It seems that there may be agreement between the European Commission and Microsoft to Windows 7 being released in Europe with Internet Explorer 8 present, but with consumers being offered a “ballot screen” which would allow them to simply select from a list of other web browsers. This would set the chosen browser as default and disable Internet Explorer.<\/p>\n
This would mean that the issues that I discussed in my previous post about Windows 7 E<\/a> would go away as the versions of Windows 7 shipped in Europe would share the same functionality as the rest of the world out of the box, which is a positive step. PC manufacturers would still be free to choose to pre-install any browser(s) that they choose to be the default of the machines they ship in Europe.<\/p>\n The proposal states that the ballot screen will be populated with up to 10 of the most used web browsers (with a usage share of at least 0.5% in the European Economic Area, and only one version per vendor), with the top 5 being given prominence. The proposal also includes a commitment to bring the ballot screen retrospectively to XP and Vista via Windows Update.<\/p>\n For more detail, read Microsoft’s press release regarding their proposal to the European Commission<\/a> and the statement from the Commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems that there may be agreement between the European Commission and Microsoft to Windows 7 being released in Europe with Internet Explorer 8 present, but with consumers being offered a “ballot screen” which would allow them to simply select … Continue reading