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Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

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Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#21

Post by denton-scratch »

cm2187 wrote: post #17

All of these practices feel fairly benign compared to what microsoft is doing now. At the time they merely shipped the browser with the OS. I don't think this would even raise an eyebrow now. They were also accused of adding new features only in IE which forced websites to deal with incompatible browsers. /s of course this is a problem developers do not need to deal with anymore! The Microsoft we are dealing with now…

> breaking internet standards by deprecating flash

Flash was never an "internet standard"; it was a proprietary product of Adobe.

OK, it depends on what you mean by "internet standard"; in general, I take "X standard" to mean a specification for X issued by some standards body, such that a third-party can implement X by following the spec.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#22

Post by denton-scratch »

JimDabell wrote: post #18
kevindamm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and IE5 introduced dynamic web requests (originally ActiveXObject, then as the familiar XHR) which was way better than holding open a long page response

There was also a way of doing it with the DOM that Mozilla implemented. I don’t recall the specifics, it was something like you would instantiate a new Document object and then call open() on it with a URL. It ended up being abandoned when XMLHttpRequest was made the standard by WHATWG I think.

XMLHttpRequest long predates the foundation of WHATWG. XMLHttpRequest was introduced with IE5 in 2001. WHATWG wasn't founded until 2004, when its first mailing list started.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#23

Post by isodev »

I loved those screenshots from my youth, but my smile quickly faded when each of the "bad stuff" Microsoft used to do back then are currently embedded into every aspect of our digital landscape by ... Google, of course! Look at them covering all their bases and making sure anything that isn't Chrome doesn't feel up to task ... or just simply making sure that one way or another, you end up seeing their ads.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#25

Post by realusername »

steve1977 wrote: post #16
Turing_Machine wrote: post #2

Besides the highly questionable business ethics discussed in this article, IE just plain sucked. On one medium-sized project I worked on back then, I calculated that around 30% of the code was there just to work around various IE bullshittery. I have to smile when I see young people complaining about Safari incompatibilities now. You have no idea , young padawans. :-)

Is Safari incompatible with the standards or with Chrome?

Kind of both, it's lagging behind Firefox and Chrome for sure but the most annoying for me isn't really that but the bugs on basic web features. It definitely feels less stable, you never know what the next version will break.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#26

Post by JimDabell »

denton-scratch wrote: post #22
JimDabell wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was also a way of doing it with the DOM that Mozilla implemented. I don’t recall the specifics, it was something like you would instantiate a new Document object and then call open() on it with a URL. It ended up being abandoned when XMLHttpRequest was made the standard by WHATWG I think.

XMLHttpRequest long predates the foundation of WHATWG. XMLHttpRequest was introduced with IE5 in 2001. WHATWG wasn't founded until 2004, when its first mailing list started.

If you check my comment again, I’m saying it was abandoned after WHATWG formalised XHR. It existed a long time before that. I think XHR was a little earlier, but they were roughly contemporaneous. And of course, people were doing XHR stuff before XHR existed with things like invisible iframes, but those were just hacks.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#28

Post by denton-scratch »

JimDabell wrote: post #26
denton-scratch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMLHttpRequest long predates the foundation of WHATWG. XMLHttpRequest was introduced with IE5 in 2001. WHATWG wasn't founded until 2004, when its first mailing list started.

If you check my comment again, I’m saying it was abandoned after WHATWG formalised XHR. It existed a long time before that. I think XHR was a little earlier, but they were roughly contemporaneous. And of course, people were doing XHR stuff before XHR existed with things like invisible iframes, but those were just hacks.

> It ended up being abandoned when XMLHttpRequest was made the standard by WHATWG I think.

"It" was using the Document object to load a URL. WHATWG was not responsible for standardizing XMLHTTPRequest.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#29

Post by Ygg2 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #21
cm2187 wrote: post #17

All of these practices feel fairly benign compared to what microsoft is doing now. At the time they merely shipped the browser with the OS. I don't think this would even raise an eyebrow now. They were also accused of adding new features only in IE which forced websites to deal with incompatible browsers. /s of course this is a problem developers do not need to deal with anymore! The Microsoft we are dealing with now…

> breaking internet standards by deprecating flash Flash was never an "internet standard"; it was a proprietary product of Adobe. OK, it depends on what you mean by "internet standard"; in general, I take "X standard" to mean a specification for X issued by some standards body, such that a third-party can implement X by following the spec.

It was a defacto standard. Everyone had Flash.

Granted, there were reason to abandon it. But I can understand people being upset with it gone.

Re: Microsoft forced people to install their browser (2010)

#30

Post by supermatt »

monkburger wrote: post #27
karmasimida wrote: post #24

Chrome is the new Internet Explorer now. And it is creating its own cardinal sins

Google's Motto was "Don't be evil" Now it's "Do the right thing" The irony.

"do the right thing (to maximise profits for the shareholders)".
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