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Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

toastytech.com

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Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#71

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #50
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth remembering that Flash was in fact extremely successful. I think we’d still be using it today if not for some combination of (1) Steve Jobs and (2) Adobe mismanagement. People say Flash was bloated but try running Slack on 2008-era hardware and let me know how it goes. And there’s no reason Flash couldn’t have been adapted to use responsive breakpoints and such for mobile friendliness.

Slack and other ill-optimized Electron apps are not great, but Flash was far worse, at least in my experience. With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop). Slack, etc are a detriment in terms of heat and battery life too, but not to such an extreme extent and at least you're g…

> With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop).

And not coincidentally, html5 banner ads will do the same thing on a G4/G5 today in TenFourFox, if you disable the built-in adblocker.

Which is to day, I actually think modern websites are much heavier. What changed is the hardware.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#72

Post by TimTheTinker »

Joeri wrote: post #47
TimTheTinker wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> quirks mode? Quirks mode was a necessary measure to ensure backwards compatibility for a majority of websites at the time (circa 2000 - this was IE5). If they had switched every website to standards mode, most of the internet at the time would have appeared broken, and people would have blamed Microsoft, not the websites. (To be fair, IE5 through IE7 had a very broken standards mode, but it was much less broken tha…

I remember some web developers would deliberately build for quirks mode because it was a stable target, unlike the always shifting standards mode.

For better or for worse, IE6 lived on, and on, and on for far too long with no changes.

A bigger concern than the changing standards mode in other browsers was the fact that IE6 just wouldn’t die.

I had people challenging me “why are you developing for Firefox first and then adapting your app to work on IE? Shouldn’t you be doing it the other way around?” Over 10 years later those apps I built are still working great on the latest browsers, with no layout fixes since then. Meanwhile, many of those “rich”, forward-thinking apps developed for IE and Silverlight are long dead.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#73

Post by blacktriangle »

distances wrote: post #51
blacktriangle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not saying there were no problems, and it's not like we haven't gone through massive teething pains to get to where we are with browser based apps either. However I'd argue if all the work that went into trying to turn a hypermedia system into an app runtime had instead been focused on fixing the Java issues, we'd be in a far better place.

Although what is interesting is that with the Java solutions, it was the user who felt the pain where developers had a decent experience. As the web platform has evolved, users have avoided most of the issues and the pain has been experienced by developers. This would go a long way to explaining why users have never had it so good as they have right now and every developer I know is trying to figure out how to get out of the industry, or at least get out of web dev.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#74

Post by bartread »

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 don't know.

For complex desktop apps I don't really think Java was a viable option until the 1.3 release in 2000 (from memory). You also always had that problem that you couldn't guarantee what version of Java somebody would have installed so you'd have to bundle whatever JRE version you needed into the installer. Deployment was always a challenge.

In the browser Java never really got past 1.1 because Sun and Microsoft fell out so you had to install a separate plugin, which almost nobody did, or just live within the restrictions of AWT.

Couple this with the fact that, as you've pointed out, Java Web Start was so late to the party and it's easy to see why it didn't do better, either on the desktop or in the browser.

Until Android came along I really thought Java was a dying technology platform. Obviously since then its fortunes have significantly improved.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#75

Post by usui »

usui wrote: post #25
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…

It's interesting to me you're getting downvoted which signifies that people don't think you're adding to the conversation Is this a form of denialism by hardcore "I-Hate-Javascript"ers? I would like to add that I absolutely hate the subset of modern websites that choose to be slow, but I think the parent is completely right. If we keep making it hard to use useful applications across platforms, then we're going to co…

I forgot to mention though that the M1 has reduced complexity in "cross-platformness" for one dimension now that you can run iPhone apps on macOS. People have been sideloading .ipa from their phone to their laptop which is exciting. Seems like a step in the right direction

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#76

Post by Osiris »

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…

Flutter2 is trying to tackle this issue by using the same code across mobile desktop and web but also being AOT compiled. Maybe it'll be more efficient than electron?

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#77

Post by dang »

This is a dupe because it had significant attention in the last year - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

Internet Explorer Is Evil (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23013001 - April 2020 (75 comments)

Internet Explorer is evil - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740890 - Nov 2012 (10 comments)

Edit: btw, since http://toastytech.com/evil/ieisevilstory.html references Netscape 7.1 and that was released in 2002 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_7), it seems like the previous submission was more likely to have the year right?

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#78

Post by inetknght »

ironmagma wrote: post #65
inetknght wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To this day I detest sites that require javascript, inject tens or hundreds of MB into cache, and make ridiculous demands of rendering.

At least they don’t leave unremovable or untraceable binaries, configurations, and databases in your system directories and registry.

True. But on the flip side, technologies like virtual machines and containers have gone a long way to solve that in a better way.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#79

Post by ironmagma »

inetknght wrote: post #78
ironmagma wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least they don’t leave unremovable or untraceable binaries, configurations, and databases in your system directories and registry.

True. But on the flip side, technologies like virtual machines and containers have gone a long way to solve that in a better way.

Who uses those for desktop applications? Even if I need a VM for something coding-related, it’s almost too much of a pain to set up because AFAIK there still aren’t many quick provisioning tools for e.g. VMWare. And I can guarantee that 99.9% of users have never even heard of Docker.

Re: Internet Explorer is evil (1996)

#80

Post by Seirdy »

ironmagma wrote: post #79
inetknght wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But on the flip side, technologies like virtual machines and containers have gone a long way to solve that in a better way.

Who uses those for desktop applications? Even if I need a VM for something coding-related, it’s almost too much of a pain to set up because AFAIK there still aren’t many quick provisioning tools for e.g. VMWare. And I can guarantee that 99.9% of users have never even heard of Docker.

Linux users have platforms like Flatpak that sandbox applications to known directories, and have multiple "app store"-like implementations with colorful buttons to make the process look unintimidating and non-threatening.

Another option is to simply use distro packages. Users of good distros who use distro packages have software that's vetted built from source independently, and compatible with the rest of the system.

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