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A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#61

Post by rekttrader »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #12
rekttrader wrote: post #7

So what you’re saying is you helped your billion dollar mega-corp use their monopoly position to destroy another monopoly and ensure chromium would be the next IE.

That's a pretty wild take, considering that the author specifically said they randomized the order of suggested browsers. They didn't push Chrome, they pushed "anything but IE6".

I distinctly remember at the time that Google even had a browser extension that loaded chromium inside the IE6 viewport...

Shady browser advertising toolbar companies were using that extension to hijack and silently upgrade users into Chrome. Google bought that company as well.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#62

Post by michaelt »

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…

> But let's be clear, between 1998 and 2003, IE was at the forefront. Its CSS support wasn't broken. It was the best and only. Its box model wasn't broken. There were no other box models to compare it to. You didn't need to give it separate CSS, because it was the only one around really to parse it. It didn't have non-standard AJAX support. It WAS the standard since no XMLHttpRequest object existed at the time.

They should have done what Chrome does - write the standards to match what you've implemented.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#63

Post by assimpleaspossi »

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 reason it's not a major issue anymore is that most developers are smart enough to follow the web standards first and then make sure the browser supports it. They've found that following standards--just like all other programming--is the foundation of computer programming.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#64

Post by duskwuff »

tracker1 wrote: post #41
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.

It was as recently as 5 years ago I was able to do supporting legacy IE versions. Was so happy for it. Various CSS and JS shims to get anything close to modern. Ugh. Not as bad as the v4 browser days, but close.

> Not as bad as the v4 browser days, but close.

Oh my goodness, yes.

Netscape 4 was especially bad. Trying to do anything interesting with CSS was playing with fire -- sometimes it'd work, sometimes it'd break, sometimes it'd crash the browser entirely, and there was no way to tell which one you'd get.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#65

Post by jen20 »

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…

As I recall, IE5 on the Mac actually had very few of these problems and was highly standards compliant.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#66

Post by tomxor »

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…

> all browsers moving over to an evergreen

Except Safari.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#67

Post by icedchai »

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…

In the early 2000's, IE was really the only viable option. Nobody else provided a fully functional browser. Netscape was rotting. Safari, Firefox, Chrome were not yet released. If you wanted something that worked and didn't crash every 30 minutes, IE was it.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#68

Post by JadeNB »

icedchai wrote: post #58
ttfkam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Mozilla (before Firefox) was too new, also unstable until roughly 2005.

That doesn't match my memory at all, unless you include Phoenix under the Firefox umbrella. I switched … I don't remember exactly when, probably in late 2003, but certainly when it was called Phoenix, and it was such a breath of fresh air coming from IE. I'm sure there were breakages, because it was the early noughties and that's what the internet was like, but I don't remember a single time wishing for something that IE provided that Phoenix didn't.

But I was just coming to it as a user, not as a dev—maybe you're referring to the dev perspective.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#69

Post by jwells89 »

cogman10 wrote: post #60
ttfkam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My memory may be failing me but I think Firefox 3 was also where it started to feel less like the snappy minimal utilitarian “just a browser” it was in versions prior and started to feel more clunky, branded, and product-y, which also didn’t help its adoption in my opinion.

If nothing else it primed users for adopting Chrome, which originally had a less branded, more utilitarian feel not unlike early Firefox.

This cycle is somewhat repeating itself though as Chrome has become very branded and product-y. Would love to see something similarly functionally-minded as early FF/Chrome come out and take a big bite out of Chrome’s marketshare.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#70

Post by lmz »

icedchai wrote: post #67
behnamoh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the early 2000's, IE was really the only viable option. Nobody else provided a fully functional browser. Netscape was rotting. Safari, Firefox, Chrome were not yet released. If you wanted something that worked and didn't crash every 30 minutes, IE was it.

Am I the only one who remembers Opera? Granted it was much more niche than Firefox.
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