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25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

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Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#61

Post by rasz »

piker wrote: post #4

> Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. Just curious if anyone has any idea what the financial reward was for these approx 100 folks? Presumably options worth a few millions today, but that's some price.

Best guess glory aka "exposure" aka nothing. As Hadi wrote

>Instead of hiring too fast, we kept a super-high bar for talent, betting that everybody would want to work for this new exclusive team at Microsoft that was so hard to get into. It worked.

This is Bill from 1985 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

>After exchanging a few pleasantries, and telling me how much the Macintosh mattered to Microsoft, he looked me in the eye and said, "You're a really good programmer, right? I think you must be a really good programmer."

>"I guess so," I responded, not understanding why he was attempting to flatter me.

>"Well, I think you are. How long do you think it will take to do this project? A month or two? I think a really good programmer like you could get it done in less than two months."

Playing on pride to exploit brilliant people for pennies. If you read whole thing you will learn Jobs was even worse.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#62

Post by hannob »

warning26 wrote: post #7

> Sadly for me, Microsoft broke up the IE team because it thought “we won.” (...) Years later, Internet Explorer would plummet in marketshare and become a sad joke among Web developers. Looking back at the version history of IE, a lot of people forget how good earlier IE was compared to its competitors. "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" ultimately ended up being a punchline, but there really was something to it; IE…

> IE had a far better and faster rendering engine than anything else did at the time, with more extensive CSS and JS support.

Faster may be, but certainly not more extensive CSS support.

I vividly remember that I desperately wanted to use plenty of CSS features that worked in Mozilla/Netscape and were part of the standard, but there was no hope at ever using them, because IE was the market leader and after IE 6 Microsoft didn't bother to implement anything for many years to come.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#63

Post by laumars »

hannob wrote: post #62
warning26 wrote: post #7

> Sadly for me, Microsoft broke up the IE team because it thought “we won.” (...) Years later, Internet Explorer would plummet in marketshare and become a sad joke among Web developers. Looking back at the version history of IE, a lot of people forget how good earlier IE was compared to its competitors. "Best viewed in Internet Explorer" ultimately ended up being a punchline, but there really was something to it; IE…

> IE had a far better and faster rendering engine than anything else did at the time, with more extensive CSS and JS support. Faster may be, but certainly not more extensive CSS support. I vividly remember that I desperately wanted to use plenty of CSS features that worked in Mozilla/Netscape and were part of the standard, but there was no hope at ever using them, because IE was the market leader and after IE 6 Micro…

That was several years later than what the GP was referring to. His point was accurate for IE3 and 4. While I would go on to loathe Internet Explorer, the early releases were actually pretty good. But this was Microsoft back when they had their “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” strategy down as a finely honed art.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#64

Post by seabird »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #40
throwaway13337 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean to imply that I'd trade modern life for it. It's just that the drive is still there. And it's useful in understanding depression in men, and the will to make the best piece of software for your corporation. Tennis cannot replace it or video games. We are stuck not wholly satisfied and must make the best of it.

Oh I agree with you there - let's recognize this vile impulse and do our best to prevent it from causing any more harm. " If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter a…

Characterizing the want to "strive for something, especially when that something is as a group" as a "vile impulse" is a bad take. It's pretty hard to argue that that we would be better off just keeling over and accepting things as they are, lest we succumb to the awful human behavior of organizing to change something we don't like.

That very same vile impulse was, is, and always will be the way we manage to overcome humanity's greatest challenges. Trying to condition people to suppress it is not a good idea.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#65

Post by laumars »

aendruk wrote: post #13
lsllc wrote: post #6

Ah the introduction of flat toolbars and the subsequent race to copy it (in MFC): https://www.codeguru.com/cpp/controls/toolbar/flattoolbar/ar... Good times!

What does “flat” mean here? I tried looking up screenshots of this but they just look… normal.

