In response to antitrust concerns, the European Commission has mandated that European versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system allow users to select their web browser from a “browser ballot”.  Yet at stake is not only the future of the market, but also how many new computer users will love and grow attached to their systems.

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Microsoft and its latest European tussle

Earlier this year, Microsoft offered to implement a browser ballot in European versions of their Windows operating system in response to pressure from competitors and the European Commission (EC) to foster competition in the web browser market.  The ballot would pop up in a window after installing an update, allowing consumers to choose from a predefined list which web browser they would like to use, presumably by clicking the icon of their preferred program.

Implementing the ballot has not proven simple, however, and Microsoft finally reached an agreement with the EC addressing several concerns expressed by competitors Google, Mozilla, and Opera about its design.  According to the original plan, the browser ballot would have listed its options alphabetically, which raised fears that Apple’s Safari would gain an unfair edge.  Moreover, the form itself was to be displayed as a web page in an Internet Explorer window with the Internet Explorer logo in the upper left hand corner, further biasing consumers.  By fixing these issues, Microsoft has ended its latest European legal tussle over its anti-competitive business tactics.

Yet as with all icons, the browser ballot carries ramifications beyond legal compliance by introducing a completely new subjective experience to the average Windows user.

More than just business: every symbol has a meaning

The visual act of choosing your browser from a ballot rather than simply accepting the default or going through the Internet to install an alternative will reaffirm the trend toward browser-centric and browser-only computing experiences.  Especially for Internet Explorer users, Microsoft’s announcement sounds the death knell for one of its oldest, most innovative, and most poorly implemented visions: the seamless integration of the Web with the desktop.  This may not matter much for established users who encounter the ballot as an update, but it may weaken the desktop metaphor for first-time PC owners who would presumably see the screen after first turning on their computers.

However, such as selection could also be an affirmative action that empowers and ennobles the user, who not only chooses a tool to use for accessing the Internet, but in effect decides her guiding force and her digital plenipotentiary.   The ballot is more than a choosing, it is a voicing that implies taking sides and fealty deeper than computer fanboyism.  It is a visual contract between to sovereign powers with obligations and expectations.

Being not only visual contract but a pictorial one, the emotive strength of the browser ballot is intrinsically connected to the layout of its icons.  Consider Microsoft’s older proposal, as posted on Mozilla interface designer Jennifer Boriss’s blog (October 15th, 2009):

Original Microsoft browser ballot design

Not only is this design weak from a usability and fairness perspective, as many including Boriss have noted, but it also closely simulates standard non-empowering and unemotive click paths for installing web browsers.  Like installing an alternative browser today, it makes the user conscious of the technical installing and informing processes with its prominent “Install” and “Tell me more” buttons.  Moreover, the user must go through an essentially verbal selection process by reading through the textual elements that dominate the page over the icons.  This design is much closer to Microsoft’s terminology of a “Choice Screen” as a literal Wahl rather than the deeper motion to affiliate oneself with a larger body inherent in a ballot.

In contrast, Boriss’s proposal in her post dated November 2nd dramatically simplifies the layout above:

Boriss's proposed design

Choices here are formulated presented within a top-heavy hierarchy emphasizing each browser’s pictorial representation.  Text is subordinated icons, and even within the text different layers are distinguished by size.  The layout’s principles are opposed to, for instance, the rhythms found in Roman aqueducts or Romanesque facades where larger arches containing bigger swaths of negative space support successively finer and smaller arches.  In the polarized visual environment of the ballot, the positive space shaped by columns of text topped by buttons and logos evoke the stem, calyx, and blossom of flowers, or architecturally the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s lily-pad columns in the Johnson Wax Building rather than the simulated entasis of hierarchically arcaded building fronts.  By making his choice, the user moves beyond technical jargon and legalese, implicitly associating himself with the generative and vegetative power of one of these browsers via their colorful icons, not their cold descriptions.

Heraldry and digital ballots in video games

Boriss’s design evokes heraldic traditions, as well, which have long engendered feelings of loyalty and partisanship through digital ballots in computer games.  Consider the venerable family selection screen from Holistic Design’s classic medieval trading simulator remake, Machiavelli: the Prince (1995):

Machiavelli: the Prince family crest selection dialog

This is the screen each user faces when starting a new game, and its effect is immediate and powerful.  Significantly, it follows a dialog box for selecting a family name from a list, yet the effect of choosing a name from a text list is far less impressive than picking a crest, the experience of which is nothing short of intoxicating.  Surely the force of the graphical dialog box comes not only from an enhanced sense of historical association, but also a heightened feeling of belonging and allying, which reminds the user of his own agency through engaging it.

The same psycho-semantic processes are at work within Boriss’s design, and moreover Machiavelli‘s ballot shares the same layout principles common to any strong ballot.  A top heavy format again evokes the calyx and the blossom, and although lines of text occupy the top this is mitigated by the use of monospaced bitmapped fonts that dissolve the words against the marble and black backdrop and allow the inviolable crest buttons to float dominant.  The subtle raised hint on rollover also bears a resemblance to the bubbled “Install” button on the browser selection window, though neither are as obvious or taxing as the button hints in Microsoft’s design.

Beyond selection

Similar to the medieval crest selection screen, Microsoft’s new browser ballot has the potential to significantly contribute to the emotional experience of new PC users who could move beyond selection to actively identify with one browser or another on a spiritual level.  This is not to mention the empowerment of consumers by affording them more choice.  It is important, however, to remember Umberto Eco’s comparison between DOS and classic Mac OS in his 1994 column in the Italian daily Espresso:

“The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ‘ratio studiorum’ of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach–if not the Kingdom of Heaven –the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation.”

The browser ballot’s ultimate promise of salvation from the online wastes of inundating levels of online information will depend on the configuration of its all-important icons.  Whether a ballot can deliver on that promise is up to the politicians and the developers.

The Beyond Selection: The Symbolism of Microsoft’s Browser Ballot by Ersin Akinci, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.