web server and a filesharing application, technologically and conceptually. The interface is straighforward, divided into panels for each service that you choose to “host.” All of them behave in the same stupid-simple way: you start a service, whether it be photo sharing, music streaming, web hosting or straight file sharing, select a shared directory, set your privacy preferences and go.

Even at this early stage, there’s a lot of hosted content to explore, including lots of publicly streamable music, which will almost certainly cause Opera problems even though, strictly speaking, they’re not actually doing the hosting or streaming. There’s no video service for now, but Unite is extensible, meaning that anyone can design a plugin to add to the program’s default file-serving capabilities.

Opera is proud of the fact that Unite runs against the tide of most new web services, opting for client-side content hosting over cloud-based solutions—so proud, in fact, that they’re able to repeatedly, straight-facedly describe Unite as a “Web 5.0″ product, which is a bit rich considering it is just a collection of services that have been available for years, albeit never in such a simple or consolidated way. As a convenient tool for sharing large amounts of content, I see it. As a game-changer? I’m not sure.

A technical preview of Opera Unite is available for download here. [Opera]

Whoa, hey, Opera has just posted download links for the beta release of Opera Mobile 9.7, the server-side accelerated, Flash-friendly update to their flagship mobile browser. Let’s see how it is, shall we?

Opera plainly states in the release notes that this is an early build of the browser, which means a few features are missing, the most conspicuous being full Flash and Google Gears support. But what what about regular browsing?

With compression on, it’s fast. The full NYT homepage, images and all, loaded in 10 7 seconds flat over 3G. Formatting is basically unaffected by the optimization, and the sacrifice in image quality is, while noticeable, not that bad. With compression on, though, the browser is crashy, occasionally poopin’ the bed when directed to more complicated sites, like Giz.

There are other issues, like near-total lack of support for nonstandard software keyboards in Windows Mobile, and a broken rotation function. But it’s a beta, and so far, so good—if 9.7 turns out as good as it sounds like—and now, looks like—it will, it’ll give Skyfire a run for its money and/or debilitating kick in the junk.
[Opera]

It should make browsing on slow cellular and/or modem connections much more palatable, the trade-off being that image content looks like arse, as demonstrated in the above screengrab. [Opera via Pocket Lint]