Blog
What is a browser?
by Dragon on 2009-10-27 01:00:49 UTC
A couple years ago I had an assignment to help write a test for a basic computer class. Since it was a basic class I thought I'd cover some stuff about browsers in addition to other things, just to keep things reasonable. I turned in the test and was told that it was too difficult. Apparently something that I found quite simple was completely unknown to most students, even for a computer class in a world heavily reliant on the web.
Today I came across an article that said only 8% of people surveyed in Times Square knew what a browser was. I'd have to guess that Times Square has a pretty well rounded group of people coming through, even if it isn't an average location. I just asked my wife about it and she was only partially correct. Wow. Anyway, check out this site: http://www.whatbrowser.org/
And... if you know what a browser it, I guess congratulations is in order. :D
Replies
by the unnamable on 2009-10-27 02:26:34 UTC
i find that very shocking with the amount of time people spend on the web i would have thought that would be commen knowledge
by tampamac2002 on 2009-10-27 17:16:17 UTC
I wonder how many know what an OS is?
by dragon on 2009-10-28 03:57:42 UTC
I asked my wife if she knew what an "operating system" was. She started off with a pretty good answer.
"Isn't that Windows? It's what makes it so the screen isn't just black with a bunch of jumbled letters."
I thought that was a decent answer. Then I asked if she knew any other operating systems.
"Firefox? Opera?"
So she has these names somewhere in her brain... just not sure where to connect them. :D
by tampamac2002 on 2009-10-28 12:30:25 UTC
I'm not sure how well my wife will do, I plan to pose the two questions to her when I get home tonight.
She may get the operating system ?, I don't think she'll do well with the browser though.
I don't think she ever heard of opera or firefox.
by TylerChuit on 2009-10-28 14:41:27 UTC
i find that very shocking with the amount of time people spend on the web i would have thought that would be commen knowledge
I used to do tech support a billion years ago (well, last century) and the guy who was in charge of buying hardware used to call computers "CPUs". ::)
by dragon on 2009-10-29 13:11:48 UTC
Yeah, I've heard them called CPUs quite a bit too.