WOT 3.0 Review
I decided against delaying this post until next weekend, because this way it comes before the press release and will inform people (potentially) before the new version is pushed out.
I've been sitting on the new version of WOT for a little while now, after having been invited to the beta-test team (thanks guys!) on April 15. Almost a week has gone by (well, five days), and I feel I have played around with it enough to form a reasonably complete opinion.
The Good
First of all, I'd like to say that the new rating icon is wonderful and much better than the one in the previous version. That little bust (it was head and shoulders, to be precise) was really difficult to use, since there was no centerline to judge from. The dot is much easier to use!
The rating bar now changes from appearing convex to appearing concave when you rate that particular component. (One could also say it dims, but either description works, in my opinion.) It makes a good at-a-glance indicator of whether or not a particular category will carry your input. There is also a message displayed beneath each component's bar if your rating differs from the averaged value from other WOT users, enticing you to leave a comment on the site.
That brings me to a little sidebar here. The WOT site has undergone a major overhaul, now appearing much more like McAfee SiteAdvisor's (rel="nofollow"; sorry, McAfee) in the information provided. The new website scorecard feature is what I'm talking about. There is data on popularity, a link to the WHOIS entry for that domain, detailed rating information with graphics that mirror the add-on's rating popup, and a section for comments and (something SiteAdvisor doesn't do) references.
This new "references" feature is particularly interesting. It takes mentions of a site from Digg, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and a multitude of other places and displays a summary of that activity right on the domain's scorecard. Sites mentioned in Wikipedia, for example, are rather unlikely to be bad; domains bookmarked on del.icio.us or submitted to Digg are much less likely to be spam. I think it's an especially good new feature.
Besides the "references", the comments provide a space for users to provide free-form feedback about the site. There are a bunch of categories to place your comment in, ranging from "Useful, informative" and "Entertaining" to "Spam" and "Browser exploit". The categories of comments are summarized and graphed (!) above the comment display area to give a general idea of the overall user feel for the site.
The Not-Quite-Perfect
With all these improvements, it's hard to imagine that there could be things missing, but there are. (Hey, I'm not paid to write this. I can say whatever I want! 
Most importantly, I would like to see a way for webmasters such as myself to claim their sites. That is one thing I think McAfee SiteAdvisor does well. In fact, it would be doubly useful if WOT allowed verification via <meta /> tags in the site header as an alternative to file upload. Google Webmaster Tools (or Google Sitemaps, as it was called before) has both options, and for free hosts that don't allow file uploads (<cough>Blogger</cough>) the meta tag option is very useful.
Now that I think more about it, the only other thing I can think of is a minor interface change. In the old version of WOT, clicking in the border to the side of a rating bar caused a rating of 100 or 0, but now those ratings are difficult to enter as the borders are no longer clickable areas. If there's still time, I'd love to have that back. For some sites, a rating of 97 or 4 is insufficient.
The Optimistic Conclusion
All told, the WOT 3.0 upgrade is definitely worthwhile. You can grab the update from the beta page if you don't want to wait for the release. With the last two updates, I'm looking forward to WOT 4.0 coming out, whenever that happens. What will they think of next?
Update (04/23): Sami Tolvanen, one of the WOT founders, comments below that the clickable borders have been restored in the latest version of WOT 3.0, which is also now out of beta. Thanks for letting me know, Sami; and you're quite welcome for the review.
McAfee Destroyed SiteAdvisor
You may or may not have heard of SiteAdvisor before. I've mentioned it a few times on this blog, but usually in passing. Say, when comparing it to WOT. This post focuses on McAfee SiteAdvisor, and the reasons I've dropped it.
First off, it used to be an independent company. Then it was acquired by McAfee, a company that makes anti-virus software (subscription-based). Before the acquisition, everything was free. After the acquisition, McAfee removed some features and put them into a paid version of the program available as part of their Internet security suite.
But that wasn't enough. They also have to nag users of the free version once a month, the first time they visit the website for more detailed information. A splash page is displayed before the website rating, asking if the user is sure they don't want to upgrade to the paid version of SiteAdvisor. Once every 30 days.
And another thing: I don't remember ads on the original SiteAdvisor site. In fact, much of the layout has changed since the McAfee acquisition (even the favicon, which is now the McAfee M; I don't even remember what it used to be). Now there is a blinking, animated ad at the top of the page. I don't see it usually, since I run AdBlock Plus (fabulous Firefox extension, BTW), but I know most users do. Why not use Google AdSense for unobtrusive text ads? Don't they pay enough?
In short, the user experience has degraded quite a bit, at least from my perspective. A related concern is an incompatibility between the SiteAdvisor extension and the (great but currently non-functioning in Gmail because of code changes) Freenigma extension which caused a non-functioning address bar for me. Both add-ons are disabled now, as I've stopped using both in everyday surfing, but it's still an incompatibility. The last update was months and months ago, long before even Google Talk's last revision.
