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The innovations of Internet Explorer

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Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#11

Post by emn13 »

electrichead wrote: post #5
ryandvm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh brother. Offended? While it's true that Microsoft has done it's part to hold up progress, the fact is that much of what you love about the web today can be directly traced back to innovation at Redmond. Let's give them credit where credit is due. Hell, they came up with AJAX so people could access Outlook from the web. Do you remember how obnoxious browsing was before XMLHttpRequest?

To be fair, that was kind of an accident. Xmlhttprequest just kind of sat there until somebody else came up with a use for it.

It's an accident of history that's it's primarily used for Json and not Xml, but you can hardly argue that the API itself was an accident.

Frankly, the importance of json in this matter is pretty minor anyhow: if it hadn't been around, you can bet some nice JS library would have come up with a different way to easily decode server data into JS objects. The scripted communication was key.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#12

Post by atirip »

emilis_info wrote: post #9

And Hitler built the Autobahns, shouldn't we say thanks to him for that? Also the rebels where never able to build something as marvelous as the Death Star :-) Success, efficiency and morality are three different things. Though many people mix them up all the time. If someone (or something) is efficient and successful that doesn't mean we should overlook the harm (or good) it is doing.

So exactly, what harm IE did to your delicate soul?

Me personally is pretty happy it killed the buggiest and shittest browser ever lived - Netscape4

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#13

Post by emn13 »

erez wrote: post #7

I remember asking the web-devs at the company I used to work for several years ago why do they support IE only, and their reaction was that they will not be able to pull off all the neat tricks they can pull off in IE in any other browser. Their reaction to any suggestion of standards was "I don't care about standards, if that means I can't do whatever IE enables me to do". Is that innovation? Some would say yes. I t…

There's a big downside here too: by publishing lots of very big and crufty (and ill-thought out) API's, they make it very hard to come up with alternate implementations. And once devs are locked into those API's, it's very very hard to port things to a different engine.

So you might respect XmlHttpRequest, but it's also a fairly small API in comparison to some of the other things MS produced.

And it's _those_ things that are "possible" in IE that were precisely the problem. If your API consists of little more than exposing coincidental implementation details, of course lots of things are possible. They're just impossible to maintain afterwards in the face of any change.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#14

Post by emn13 »

huskyr wrote: post #10
emilis_info wrote: post #9

And Hitler built the Autobahns, shouldn't we say thanks to him for that? Also the rebels where never able to build something as marvelous as the Death Star :-) Success, efficiency and morality are three different things. Though many people mix them up all the time. If someone (or something) is efficient and successful that doesn't mean we should overlook the harm (or good) it is doing.

Actually.. Hitler didn't built any Autobahns :) http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth08.htm

According to that link, he didn't invent them. They're not claiming he didn't play a role in building them.

Titling the article as a "Myth" smacks of about.com linkbait.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#15

Post by Drakim »

atirip wrote: post #12
emilis_info wrote: post #9

And Hitler built the Autobahns, shouldn't we say thanks to him for that? Also the rebels where never able to build something as marvelous as the Death Star :-) Success, efficiency and morality are three different things. Though many people mix them up all the time. If someone (or something) is efficient and successful that doesn't mean we should overlook the harm (or good) it is doing.

So exactly, what harm IE did to your delicate soul? Me personally is pretty happy it killed the buggiest and shittest browser ever lived - Netscape4

After it killed it's rival, development practically stopped for several years, and the progress of the web stopped with it.

You know how everybody hates AT&T and Verizon for not bothering to make a better service because they essentially have no competition? That's the same reason I dislike IE.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#16

Post by emn13 »

FuzzyDunlop wrote: post #6
wrath wrote: post #4

Say what you want about Microsoft and IE (I'm expecting Microsoft to be bashed as usual in this thread), but for those of us who were developing for the web in the early 2000s IE was way richer in features that any other browser. The event model and the styling capabilities were better and best of all MSDN actually had documentation. There's a reason why IE6 was adopted so much. It "was" good. Others with better idea…

Fair point. You can look back at a number of features added to the HTML spec, and note that they were first implemented off-the-cuff in IE6. XHR, contentEditable, to name two I can think of straight away. We can give them as much shit as we like for letting the ecosystem stagnate while they had control, which Firefox thankfully set out to fix, but would we have had AJAX if there wasn't an existing XHR implementation,…

It's so hard to say: maybe it'd have taken a while longer. On the other hand, maybe the alternative solution would have been simpler, allowing later developments to progress more quickly. It certainly took years to clean up IE-specific html mess. Who can know if it's a net positive...

