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A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#71

Post by callalex »

jimmaswell wrote: post #53
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…

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.

Is it non-standard, or non-exactly-like-Chrome? There’s a difference.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#72

Post by teunispeters »

Back when I worked on websites (2011-2012), supporting IE6 through IE9 ate somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all my development time, as nothing was consistent with any of them, and that included the same browser with slight tweaks. It was a horrible, time-wasting badly behaved set of browsers and because I worked on government sites for part of that, Internet Explorer support was mandatory.

I'm so very glad they're gone - they were the lemon cars of the computer world of those days.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#73

Post by behnamoh »

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.

But this conspiracy is talking about a time when Chrome existed.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#74

Post by tannerellen »

jimmaswell wrote: post #54
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.

This is a red flag that you are trying to use non standard CSS or you are trying to use things that are so bleeding edge that you are requiring even evergreen browsers to have been restarted and updated very recently. Set your target to any CSS that has been around for about a year or so and is based on standards and you shouldn't need to be writing anything different for specific browsers.

I haven't had to target a specific browser for any CSS in years. I honestly don't know what people are trying to do that would require this now days. Grids, flexbox, animations, transitions no issues and don't even need browser prefixes. The only thing that I can think of that still requires a browser prefix in safari is -webkit-backdrop-filter. Maybe I'm just not doing super out there stuff I guess.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#75

Post by ttfkam »

jen20 wrote: post #65
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…

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

And maybe peaked at 3% marketshare between 2000 and 2003 during Apple's early resurgence. Remember that Apple almost died in the late 90s. It wasn't the juggernaut it is today by a long shot.

Mac IE became its own albatross for web development for a while once Safari hit its stride and supplanted it.

Prior to somewhere between 2003 and 2005, "web standards" were aspirational rather than the reality on the ground. There was Internet Explorer for Windows at 85-90% and all the bit players scrambling for a percentage point or two.

For the bit players, the standards were their only bid for survival since no one would tolerate putting extra dev time into an extra 1%. Together, you could make a case for a 10-15% target.

For Microsoft's part, "IE is the standard" had an extremely long tail.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#76

Post by tempestn »

The thing that gets me the most is how ancient 10 year-old YouTube looks. Which makes sense that this was the era before smartphones, when IE6 still had significant market share. But 10 years! Sounds like such a short time.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#77

Post by lolinder »

politelemon wrote: post #22
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.

> Those claiming that safari is the new chrome just don't understand how bad IE was at the time. I suffered in the IE6 times, understood how bad it is, but still claim otherwise; when we're saying that Safari is the new IE/the new Chrome, it's with good reason. We've recognized that a piece of history is repeating itself, and it's pretty sad that it gets handwaved away or dismissed, just because people happen to have…

What exactly does it mean for Safari to be both the new IE and the new Chrome?

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#78

Post by geor9e »

pompino wrote: post #57

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…

They targeted IE 6 or older by recommending folks install IE 8, Firefox 3, or Chrome 4, shown in random order. Since Firefox and Chrome were self-updating, they didn't have the problem of obsolete versions floating around.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#79

Post by rightbyte »

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.

I think Opera was preferabke at some point at that time?
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