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Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

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Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#51

Post by dualogy »

hackmiester wrote: post #38
dualogy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, they're moving to a standards-compliant model like WebKit or Gecko I think that was the professed and proclaimed goal for every IE version since 8, or maybe even back at 7? I keep hearing that for years, and what this intention delivers in the end is yet more "IE modes": n "browser modes" times 2 "document modes". Quirks mode. "Compatibility view." So for IE 11, web developers would have two choices: tes…

Couple of corrections. - Apple didn't license WebKit. Apple created WebKit, by forking Konqueror's engine. - Chrome doesn't update without restarting. (Unless you mean restarting the machine, in which case, of course not! What kind of browser would require a machine reboot to... oh.)

> Apple didn't license WebKit. Apple created WebKit, by forking Konqueror's engine

Of course, you're right. I was typing this faster than I was thinking..

Anyway, MS shouldn't even think of pulling something like this, on second thought---because rather than a render-engine replacement, it would end up as yet another "mode" in IE..

> Chrome doesn't update without restarting

Of course the binary cannot replace itself while running -- ((although with each tab being its own process and their highly persistent statefulness they might consider silently "rebooting" background tabs)) -- but, well at my end / from my experience, Chrome doesn't restart itself and doesn't prompt about restarting, in most cases -- rather seems to wait until the next time it is restarted by the user. Maybe I get that wrong, but if my memory recalls this as Chrome's auto-update user-experience, that's a feat one way or the other..

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#52

Post by Toshio »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #43
runjake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't forgive Microsoft for being absolutely massive tools in the past. As a person who seems to defend Microsoft quite often on HN, I can't shake the feeling that if they get to first place in anything, they'll become massive tools once again. I like seeing them as the underdog, it forces Microsoft to be kinder and more free, but I think innovation and progress would be seriously hindered (once again) if t…

What does "being massive tools" mean?

Excerpted from Urban Dictionary: "The tool is usually someone who is unwelcome but no one has the balls to tell them to get lost. The tool is alwasys making comments that are out-of-place, out-of-line or just plain stupid. The tool is always trying too hard to fit in, and because of this, never will."

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#53

Post by tracker1 »

chadzawistowski wrote: post #35
bsimpson wrote: post #33

I was at CES last year, and the showing of the IE team was my favorite part of the trip. They were a bunch of younger guys who basically said "We know the guys who used to work here did some terrible things in our name. We're changing that, and we're here to tell you about it." They seemed like really cool dudes. I even went over to the mall to try a Surface when they came out. Then, I realized Windows 8 is still Win…

Windows 8 may still be Windows, but WinRT is very much the System 9 -> OS X transition. Windows 8 supports both the old Win32 APIs and the new WinRT APIs.

That was going to be my comment as well... The WinRT kernel was started "fresh" to be mostly compatible, without the weird crufty legacy support. I think the biggest things holding back RT is that it's only on locked down ARM platforms, and low-level SDKs aren't widely available.

I would speculate that RT will become the main windows kernel by Windows 10. Then again, I'm less likely to even be running Windows by then (4-6 years).

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#54

Post by mratzloff »

chadzawistowski wrote: post #35
bsimpson wrote: post #33

I was at CES last year, and the showing of the IE team was my favorite part of the trip. They were a bunch of younger guys who basically said "We know the guys who used to work here did some terrible things in our name. We're changing that, and we're here to tell you about it." They seemed like really cool dudes. I even went over to the mall to try a Surface when they came out. Then, I realized Windows 8 is still Win…

Windows 8 may still be Windows, but WinRT is very much the System 9 -> OS X transition. Windows 8 supports both the old Win32 APIs and the new WinRT APIs.

Well, OS X had Classic[1] for years, so it had that compatibility layer to bridge 9 to X.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Environment

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#55

Post by mattbasta »

Aardwolf wrote: post #11
lucian1900 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because apparently lots of websites still (mistakenly) check for "Mozilla" and "Gecko".

