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A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#51

Post by macNchz »

karolist wrote: post #45

No other software I hated more than IE6 in my life. I've started webdev in 2003 and was doing PSD to HTML/CSS conversions in the evenings and nights after my webdev dayjob. Opera and Firefox was a pleasure and easy to convert for, IE6 caused no end of pain for these conversions. In time I've learned enough tricks to know all the workarounds and could look at a given PSD file and know within 30min precision how many h…

I was still messing around with IE6 as late as 2012...the web agency I worked at had clients in huge old school companies who must have had proprietary internal software that depended on it. Whenever we thought we could finally ditch it, we'd get forwarded an email from a higher up at a client company with a subject like "??????" containing a screenshot of our pre-launch environment for a new site looking entirely broken in IE6.

At that point we had this giant wad (like, several files and multiple megabytes?) of JS and CSS of uncertain provenance that we'd conditionally load for IE6 that magically made almost all of the more modern stuff actually just work. I'll never forget the feeling of rage-then-relief when the screenshot situation above happened a matter of hours before a major site launch. I booted my IE6 VM, shrieked at how utterly broken the site was, copied over that ungodly blob of polyfills and dark magic, reloaded the page and everything looked correct. I was working in a coffee shop and may have whooped out loud.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#52

Post by behnamoh »

cogman10 wrote: post #4

One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, everyone in the bad old days programmed to the lowest common denominator (IE6, 7, or 8). Even while brand new features and standards were widely adopted by everyone else. One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to rende…

I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it.

And I don't think the conspiracy in this article is something to boast about. It's literally using dishonesty with the higher-ups (no matter how much you might hate them) as a way to make your own job easier.

Plus, stuff like this is why we ended up in a Chrome monopoly, to the point that even Edge finally got Chromified.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#53

Post by jimmaswell »

ksherlock wrote: post #31
cogman10 wrote: post #4

One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, everyone in the bad old days programmed to the lowest common denominator (IE6, 7, or 8). Even while brand new features and standards were widely adopted by everyone else. One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to rende…

The thing about IE, one thing anyway, is that it's CSS support, box model, etc, was broken and non standard. So you would need to exploit CSS parser bugs to give IE a separate CSS, use DXImageTransformFilter to make png transparency work, etc. Maybe by WebKit you mean Blink and by Blink you mean V8, because when somebody does a "Show HN: something that doesn't work in Safari or FireFox" it's usually a javascript prob…

Safari has been a huge pain for me as a web dev for its nonstandard parsing/implementation of basic CSS and requiring special cases made for it for things like modal focus/scrolling, nothing to do with Google or privacy whatsoever.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#54

Post by jimmaswell »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #17

I and every single other webdev I've known from the early aughts would immediately offer to buy this person a beer upon hearing this story in person. Those claiming that safari is the new chrome just don't understand how bad IE was at the time.

Safari is the one and only browser I continue to need to write special extra CSS for.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#55

Post by cogman10 »

behnamoh wrote: post #52
cogman10 wrote: post #4

One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, everyone in the bad old days programmed to the lowest common denominator (IE6, 7, or 8). Even while brand new features and standards were widely adopted by everyone else. One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to rende…

I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. And I don't think the conspiracy in this article is something to boast about. It's literally using dishonesty with the higher-ups (no matter how much you might hate them) as a way to make your own job easier. Plus, stuff like this is why we ended up in a Chrome monopoly, to the point that even Edge finally got Chro…

> Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it.

Ehh, plenty of corporate IT decided to force employees to use IE. That's actually my main interaction with programming for it, clients that HAD to use IE due to corporate policy.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#57

Post by pompino »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T...

>The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).

That's pretty wild that a direct competitor targeted a browser based on a few random engineers's personal views. In 2024, privacy being front and center, I wonder if its even feasible to kill off Google. They are slowly becoming a bully and a menace to society (unless you're one of the three letter agencies).

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#58

Post by icedchai »

ttfkam wrote: post #40
ksherlock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about IE, one thing anyway, is that it's CSS support, box model, etc, was broken and non standard. So you would need to exploit CSS parser bugs to give IE a separate CSS, use DXImageTransformFilter to make png transparency work, etc. Maybe by WebKit you mean Blink and by Blink you mean V8, because when somebody does a "Show HN: something that doesn't work in Safari or FireFox" it's usually a javascript prob…

I came to hate IE with every fiber of my being, but let's call a spade a spade here: IE basically invented modern CSS. Netscape 3/4 and IE 3/4 had very different views on how web pages should be dynamic and how they should be styled. IE championed CSS and the DOM. Netscape was fixated on bgcolor, font tags, etc. Netscape introduced the tag. IE just made every tag a potential layer. Remember AJAX? Loading content from…

I remember those days well. IE was really the only usable browser for a long time. Netscape was incredibly unstable, didn't support any modern standards. Mozilla (before Firefox) was too new, also unstable until roughly 2005.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#59

Post by II2II »

behnamoh wrote: post #52
cogman10 wrote: post #4

One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, everyone in the bad old days programmed to the lowest common denominator (IE6, 7, or 8). Even while brand new features and standards were widely adopted by everyone else. One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to rende…

I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. And I don't think the conspiracy in this article is something to boast about. It's literally using dishonesty with the higher-ups (no matter how much you might hate them) as a way to make your own job easier. Plus, stuff like this is why we ended up in a Chrome monopoly, to the point that even Edge finally got Chro…

> I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it.

No one was forced to use IE, but many people had the decision made for them. Sometimes it was because it shipped as the default on the dominant operating system. (I suspect people forget how dominant Windows was. While Windows remains the dominant operating system on desktop computers to this day, their share wasn't diluted by platforms like Android and iOS.) Other times it was because sites designed exclusively for IE were visibly broken in other browsers. (I suspect part of the reason why I am not bothered by incompatibilities with Firefox to this day is because the incompatibilities are minor compared to those we faced in the past.)

I do agree with your sentiment about conspiracy boasting, though from a different perspective. Their actions represent a group of people in a position of power making a decision for other people, even if it wasn't an officially sanctioned decision. (Though I have no doubt that many people cheered for their actions.)

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#60

Post by cogman10 »

ttfkam wrote: post #40
ksherlock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about IE, one thing anyway, is that it's CSS support, box model, etc, was broken and non standard. So you would need to exploit CSS parser bugs to give IE a separate CSS, use DXImageTransformFilter to make png transparency work, etc. Maybe by WebKit you mean Blink and by Blink you mean V8, because when somebody does a "Show HN: something that doesn't work in Safari or FireFox" it's usually a javascript prob…

I came to hate IE with every fiber of my being, but let's call a spade a spade here: IE basically invented modern CSS. Netscape 3/4 and IE 3/4 had very different views on how web pages should be dynamic and how they should be styled. IE championed CSS and the DOM. Netscape was fixated on bgcolor, font tags, etc. Netscape introduced the tag. IE just made every tag a potential layer. Remember AJAX? Loading content from…

What was bad about IE, more than anything else, was how tightly integrated to the OS it was. Running windows 2000? You can only run IE6. Running windows XP? IE8 is your limit.

This was particularly problematic because MS struggled MIGHTILY to get Vista out the door. It was a decade of really terrible IE which was pushed out longer due to Vista's poor performance and stability.

Meanwhile, you could install firefox and later chrome and get a relatively modern internet browsing experience.

Ironically, I think the thing that hurt firefox adoption was the switch to the evergreen model. The era of firefox 3->~33 was quiet painful, updating was simply far too intrusive. "You are out of date, click here to download the latest version!". Chrome from the get go was pretty good at making that seamless.

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