From a modern perspective they might. But that is because these days everyone designs flat toolbars. However in the early days of OS design each button on the toolbar looked like a distinct button. Microsoft then flattened the buttons while keeping a bevel on the toolbar itself (latter even that would disappear) — which is the effect being discussed here.

Back in the 90s there used to be a great discussion over the flat design (aka Microsoft) vs skeuomorphic design (aka Apple) in terms of usability with most designers vocally preferring skeuomorphic citing usability as their reasons. Albeit some did still think Apple took their use skeuomorphic design too far. It’s funny how flat design eventually won out across all platforms and not just at Microsoft and Apple; later Google with Cardboard (et al) too.

In the 90s this was quite a hot topic of debate.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#66

Post by lkramer »

kristianp wrote: post #31

IE 4 was better than Netscape, partly because Netscape dropped the ball around version 4. Someone can correct me, but I think after ns3 they decided to re-implement a lot of the user interface code which caused a big delay and allowed IE to pull ahead.

In the 90s, I disliked Microsoft with the passion and irrationality you can only really drum up with teenagers. (I continued to somewhat dislike them, even through the mild good guys years, and feel somewhat vindicated by where Windows 10/11 has been going).

I think I must have been one of the last hold outs for Netscape, but around 2000 even I could not justify using it anymore. (It was also a dark period for the Linux Desktop since until Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox came around a good chunk of the internet was not usable there). In the end it was a terrible browser, and IE was clearly on a different planet in terms of just working better.

I feel these days I'm expected to make the same choice with Chromium based browsers vs Firefox, though the difference this time around is that I feel Firefox is genuinely a better product (for my needs).

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#67

Post by verall »

piker wrote: post #4

> Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. Just curious if anyone has any idea what the financial reward was for these approx 100 folks? Presumably options worth a few millions today, but that's some price.

In some industries, people crunch, and everyone knows. It is very much considered to be a part of the job, and people that don't have their heads in sand are aware during hiring. Apple compensates very well but certainly knows how to push their engineers. The reward is to remain on a very rich boat during a fast-rising tide. Highly compensated software developers that have never had to crunch in their careers are lucky. And academics go through their own gauntlets...

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#68

Post by system2 »

laumars wrote: post #63
hannob wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IE had a far better and faster rendering engine than anything else did at the time, with more extensive CSS and JS support. Faster may be, but certainly not more extensive CSS support. I vividly remember that I desperately wanted to use plenty of CSS features that worked in Mozilla/Netscape and were part of the standard, but there was no hope at ever using them, because IE was the market leader and after IE 6 Micro…

That was several years later than what the GP was referring to. His point was accurate for IE3 and 4. While I would go on to loathe Internet Explorer, the early releases were actually pretty good. But this was Microsoft back when they had their “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” strategy down as a finely honed art.

I wonder how many websites were using CSS those days.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#69

Post by rambambram »

rasz wrote: post #61
piker wrote: post #4

> Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. Just curious if anyone has any idea what the financial reward was for these approx 100 folks? Presumably options worth a few millions today, but that's some price.

Best guess glory aka "exposure" aka nothing. As Hadi wrote >Instead of hiring too fast, we kept a super-high bar for talent, betting that everybody would want to work for this new exclusive team at Microsoft that was so hard to get into. It worked. This is Bill from 1985 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... >After exchanging a few pleasantries, and telling me how much the Macintosh mattered…

> Playing on pride to exploit brilliant people for pennies. If you read whole thing you will learn Jobs was even worse.

Yeah indeed. Go look into cluster B personality disorders and look for the similarities between this behavior you mention and the behaviors of psychopaths or bad narcissists. It's an eye opener for good/naive people.

Re: 25 years ago Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0

#70

Post by WalterBright »

piker wrote: post #4

> Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. Just curious if anyone has any idea what the financial reward was for these approx 100 folks? Presumably options worth a few millions today, but that's some price.

Microsoft minted thousands of multi-millionaires in the 1990s due to stock options. The Seattle Times wrote once that there were 10,000+ of them living in the Seattle area. Many were quite ordinary employees.

Amazon has minted as many or more.

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