The Web browser market is suddenly a very competitive one, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer having lost its huge dominance, and Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome bringing new options to the party (as well as those other more niche browsers). But what determines people’s choice of browser? Porn, apparently.

OK, so that’s a sweeping statement that really doesn’t apply to all, but porn is clearly a concern for a healthy proportion of the Internet population.

Whether we admit it or not, there is one thing the Internet is used for on a regular basis – for browsing porn. Reading news sites, using social networks, and shopping online are all pretty popular but these are things which we can take or leave most of the time. But porn? Porn is an essential element of the Web for a lot of people, even those too shy or sober to admit it.

There is however one very big problem with surfing the Web for porn, particularly if one visits the same sites regularly. That is the risk of being caught out by either a loved one or a work colleague. The obvious desire is to bookmark the porn sites one uses on a regular basis, but that is a risky business.

While Firefox 2 didn’t cause too many problems in this respect – a simply named bookmarks folder which no one would want to rifle through would suffice – Firefox 3 was another case entirely. Firefox 3 expanded the use of the location bar to include searches against history and bookmarks, meaning someone inputting a perfectly innocent URL could have a porn site that’s regularly visited suggested to them.

According to Firefox’s principal designer, Alex Faaborg, writing on the Mozilla Blog of Metrics, this meant many people tried Firefox 3, didn’t like what they saw, and promptly reverted back to using Firefox 2.

When we expanded the capabilities of the location bar to search against all history and bookmarks in Firefox 3, a lot of people contacted us to say that they had certain bookmarks they didn’t really want to have displayed. In some cases users had intentionally hidden these bookmarks in deep hierarchies of folders, somewhat similar to how one might hide a physical object. Having something from your previous browsing displayed to someone else who is using your computer (or even worse) to a large audience of people as you are giving a presentation, is really one of the most embarrassing things that Firefox can do to you.

Porn isn’t actually mentioned anywhere in the post but the tactful explanation makes it pretty clear that’s what we’re talking about here. Thankfully for lovers of Internet porn Firefox 3.5 somewhat fixed the problem for them by introducing a Private Browsing mode. Suggestions in the location bar can also either be turned off completely or edited to leave out any site that could prove embarrassing.

Related:

Entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 11:30 pm under Amusing, Internet, Opinion.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
Stumble It!