-- Potential Energy | Main | Between HR857 and Iota Persei ++
They’re at it again
Monday, 15/May/2006 : 12:23PM
W ould you, dear reader, kindly do me a favour? Pull up a new browser window, type ‘quernstone’ in the address bar, and hit return. Then leave a comment here to tell me what happens.
For me, in Safari, on both my Macs, I reach this page. Which seems reasonable – browsers usually guess a ‘.com’ ending if none is specified, so here seems like as good a place to end up as any.
Internet Explorer on my Windows XP box, to be different, has a bit of a ponder before returning an MSN search page for ‘quernstone.’ Which is fair enough, I suppose.
Firefox, however, does something altogether weird. Typing ‘quernstone’ sends one to… quernstoneknits.co.uk, a knitwear company on Orkney. Hnnnngh? Firefox does this on both Windows and Mac OS X, for me, using the current release versions.
Can anyone verify this? Better, can anyone explain?
Posted by jonathan at May 15, 2006 12:23 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.quernstone.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/927
Comments
I get Quernstone knits- Mac Firefox... :(
Posted by: gia at May 15, 2006 12:31 PM
Firefox by default seems to do a Google I'm Feeling Lucky search... http://www.google.com/search?q=quernstone
Posted by: Chris at May 15, 2006 1:07 PM
Monkeys. That would explain it, right enough.
I wouldn't mind so much if they'd give me a nice jumper or something. Should we set Hugh on them? Or maybe suggest that Stormhoek move into the knitware market?
Umm... I'll get me coat.
Posted by: Jonathan at May 15, 2006 1:15 PM
I think it's becoming more typical for browsers to default assuming that the text is meant for a search engine if no suffix is specified.
Both IE (7 beta 2) and Firefox exhibit this behaviour (ooh, knitwear!) although Opera 8.5 takes me straight through to this site.
I do remember the days when IE would attempt to append a .com though.
Posted by: iMark at May 15, 2006 1:21 PM
In IE, this is a preference you can set, with four options:
- MSN 'I'm feeling lucky' ("just go to the most likely site") - the default, I think
- open MSN search page
- ??? (append .com, perhaps?)
- don't search at all
In Firefox, I can't find a preference to change this behaviour. I'd rather have it open a Google search page than do an 'I'm feeling lucky'.
Posted by: Harro de Jong at May 15, 2006 9:25 PM
Sod preferences, I just want a jumper.
Posted by: Jonathan at May 15, 2006 9:29 PM
Everything goes to the poxy:
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://quernstone.ucc.usyd.edu.au/
The following error was encountered:
Unable to determine IP address from host name for quernstone.ucc.usyd.edu.au
The dnsserver returned:
Name Error: The domain name does not exist.
This means that:
The cache was not able to resolve the hostname presented in the URL.
Check if the address is correct.
Your cache administrator is www-cache@mail.usyd.edu.au.
Generated Tue, 16 May 2006 00:54:36 GMT by www-cacheD.usyd.edu.au (squid/2.5.STABLE9)
Posted by: Richard P. Grant at May 16, 2006 1:55 AM
If you want some fun, go to Google, type alan bell is a prick, and then click Feeling Lucky. Ian found that one, humph :(
As for your request, mine just goes to the MSN search, although it does list your site as one of the options, with a new style 'preview' graphic I've not seen before. Hmmm, me thinks the backroom boys have been updating the system again, didn't do that last week...
Posted by: Al at May 16, 2006 1:21 PM
"quernstone" -> quernstone.com on Camino, Mac OS X. which is yay isn't it?
Posted by: giles at May 17, 2006 2:13 PM