Today as you may know, Microsoft will start sending out the browser choice update. In the news I heard about the update displaying the list differently in different browsers: I tried this with both IE and Chrome: this is the result:
These are only the first five choices, where there are nine.
In these two browsers only the most left and right are at the same location: Mozilla Firefox and Flock,
I thought that the browser were shown in random order… So this all might be a coincidence.
Problem is, it is not entirely random, according to the following article: http://www.automatiseringgids.nl/technologie/software/2010/9/microsofts-browserkeuzescherm-werkt-niet-helemaal-goed.aspx
In fact, their shuffle is not deterministically terminating either… Nice discussion here: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b7h47/doing_the_microsoft_shuffle_algorithm_fail_in/ and http://www.robweir.com/blog/2010/02/microsoft-random-browser-ballot.html
Short version: don’t use Math.random() inside your comparison function if you want a stable and terminating sort…
function RandomSort (a,b)
{
return (0.5 – Math.random());
}