This is over 15 years ago that IE was related to Mozilla. These "lots of websites", is this about websites from 1995, or modern ones?

Unfortunately, yes. Every mom-and-pop PHP-based website that was done by a teenager in the last 15 years probably still does this at some level. There are also plenty of old web servers out there that look for those headers to decide how to respond (to account for browser bugs).

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#56

Post by RyanZAG »

recursive wrote: post #40
marizcombinator wrote: post #24

Just use webkit already...

Fix the old bad monoculture with a new shiny monoculture.

I'd take a mono-culture over terrible IE (6-8) any day of the week. The problem was never a mono-culture - the problem was IE6 was closed off to non-windows OSes, and stopped progressing. If IE6 had been available as a portable open source project that could be run on linux/android/anything and had continued to include new features, we'd all still be using IE.

The problem with IE was failure to provide value, and nothing at all to do with some mythical 'mono-culture' argument. You can say that a mono-culture encourages something like IE6 - but since Webkit is open source, that can't actually happen.

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#57

Post by sbilstein »

tomelders wrote: post #25

I still don't forgive Microsoft for being absolutely massive tools in the past. As such, they have a higher bar to jump over if they want me to acknowledge that they have created a "modern" browser. They have to make a browser that beats every other browser in it's standards compliance, stability and performance. They have to create the greatest browser that has ever been and ever will be. And only then will I even c…

What you are saying is totally legit. Microsoft is a company, and as engineer/web dev/creative/whatever, choosing to rely on IE for development or anything else implies you trust the Microsoft brand to help you get something out of using their toolset. We've all been burned in the past by MSFT and even if their claims about a modern browser are true, and even if it ships today with the best codebase out of any browser, there is little evidence for any of us to suddenly start trusting the spirit behind this new push.

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#58

Post by wwweston »

ajross wrote: post #13
Toshio wrote: post #10

Correct me if I'm wrong. If a web developer is hell-bent on detecting ie, they could look for the presence of the activex API (like jQuery currently does in order to provide a uniform AJAX interface).

Of course. They're not trying to make it impossible to detect IE. They're trying to make sure that all the "IE mode" quirks and workarounds out there in the wild don't get triggered on IE11 and break things. Basically, they're moving to a standards-compliant model like WebKit or Gecko and they want to take advantage of all the standards-compliant layouts that developers are producing. But the only way to do that is t…

> they're moving to a standards-compliant model like WebKit or Gecko

This will be great if they:

(a) actually achieve parity with Webkit or Gecko

(b) Don't try to maintain backward compatibility with previous authored-for-IE pages/sites

However, most of the browsers they've released since announcing their intention to move towards a standards-compliant model didn't meet those goals.

Maybe they'll get it this time. Or maybe this will be like Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the Football.

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#59

Post by eterm »

tomelders wrote: post #25

I still don't forgive Microsoft for being absolutely massive tools in the past. As such, they have a higher bar to jump over if they want me to acknowledge that they have created a "modern" browser. They have to make a browser that beats every other browser in it's standards compliance, stability and performance. They have to create the greatest browser that has ever been and ever will be. And only then will I even c…

This is how I feel not just about microsoft but about all closed-source software. It's great that it exists and wants to compete and keep the open source stuff on its toes but ultimately I prefer the top dogs to be the open source guys because I know if it ever does go off the rails it can be forked.

Re: Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”

#60

Post by guelo »

chadzawistowski wrote: post #35
bsimpson wrote: post #33

I was at CES last year, and the showing of the IE team was my favorite part of the trip. They were a bunch of younger guys who basically said "We know the guys who used to work here did some terrible things in our name. We're changing that, and we're here to tell you about it." They seemed like really cool dudes. I even went over to the mall to try a Surface when they came out. Then, I realized Windows 8 is still Win…

Windows 8 may still be Windows, but WinRT is very much the System 9 -> OS X transition. Windows 8 supports both the old Win32 APIs and the new WinRT APIs.

I think of WinRT as more of a weird System 9 -> iOS transition.
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