Obviously, I've replaced McAfee SiteAdvisor with WOT. I just hope WOT doesn't go the same direction as SiteAdvisor, perhaps after an acquisition by Norton (so they can compete with McAfee, of course).
WOT Going 3.0
WOT, a website-rating (think McAfee SiteAdvisor, not StumbleUpon) browser extension available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, will soon be testing another new version. I was sent an invitation to test their last release before it was launched, and the upgrades there were pretty substantial.
WOT 3.0 will include comments and a plethora of details on sites rated using the add-on, including categorization, popularity, server location (country), and a direct WHOIS lookup link. It sounds even more impressive than the last upgrade. I'm excited!
I'm not sure how I found the WOT site, but when I first started using the extension, all it did was rate sites on four different categories (trustworthiness, privacy, child safety, and vendor reliability). Since then, it has expanded exponentially. The features introduced in the upcoming upgrade appear to rival, and may even surpass, McAfee SiteAdvisor, which is the extension I used before WOT (and dropped in large part because of the increased marketing after the McAfee acquisition).
I'm going to have to start rating sites some more; they say the top 500 most active users will be given the opportunity to test a pre-release version of the new WOT in the next few weeks. My site-rating activity has dropped recently, partly because I'm not visiting as many new sites and partly because I'm usually focused on something besides website ratings. I need to change that mindset.
Update (04/20): I was invited to beta-test on April 15, and I've just published my review of the new WOT 3.0 today.
Internet Explorer Upgrade Nags
Fortunately, Microsoft hasn't pushed out a required upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP yet. They're definitely trying to get people to upgrade, though. A few times now, I've had the Internet Explorer download page from Microsoft.com open on me, instead of my homepage (iGoogle over HTTPS).
At the moment, it says, "Upgrade with confidence," right under the first heading (normal text, below "Internet Explorer 7 downloads"). Sure I have confidence in how much better IE7's rendering engine is, but I don't like the new interface or their implementation of tabs. That's why I still use Internet Explorer 6. I know that the sites I design look better in IE7 than in IE6 (though I've fixed a lot of bugs; and in all honesty they were designed with better CSS support in mind, i.e. Firefox 2).
So it bugs me when IE6 tries to get me to dump it for its younger sibling. All the sites I use in IE work fine in version 6, and in fact I was told that version 7 is unsupported by the most critical sites of all: my school's. Being nagged to upgrade when I have been told not to is annoying.
Microsoft: If you're going to offer an optional software upgrade, offer it in Windows Update, and/or a download. Don't bug users who can't (or shouldn't) do anything to change what version they use.
Update (03/16): Just got another one when I opened IE6 today. Grr...
Q4 2007 Site Stats Review
As promised back in October, I'm reviewing the browser and operating system statistics for this site again. All data is from the period 2007-10-04/2007-12-31.
So, on to business. First up is the overall browser chart. Firefox leads with 57%, followed by Internet Explorer at 29% and Safari at 10%. I also got some negligible visits (less than 2%) from Mozilla, Opera, Camino, Netscape, and Konqueror, plus a very few hits from what appear to have been mobile browsers, such as HTC_TyTN_II Mozilla and Palm680.
Drilling into per-browser version information, Firefox had a pretty good spread of versions, even getting about 80 hits from Firefox 3.0, though 2.0.0.11 (the latest update to the 2.x series) was on top with 40% of Firefox visits. Some people were still using FF1.5 or even version 1.0 -- to you Luddites, I say, "Upgrade already!" You know who you are.
Internet Explorer 7 led the IE sector, with 58.34% to IE6's 41.54%. Those numbers don't add up to 100% for a reason: I had one Internet Explorer 4.01 visitor. Whoever you are, my note to the Firefox 1.0 and 1.5 Luddites above goes for you, too.
Safari's version spread is pretty much indecipherable to me, because the version numbers appear to actually be build numbers. All I can say is that 43% of Safari visits were using version 523.10, with 20% using v419.3 and 11% using v523.12. I have no idea what the corresponding version numbers are; sorry!
For Opera and Mozilla, the most popular versions were 9 and 1.9, respectively (Opera only had the one version, plus a few "not set" values). I won't get into detail about browsers under 1%.
Onward to operating systems, then. Windows was 73% of visits, followed by Macintosh at 20% and Linux at 5.5%. Windows Vista again bit the dust in the Windows version spread, trailing behind XP at 14.7%, while Windows XP had a whopping 81% of the chart. Versions below Vista all held less than 3% each, led by Windows 2000 at 2.7%.
