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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)

#41

Post by jefftk »

creatonez wrote: post #20

> Outlook 98 used IE 4 to compose and render HTML e-mail messages (rather than just translating to RTF) as well as a summary page of messages, tasks, and calendar events called "Outlook Today". Everybody was perfectly happy to ignore the fact that this opened up Outlook to all of the bugs and exploits present in IE 4. This one is funny in retrospect, because nowadays we would probably say that replacing a custom pars…

I'm confused; aren't "Java, C#, Python, Ruby, Lua, and Javascript" examples of "memory-safe interpreted and bytecode languages"?

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

#42

Post by richm44 »

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.

It was also possible in earlier browsers by using hidden frames. User interaction or a timer would trigger, then you load the frame (which contained dynamically generated js) and then call the javascript you'd just loaded.

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

#43

Post by emj »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #14

I miss when the IE5.5 reference was all I needed to use (worked somewhere that mandated that browser). I don’t recall any big issues with it but we did as little JS as possible.

That mindset made it impossible to upgrade from IE6, if you kept away from a dynamic front end it was a bit easier. That said the current landscape is worse, the javascript tooling can make old apps impossible to improve upon just 5 years after release unless you have continuously worked on it.

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

#44

Post by Panzer04 »

"Web Browsers really make poor client application runtimes for all but the most basic of things."

I found this the most amusing line of the post, given the current state of many staple desktop applications. Besides games, how many programs these days are designed to run natively on desktop as opposed to in a browser? It feels like the default is now browser-based!

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

#45

Post by Sharlin »

darkwater wrote: post #13

Old greybeard moment: I remember all of this and how people on newsgroups (Usenet) defended Microsoft, said that the IE integration in the OS was a technical requirement and not an MS tactic. It clearly was a deliberated tactic to retain power, just like Chrome is today (even if they look less evil)

I’d love to know whether the act of integrating your web browser and your file browser did in fact have any engineering-level benefits or if it was more like a big mess of impedance mismatch.

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

#46

Post by jacquesm »

Panzer04 wrote: post #44

"Web Browsers really make poor client application runtimes for all but the most basic of things." I found this the most amusing line of the post, given the current state of many staple desktop applications. Besides games, how many programs these days are designed to run natively on desktop as opposed to in a browser? It feels like the default is now browser-based!

Both can be true though. The fact that with a pile of duct tape and spit you can get it to work doesn't mean that web browsers make really poor application runtimes for all but the most basic of thing. It's horrible how all this stuff works under the hood, it's just one kludge on top of another, the fact that it's mostly abstracted away doesn't make it is suddenly all good.

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

#47

Post by Sharlin »

Dah00n wrote: post #35
karmasimida wrote: post #24

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

I think there's a case for arguing Safari is the new IE.

In a way, but as long as Apple doesn’t have a 95% market share it’s not an abuse of a monopoly like it was with MS. As such, Apple cannot use embrace, extend and extinguish tactics either. Google can and could, given Android’s dominance in some markets (eg. ~95% in India), though globally its share (~70%) is not enough to allow really abusive tactics.

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

#48

Post by resonious »

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…

Maybe I'm nuts, but the start menu's web search results seem to ignore default browser settings and only open in Edge.

Event better: I had a period of time where Edge would freeze before showing any content. So clicking a web result from start menu would just open an empty, unresponsive window. Windows would then tell me the window is unresponsive and ask if I want to kill it. Classic Microsoft quality. It's like that old org chart meme where Microsoft's departments are pointing guns at each other, played out directly in the OS, Conway's Law style. Very amusing.

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

#49

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#50

Post by karmasimida »

Dah00n wrote: post #35
karmasimida wrote: post #24

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

I think there's a case for arguing Safari is the new IE.

To have IE's status, you need to be in a place that people are hating on you, but can't really deal without you.

Safari isn't popular enough to have the latter.

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