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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”

#71

Post by MichaelGG »

runjake wrote: post #37
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…

> 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…

Take, for instance, SQL Server. It's become quite an interesting and capable platform over the last decade. It used to be that Microsoft took the stance that hardware improvements were the customer's benefit, so they'd license per socket, full stop.

They used to mock Oracle with their licensing depending on what kind of CPU and how powerful it was.

Latest SQL Server? Yep, you pay depending on the CPU vendor (AMD or Intel) and the type of chip.

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

#72

Post by agrias »

chasing wrote: post #63
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…

Agree 100%. As someone who's been doing web development since 1995, I have wasted an enormous amount of my life dealing with IE-specific bugs. This is enough for me to feel uncomfortable even thinking about Internet Explorer and has tainted me against Microsoft products in general...

When our company decided to stop supporting IE.. I had the best day of my life at work yanking out all of the 'kind of' working IE quickfixes/hacks we had used out of the source code. I couldn't agree more.

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

#73

Post by resu_nimda »

Aardwolf wrote: post #7

If they change the UA, why didn't they take this opportunity to get rid of these ridiculously long UA's that mention competing browser brand names, and just make their UA string the following: "Windows NT 6.3; Trident/7.0; rv 11.0"

Not being very familiar with browser standards, I found this bit pretty funny:

navigator.appName is now set to “Netscape”

This may seem like a sneaky attempt to trick developers, but this behavior is actually specified in HTML5.

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

#75

Post by TylerE »

ksk wrote: post #65
TylerE wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because Webkit is open source and was developed independently?

What does it being open source have anything to do with it? People didn't like it when MS did it because it introduced additional unwanted bloat in the OS that was annoying to decouple.

That's not what I remember. It was more about it having remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities without being uninstallable.

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

#76

Post by Already__Taken »

sixothree wrote: post #46
BillyMaize wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about everything MS has produced/is planning on producing in the near future. IE, Windows 8, Xbox One, Microsoft Office, the list just goes on.

Everything about Windows 8 to me just feels like a kick in the groin from Microsoft. For many years now they've claimed that .Net was the present and future of Microsoft development; yet it seems they've shoved it into the back seat and likely next into the trunk of deprecation.

How'd you work that out? .Net is the hook to get people to take powershell seriously.

But I'm no Microsoft developer.

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

#77

Post by nwilliams »

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…

Well, the case of Opera's Presto engine being forced to die in the past few years proved that the holy grail of everything being fine and dandy if browser engines and websites follow web standards is a big lie.

Opera is/was known for its standards support, .

Google Service Drops Support for Opera https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195298

G+ doesn't support Opera... why? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2738099

Gmail sometimes shows "Gmail too slow? Switch to Chrome, a faster browser." for Opera uses and a similar message shows up on Youtube Google Docs.

Chrome and Firefox started their own take on HTML beta and experimental features and led to a race of broken standard support. Too many standards are half baked, and are implemented by some browser makers in a half baked manner and are frequently rolled back in an incompatible way, HTML5 storage being just one example.

From "Judgment Day Arrives: Opera Implements the CSS3 Webkit Prefix" http://www.sitepoint.com/opera-css3-webkit-prefix/ "In February 2012, we reported the minutes of W3C meeting where Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft discussed implementing -webkit prefixes in non-webkit browsers. The reason: some developers use only webkit prefixes — their sites look good in some browsers, but broken in others even when they offer the same level of CSS3 support. The issue is especially prevalent on mobile browsers and many developers fail to look beyond their high-end Apple or Android devices." "Opera analyzed stylesheets from 10,000 popular websites to determine which CSS values/properties would receive -webkit aliases:"

Final result? A browser engine known for speed, leanness and standards support killed, because it couldn't keep up with the big browsers' incompatible beta standard support, and the number of websites that go for the latest and greatest and don't care one bit about standards support over cool features.

Take a look at this HN thread about a broken Google site and you see a lot of people defending non-standard HTML because it works on their choice of browser. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4594913

These things are evidence of a currently broken web regardless of IE's involvement, with webkit being the new IE. And it actually explains how some of IE's features and bugs came about in the early 2000s resulted in pain for alternate browsers. Prime example of a great thing: XMLHTTPRequest was not part of a web standard.

Though Webkit is open source, I am a bit wary of Chrome's dominance as Google spends a ton of money to bundle it with everything and promote it at every chance over Firefox/Opera since they don't have to continue paying them hundreds of millions for being default and building a big moat for their search engine in the process against competing and future search engines.

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

#78

Post by megaman821 »

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…

I have cursed at working around IE quirks more times than I can remember, but I don't dump all the blame on Microsoft.

Why is this the top comment, it is just a rant/whine? What other browser released at the same time as IE6 would work well (or at all) with them modern web?

Microsoft has given customers a choice on whether to update their browser or not, and by in large they haven't. Then it becomes Microsoft's fault for not forcing them to upgrade. I don't think people need all their choices made for them. Why is it not web developer's fault for continuing to develop for outdate browsers? or computer manufacturers' fault for not loading a different, more consumer oriented default browser? or the users themselves for not taking a few minutes to update or download an alternative browser?

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

#79

Post by Already__Taken »

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…

> 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.

Didn't we get that? Wasn't that ie6. What went wrong was the internet didn't go away and we didn't all want desktop software.

No I think we should all know how that story ends by now. The answer has got to be open source or open standards at the very least. We need to be in a place where your browser doesn't matter, there's 50 out there choose the green one if you like green.

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