Macintosh only reported the chipset (Intel or PPC), so I can't do a version comparison there. That is a little annoying; I've been getting so many visits to Leopard-related posts, I was kind of wondering how many of those were actual Leopard users. Intel had 75% and PPC 25%, with a trace 68K visit (0.17%). That's all I can say.
There were no Linux version values set, so that's unfortunately going to remain a mystery to everyone.
So the answers to the questions I posed in October are:
Will Vista catch up to and/or surpass XP?
- Nope, not even close.
Will IE take over Firefox?
- Nuh-uh. Thank goodness it didn't!
It's interesting that the statistics' indications mirror my feelings so closely. I'm actually starting to like IE7 better than IE6, at least from a coding perspective; but I don't know anyone -- including myself -- who likes Windows Vista. Perhaps I'm attracting a like-minded readership, or perhaps my statistics are indicative of a real Vista-hating trend in the world. Who knows? Can that judgment really be made with a 3,000-visit sample?
In closing, I'd just like to say that I'm really happy about these statistics. If other sites are showing similar stats (at least about Vista vs. XP), that makes me even happier. May Vista die a painful death, and may Internet Explorer 8 improve even more on version 7's CSS enhancements. (It's already passed the Acid2 test from the Web Standards Project, which is very cool. Not even Firefox 2 passes it, though I haven't tested Firefox 3 yet.)
Netscape Getting Killed Off Next Year
AOL/Netscape has announced plans to kill off Netscape Navigator, the venerable old browser that once held 90% market share, spun off its code into open-source Firefox, introduced the world to JavaScript, and showed us what CSS could do. The end of support: February 1, 2008.
The official recommendation is to switch to Firefox. Extension developers from Netscape's development team have been working on creating Netstripe, a Firefox version of the Netscape 9 default theme. (Update (2010-05-12): Netstripe is gone; the Netscape Navigator and Messenger 9 themes were merged to create Simple Green.)
I used Netscape briefly to test website designs, back at version 8, and quit simply because it switched between the IE and Firefox rendering engines, providing no quirks of its own. Old browsers like Netscape 4, I've tossed already. I also used Mozilla for a time, and also quit that for similar reasons: Mozilla uses the same engine as Firefox, so rendering doesn't change.
There will be a Netscape Archive for die-hard fans of the browser, where users will be able to download versions of the program, without support. Meanwhile, TechCrunch, Web Worker Daily, and Zoli Erdos all mourn the announcement. I wish I could share their feelings, but I've never really used Netscape; I most certainly didn't start the Internet with it (that was horrid Internet Explorer), and now Firefox has begun climbing up the charts (16% last I heard, to IE's 77%).
But in the interest of Internet history, let me say farewell, formally, to Netscape Navigator, and hope that its innovations will continue to be mirrored in all the competing programs that drove it out of business.
Internet Explorer Patch Fix Released
Microsoft has released instructions for fixing the Internet Explorer installations messed up earlier this week by an update. The fix entails editing the Windows Registry, that hulking configuration database that is the bane of all consumers (due to how often it gets corrupted).
Apparently, the problem affects certain customized installations of IE6 on WinXP SP2. While Microsoft didn't say what customizations caused the problem, users of some newsgroups speculate that the problem was related to antivirus software, seeing as how users of Norton (Symantec) and McAfee users who experienced the problem were able to solve it by uninstalling the patch, uninstalling the antivirus software, reinstalling the patch, and reinstalling the security suites.
So, Microsoft issues instructions involving editing the Registry. Why do they always do that? Can't they provide a simple patch file to do it automatically? So often I have seen Knowledge Base articles with instructions for delving into the Registry, but it is rare to find someone comfortable with tweaking those values. I myself shudder at the thought of messing with my Registry. My grandmother, more the average computer user, would be lost. Same goes for those convoluted configuration file edits. Make an EXE or an MSI package, Microsoft; don't leave your often-clueless users to fend for themselves!
Microsoft Cripples Internet Explorer
Now that I'm done catching up, I can talk about today's news.
One of Microsoft's security updates for this month has been causing problems for Internet Explorer users, of both versions (6 and 7). Users have been reporting that IE either won't start or crashes when trying to load certain sites. Microsoft is reportedly looking into the issue.
It doesn't happen on all machines. My computer's perfectly fine. Admittedly, I use Firefox for everything but my school website, but at least I don't have trouble starting the browser.
As long as Microsoft is only messing up their own browser, I'm happy. If one of their security updates destroys Firefox's functionality and leaves IE smelling like roses, though, I'll be really mad.
Opera Files Antitrust Suit Against Microsoft
OK, I swear I won't take anything else verbatim from my source article other than the title. Kudos to James Niccolai for coming up with such a hot headline!
That said, I'll get down to business. Opera Software, the Norwegian maker of the alternative Opera browser, has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union. The suit accuses Microsoft of stifling competition by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and not following accepted industry standards within that browser.
