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Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

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Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#51

Post by distances »

blacktriangle wrote: post #42
Joeri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps won because they didn’t need to be installed on the device. They were vastly inferior to desktop apps built with any framework (even java), but they were “good enough” and IT departments liked them because they were easy to deploy. Anything that required a local install never stood a chance. That advantage for web apps is still there, which is the thing that keeps web app dominance in place.

I feel like this could have been overcome by Java Web Start, which at the time it was released was too little too late. Even embedding applications as applets could have been a good solution.

I think people forget how slow the Java applets were to load though. It wasn't a great experience at all.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#52

Post by vetinari »

blacktriangle wrote: post #42
Joeri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web apps won because they didn’t need to be installed on the device. They were vastly inferior to desktop apps built with any framework (even java), but they were “good enough” and IT departments liked them because they were easy to deploy. Anything that required a local install never stood a chance. That advantage for web apps is still there, which is the thing that keeps web app dominance in place.

I feel like this could have been overcome by Java Web Start, which at the time it was released was too little too late. Even embedding applications as applets could have been a good solution.

Java Web Start must have all stars aligned for the apps to work correctly.

Ever tried to use HP ILO's Remote Console via Web Start? (For additional nerd points, try doing that with Apple M1 machine). Compared to that, the HTML5 version just works.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#53

Post by phone8675309 »

ebiester wrote: post #16
steiner_j wrote: post #8

"In conclusion, people are finally beginning to understand the hard way: Web Browsers really make poor client application runtimes for all but the most basic of things. ActiveX is a security nightmare and counter to making cross-platform applications. The web is a constantly changing and evolving standard separate from Microsoft or any specific operating system, as such implementing an application for just one specif…

But nobody chose the alternatives. Java or single operating system applications were the alternative. Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops -- or worse, had to have both -- because you depended on applications that had no common operating system? The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications. Now, it's possible that we could have ended up with Web Start…

>Java or single operating system applications were the alternative.

Not really - you could write cross-platform GUI applications from a single code base in 1996 if you wanted to without using Java. It was unpleasant, but it was absolutely possible.

>Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops -- or worse, had to have both -- because you depended on applications that had no common operating system?

Those days are still here, depending on the application.

>The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications.

I wouldn't say that's the reason. Certainly a reason, but not the definitive one.

There are still cross-platform applications from a single code base. This is actually easier due to better cross-platform toolkits that were developed and would have continued development even if webapps hadn't become a thing.

>Even today, it's a giant pain to write cross-platform apps in anything but C or C++

Python and Java are relatively painless in this regard.

>It turns out that nobody is willing to put in the effort when we already have web applications.

Web applications certainly do have the advantage from a monetization, time to market, and network effect standpoint, no doubt.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#54

Post by frompdx »

iamgopal wrote: post #30
ebiester wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nobody chose the alternatives. Java or single operating system applications were the alternative. Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops -- or worse, had to have both -- because you depended on applications that had no common operating system? The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications. Now, it's possible that we could have ended up with Web Start…

Was there ever a JVM web browser?

I would say the JavaFX webview API, but that's based on webkit.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#55

Post by gmfawcett »

iamgopal wrote: post #30
ebiester wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nobody chose the alternatives. Java or single operating system applications were the alternative. Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops -- or worse, had to have both -- because you depended on applications that had no common operating system? The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications. Now, it's possible that we could have ended up with Web Start…

Was there ever a JVM web browser?

Yes... even in its heyday, HotJava was far less usable than Mosaic or Netscape. But it did exist.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#56

Post by kitsunesoba »

blacktriangle wrote: post #28
ebiester wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But nobody chose the alternatives. Java or single operating system applications were the alternative. Where would we be today if you couldn't swap between Mac and Windows laptops -- or worse, had to have both -- because you depended on applications that had no common operating system? The reason we can use linux as a desktop is because of web applications. Now, it's possible that we could have ended up with Web Start…

I think the answer would have been for Java desktop apps to take off. I think if we had had a more diverse desktop landscape in the late 90s / early 2000s Java desktop apps would have won. As it was that was peak Windows and Java desktop apps were never given the time they needed to mature since the cross platform pitch was at its least compelling. The browser pretty much won because it was able to unseat the Windows…

I don't think Java as an app platform ever really recovered from the reputation in picked up in the 90s in the form of applets (which were notorious for crashing your browser/machine) and in the 00s with desktop apps due to the high startup time and often alien-feeling UI toolkits.

I recall back in the 2000s there being a few Java apps for macOS that used Cocoa UIs via the Cocoa-Java bridge that used to exist. These tended to be embraced almost as readily by users as full-native Mac apps, and I think that was largely because these apps tended to start up more quickly and fit into the user's desktop better, removing those two barriers to adoption.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#57

Post by kitsunesoba »

elvis70 wrote: post #35
tech-historian wrote: post #6

If you want some IE nostalgia, here's a visual history of IE starting in 1995 (v1.0): https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/internet-explorer Factoid: There were versions of IE for both Mac and Solaris.

IE5 for Mac was very great! The first version to implement tabs if I am not mistaken.

IE5 for Mac was quite good. It handled transparent PNGs correctly around a decade before its Windows counterpart and was just generally more pleasant to develop for.

I always wondered why Tasman never got backported to Windows to act as a next-gen replacement for Trident.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#59

Post by thought_alarm »

elvis70 wrote: post #35
tech-historian wrote: post #6

If you want some IE nostalgia, here's a visual history of IE starting in 1995 (v1.0): https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/internet-explorer Factoid: There were versions of IE for both Mac and Solaris.

IE5 for Mac was very great! The first version to implement tabs if I am not mistaken.

Firefox (or the Mozilla browser that became Firefox) gave us our modern idea of tabbed browsing. If I remember correctly, it was initially an experimental feature buried in the settings, but it quickly became a popular mainstream feature that Safari and IE adopted.

Opera had an earlier version of tabbed browsing, but it was tacked on to their existing Windows MDI interface.

In the 90s, MS Visual Studio 6 had a 3rd-party plug-in that would add tabs to their existing MDI interface.

Borland's Delphi and C++ Builder may have been the first apps to provide a true tab-based document handling in the early-mid 90s.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#60

Post by Lammy »

Semaphor wrote: post #46
Lammy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please forgive my pedantry, but the suffix `-oid` means `-like`, i.e. not a fact. I should start calling minor-facts "factlets" lol https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Diminutive+suffix

> A factoid is either a false statement presented as a fact, or a true but brief or trivial item of news or information. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid

Keep scrolling! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoid#Versus_factlet
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