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#17

Post by codeka »

Toshio wrote: post #2

I'm particularly offended by this statement: "we wouldn’t have the web as we know it today if not for its contributions". In a parallel universe where microsoft never existed, the people who came up with XMLHttpRequest did their innovative work at Netscape and the web today is light years ahead.

Why discount Microsoft's contribution just because "if they didn't do it, someone else would have"? If that's how you think, then nobody's contribution to the world is significant, since "somebody else would have done it."

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#18

Post by coopaq »

MS stopped others (Netscape) from innovating. IE only ran on Windows* IE 5 on Mac was crap and maybe antitrust avoiding effort. IE was created at all costs to stop the web browser from becoming an application platform that competed with Windows. MS did everything to keep users from using competing browsers. MS tried to make it impossible to uninstall from Windows. MS tried to keep developers from creating rich applications in the web browser and kept IE6 in stagnant mode for almost a decade until competition arrived. Microsoft won. This stuff should be fact entered in Wikipedia.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#19

Post by nikcub »

erez wrote: post #7

I remember asking the web-devs at the company I used to work for several years ago why do they support IE only, and their reaction was that they will not be able to pull off all the neat tricks they can pull off in IE in any other browser. Their reaction to any suggestion of standards was "I don't care about standards, if that means I can't do whatever IE enables me to do". Is that innovation? Some would say yes. I t…

IE5 was amazing in corporate environments. I was involved in many projects where we migrated old desktop software or mainframe software to new web based applications.

You could have client-side data sets and manipulate them all in the browser. When a standard HTML control didn't meet your usability requirement you would drop-in an ActiveX control (I did this for better drop-downs and selection boxes that would autocomplete). You had XML parsing (XML finally living up to the hype - a lot of server software supported XML API's). For security you had domain policies and groups as well as client certificates for those on the road.

This was an inflection point in the entire history of the web. For years you would read op-ed pieces about how the web would replace the old computing model, about ASP's (application service providers), about apps on the web, etc. but it simply wasn't possible until IE5.

Further, IE was the only browser where it was possible for a long time. It may be hard to imagine now but in the late 90s and early 2000's most web developers would lean towards 'IE only' and not have to deal with Netscape (which was considered 'broken' at the time - and was going through its own rough patch with the rewrite - Netscape 6/7)

It was a completely new paradigm. Lower development costs, easier rollouts, much lower administration costs. As a plus being a Microsoft developer was a great experience - boatloads of software, seminars, conferences, speaking to real developers from the company on the phone when you needed something.

Re: The innovations of Internet Explorer

#20

Post by nikcub »

emn13 wrote: post #13
erez wrote: post #7

I remember asking the web-devs at the company I used to work for several years ago why do they support IE only, and their reaction was that they will not be able to pull off all the neat tricks they can pull off in IE in any other browser. Their reaction to any suggestion of standards was "I don't care about standards, if that means I can't do whatever IE enables me to do". Is that innovation? Some would say yes. I t…

There's a big downside here too: by publishing lots of very big and crufty (and ill-thought out) API's, they make it very hard to come up with alternate implementations. And once devs are locked into those API's, it's very very hard to port things to a different engine. So you might respect XmlHttpRequest, but it's also a fairly small API in comparison to some of the other things MS produced. And it's _those_ things…

that is how things are developed though, people ship them and they become standards or die.

it wasn't just Microsoft, Andreessen invented the image tag by simply shipping it in Mosaic:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/alt.hypertext/fMl2xRqL...

TBL was against it, as were others. If he went through the theoretical 'standards' process that you infer is the 'right way' it never would have got done

I am definitely of the view of software first, standards second - because it has been proven throughout history to work

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