Dear Yahoo, Please Don’t Jack My Homepage!
I really get turned off when any software tries to change my home page, my search engine or tries to install unwanted toolbars and other crap. Sure, I understand the monetary reasons behind it. A software publisher gets someone’s toolbar installed, they get paid a dollar. But at least make it so the user has to specifically opt-in to install the bloatware.
Back in the day Konfabulator had the coolest cross-platform widgets. Widgets are small programs that add some functionality. They still have cool widgets but since they sold out to Yahoo, at least in my opinion, they lost some of that independent cool factor.
I have done some testing of the Windows Vista Sidebar and the Yahoo Widget engine. I like both but the Yahoo product has the widgets I prefer. Both have weather and battery status widgets, and both have international time display widgets, but I prefer how the Floresense WorldClock 1.2 Yahoo widget works, especially since it synchronizes time and accounts for localized daylight savings time.
… Anyway, back to my rant! Here I am installing the Yahoo Widget thing on my new Vista laptop, and the damn software wants to change my homepage and search engine. What the hell! Both options are checked (true) by default, if one is not paying attention their browser would become totally jacked by Yahoo. How rude!
That’s fine to offer changing my browser preferences, but ask me first and don’t assume I want to see a big red Y in my face every time I open my web browser. I’ve been on the web since there was a web, I have very specific browsing preferences, and I take offense to having my settings changed by anyone or anything. {end rant}
_
Bookmark this to:
del.icio.us
| soc.ialize.us
| digg
| furl
| reddit
| Yahoo
| Google
| Netscape
| Live
| AOL