An important choice to make: your browser

Your browser is an important piece of software on your computer. It is what you use to surf the internet: it’s the window around the web sites you visit.

There are many browsers available, each with a variety of features. On the next screen, you can select and install any additional browser(s) you want.

Please Note: The Browser Choice update unpinned your browser, Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer, from your taskbar, but you can pin it back if you want. Click here to learn more.

Internet Explorer is still available from the Start/All Programs menu.

Before proceeding, please confirm that you are connected to the internet.

I've heard about the browser ballot a lot recently, but this is the first time that I've seen it in action. The ballot arrives in the form of a windows update -so if you don't have automatic updates turned on you might not get the ballot; ironically, its the machines that are most at risk of being hacked that are least likely to benefit from any security improvements garnered by the ballot.

One annoying thing about the ballot is that it removed your IE button from the windows 7 taskbar.

The choices I was offered are shown below:

If you look carefully, you can see that you can scroll right (this might not be obvious to inexperienced computer users) and doing so shows more browsers. The extra ones I was offered were Flock, Sleipnir, Maxthon, Avant, Green Browser, Flash Peak, and K-Meleon. The only one of these I've ever heard of was Avant browser, which is not a bad browser at all (although the lack of google toolbar is the most important consideration for my choice of browser). Personally, I will not be changing my browser of coice (IE8) until I've seen Internet Explorer 9 - which is due out soon. I use Firefox 3.6.2 in tandem for cross browser testing. Recently Germany warned people to stop using version 3.6 due to a critical security vulnerbility. No browser is 100% secure, but the responsiveness of the manufacturer to warnings of vulnerabilities should be seen as a factor of choosing which browser to use. Mozilla fixed this hole in about a week. When Microsoft was warned of the vulnerability behind the China hacking, it turns out the vulnerability in question was already known about for several months and was not deemed high enough priority to push through an urgent update.