As my friend i80and pointed out earlier today, something similar happened with Netscape about five years ago. Microsoft ended up paying $750,000,000 to settle the suit with Netscape, which was by then owned by AOL. Also included in the settlement was a seven-year, royalty-free license to use Internet Explorer technology.
Back to today's issue, Opera's complaint reasons that by not following standards, Microsoft is hindering interoperability, because Web developers and designers will program their sites to work in the most widely-used browser. Thanks to Microsoft's bundling over the years, that browser is Internet Explorer, heretofore and hereafter referred to as The Bane of Every Web Developer (or Suckernet Exploder for short).
The fact that IE renders sites differently from all the other browsers I've tested on has caused hours of troubleshooting work for me alone. Not to mention, each version's rendering changes slightly, requiring multiple stylesheets with layout fixes specific to the IE version in use. That doesn't even address the vastly different JavaScript methods used in IE, which cause countless headaches for all kinds of people. The fact that XMLHttpRequest() is, in IE, an ActiveX control means the simple call to the standard function (in all non-Microsoft browsers) must be turned into a twelve-line try-catch statement to not only allow for IE's different method, but make sure to use the right version of IE's method, as there are two different versions.
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) says it strongly endorses Opera's complaint.
"By tying its Internet Explorer product to its monopoly Windows operating system and refusing to faithfully implement industry accepted open standards, Microsoft deprives consumers of a real choice in internet browsers. Browsers are the gateway to the internet. Microsoft seeks to control this gateway," said Thomas Vinje, an ECIS spokesman.
The complaint bears some similarities to the 2004 ruling concerning the bundling of Windows Media Player. Microsoft was forced to sell a second version of Windows, sans-WMP, but priced it at the same amount as regular Windows. It was no surprise that the second version, dubbed "Edition N", didn't sell.
I personally hope that the ongoing antitrust problems Microsoft has been having in the European Union will percolate through to the United States and help reduce usage of Internet Explorer the world over. For now, time will tell if Opera's lawsuit is to bring any benefits to the world's general population.
Google Toolbar Updated, but Only for IE
It often seems as though Google's Firefox releases lag behind their releases for Internet Explorer. Recent case in point: the Google Toolbar. Just yesterday, a new version of the toolbar was released, with new features like Google Gadget support, saving settings on Google servers so they can go anywhere you do, revamped Google Bookmarks functionality, integration with Google Notebook, and Web History access. I'm very happy about the news, and I looked for a Firefox version. Is there one anywhere? No, of course not. As with the last version of the toolbar, Google will probably not release an update for another few months at least.
I remember the Firefox T3 update well. The Internet Explorer toolbar had bookmarks for weeks and weeks before I could get the same functionality in Firefox. Now it will likely be the same length of time before I can finally dump the Google Notebook extension for the integrated toolbar features. That's what I did with the bookmarks; I had a third-party extension for Google Bookmarks access until the feature was finally added to the Firefox toolbar.
This is nothing new, for sure. Google has always lagged a bit with updates for Firefox. It's understandable, considering Internet Explorer holds about 80% of the browser market, but that doesn't make it less annoying. None of the Google extensions I have in my browser right now have been updated in the last six months, with some going over a year with no changes. Some I've disabled because they no longer even work due to changes in infrastructure (such as the Blogger Web Comments extension, which doesn't support Google Account logins) or because they're just so buggy.
I can't ask Google to issue updates for all their products overnight, but I hope that in the future they'll be a little faster at issuing updates for the second-most popular browser in the world.
Social Me
Badges
Subscription Options
Latest Comments
- Voyagerfan5761 on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
- dogbonz on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
- Voyagerfan5761 on “No Evil”: My NET10 Wireless Experiences
Latest Posts
Archives
Categories
Creations
Southwest High Robotics Team My first non-personal design work
Promotions, Causes, Etc.
- Yes, it's a shameless plug for money. A strange thing coming from me, but it supports one of the Web's greatest sites.
- I'm sure you saw this one coming. You know what I want.
- Set yourself up with OpenDNS, the fastest DNS service around! You can also set up shortcuts for frequently visited sites and filter content.
- Download the best multi-protocol IM client I've ever seen! So it crashes once in a while, but it's in active development, so they're definitely working on it. (And really, what program doesn't crash once in a while?)
- Don't let Microsoft push through a redundant, broken standard for office files! Chaos and confusion could ensue!
- This is just in case spam-bots visit this site. Click it to find out more (it only does bad things to email harvesters, don't worry).
Blogged.com says I have to leave its badge here to claim ownership of this site. I can't take it off, apparently. Whatever. What would be nice is linking to my own site's page rather than generic "technology news" listings...
blogarama and Blog Flux have similar, but implied, issues. And why does everyone link me to a generic listing page?!