A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#111

Post by pompino » Fri, Feb 09, 2024, 5:52 AM UTC

geor9e wrote: post #110

pompino wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was already offering users to upgrade to IE8. Users chose IE6 for whatever reason. Most likely because non-technical users didn't give a shit, or maybe they were stuck on IE6 due to ActiveX or other compatibility issues. Google faked a "we will be phasing out support" screen to trick users into changing the browser. All this talk of open source and "open" this and "open" that, and yet they still want to man…

By your definition Hacker News would be anti-free because NCSA Mosaic 1.0 can't render it. Youtube didn't add anything to block IE6, they simply removed all the non-compliant hacks that barely kept IE6 working as long as it did. IE6 can't render a website of purely standards compliant code. They didn't fake anything. If you went to youtube.com on March 13 2010, the day they deleted the IE6 helper hacks, the videos wo…

>IE6 can't render a website of purely standards compliant code

Yes, supporting IE6 is a burden, so just stop supporting it. A simple "IE6 support ending on Mar 13, 2010. Please upgrade to IE8 to continue using this website." would suffice. But they tried to trick the user into installing a random browser through a fake banner.

"The text was intentionally vague and the timeline left completely undefined. We hoped that it was threatening enough to motivate end users to upgrade without forcing us to commit to any actual deprecation plan."

Google doesn't give a shit about the user anyway, they are anti-standards unless it helps them collect user data or show ads.

All their primary products are proprietary and they don't support open data exchange. This in and of itself isn't a problem to me (if a company is open about their business model) but the smugness of the company and the employees with their "we know better so we are going to trick or force you" is repulsive.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#112

Post by ttfkam » Fri, Feb 09, 2024, 2:29 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #104

JadeNB wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 inter…

I was including all "Mozilla" browsers (Phoenix, Firebird, whatever) under that umbrella. I didn't start using Firefox seriously until roughly 1.5. Maybe it was just me!

I was there too. Actually ever since Mozilla M1 or M2 I think. Things were pretty rough back then (so much blue!). Then the browser-only Phoenix followed by the rename.

I (and presumably others) hated the notion of a Microsoft/Windows-only web. Younger folks just don't realize how close we came and the debt owed to those Mozilla devs.

Re: A conspiracy to kill IE6 (2019)

#113

Post by rkuykendall-com » Sat, Feb 10, 2024, 2:40 PM UTC

scrlk wrote: post #24

On a tangent: the screenshot of the deprecation banner brings back memories of a time when the internet still felt relatively free, before the rise and dominance of mega platforms in the 2010s. I still mourn the loss of community forums that were replaced by reddit, or worse, Discord. So many hours spent on various phpBB/vBulletin etc. forums. :^)

I run a Discord and a phpBB forum. The Discord is free. The forum is $130 a year and signups are broken. It's very clear why everyone moved away from them.