Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

americasmarkets.usatoday.com

111–120 of 213 posts

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#111

I'm willing to give Spartan a chance, honestly. The ModernIE initiative taken by Microsoft the past few years feels like Microsoft gave IE to a team of competent engineers and told to run with it. They dropped support for older versions of IE and upgraded the technology behind it. Firefox is too slow. As a power user I notice millisecond differences in page render times. I may be an outlier but I think most people wh…

I think you're being too mild in your side note. The first half of the IE6-9 era was part of a deliberate scorched-earth strategy to harm the open Internet, and the second half was them furiously backpedalling from that when it failed. It wasn't a technical decision, it was cynical business strategy, and having their IE brand get trashed is the least of what they deserve. I'm kind of annoyed with how quickly people a…

I don't care who does it or why - I just want higher quality software platforms. I'm glad that Microsoft didn't immediately give into the "open web" because it's a horrible mess of designed-by-committee compromises.

I wish someone would just make a new browser that lets people browse a mix of native apps and web pages so we can stop bolting more crap on top of HTML/JS/CSS.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#112
post #82

Does it really matter? Do they need a browser at all? Browsers are all pretty much interoperable now. What strategic advantage is there in developing and maintaining their own browser? Nobody pays for browsers. They might pay for content or apps delivered in the browsers. That's what Microsoft should worry about. They've lost their browser monopoly, move on.

> What strategic advantage is there in developing and maintaining their own browser?

You hold the keys to the default search engine for that particular browser, to name an example. Even with the Mozilla-Yahoo deal it's still in MS interest to own a browser so they can push Bing and their other cloud services there.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#114
post #94

I'm willing to give Spartan a chance, honestly. The ModernIE initiative taken by Microsoft the past few years feels like Microsoft gave IE to a team of competent engineers and told to run with it. They dropped support for older versions of IE and upgraded the technology behind it. Firefox is too slow. As a power user I notice millisecond differences in page render times. I may be an outlier but I think most people wh…

>Firefox is too slow. Despite all the evidence to the contrary? >As a power user I notice millisecond differences in page render times. No you don't. As a web developer, I personally can attest that's not true.

Oh you can easily figure out render performance differences in milliseconds with your eyes. Try that. For example, a difference of 300 milliseconds is noticeable by me. I don't know what are you 'attesting' there. I'm not a web-developer, but just 'a developer'.

Also, what evidence you have that says Firefox can't be slow(even with all the add-ons it supports). In fact, those hundreds of bugs will be quite a sufficient evidence that it indeed is for many people. (It's coming from someone who still hasn't converted to Chrome)

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#115
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Firefox is too slow. Despite all the evidence to the contrary? >As a power user I notice millisecond differences in page render times. No you don't. As a web developer, I personally can attest that's not true.

Oh you can easily figure out render performance differences in milliseconds with your eyes. Try that. For example, a difference of 300 milliseconds is noticeable by me. I don't know what are you 'attesting' there. I'm not a web-developer, but just 'a developer'. Also, what evidence you have that says Firefox can't be slow(even with all the add-ons it supports). In fact, those hundreds of bugs will be quite a sufficie…

When you say “I notice millisecond differences”, that means “one millisecond”. If you meant something more on the order of hundreds of milliseconds, you should probably clarify that.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#116
post #33
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is mostly marketing (i.e. still using Chakra and Trident engines), the biggest change from a web developer's perspective is that the new Spartan browser will be evergreen[1]. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+PaulIrish/posts/f15yUhu4tE3

I may be wrong, but I believe that they replaced the old rendering engine (Trident), with a new one (EdgeHTML.dll).[1] But Trident will still be around, for compatibility with old websites (especially for enterprise applications). So, it's not just marketing... [1] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts...

EdgeHTML.dll is just a fork of mshtml.dll, which started somewhere after IE11 and stripped out all the compatibility modes (except quirks and limited-quirks, both of which are starting to get properly standardised) and then started refactoring the code to get rid of all the less nice design decisions caused by having to keep the IE7 code working through a bunch of ifs.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they can't, because enterprise/legacy sites. They need to keep it kicking around. But the non-awful modern browser, that won't be called IE.

Is there some proof of this outside of this USA Today article? I came here with the exact same concern as the GP comment. “We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan..." It just reeks of marketing double-speak that gets engineers excited, only to find out that they're stuck maintaining code for N + 1 browsers now. Incidentally, Microsoft rebranding exercises inf…

AIUI, the version of Trident (i.e., mshtml.dll) shipping in Win10 is that of IE11. There shouldn't be any behavioural changes, and Trident should only be used in IE12 for intranet websites by default.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#118
post #35
post #7

> "We’ll continue to have Internet Explorer, but we’ll also have a new browser called Project Spartan" Oh joy, another browser from Microsoft to test. :\

I don't know why you were down voted. We have to support Ie7,8,9,10,11 and 11 for metro in and out of compatibility mode across three fucking platforms due to control styling differences. Now we have Spartan and whatever shtcrock will ship as legacy. We'll lose IE7 when vista is dead. We'll be left with enterprise IE11 well into 2028! Why? In financial services all our clients are cheap, dumb and incompetent. Unpatch…

As of Jan 2016, only IE9 (on Vista), IE11 (on 7/8), and Spartan will be receiving security fixes. See " rel="nofollow">http://support.microsoft.com/gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer>.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#119
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What browser do you use now? I agree with your points, but I've stuck with Chrome because of the range of extensions.

I don't use much extensions, so that's never been too big of a deal for me. I'm using Opera although currently trying Vivaldi[0] Vivaldi has a cool story, former Opera guys that want to make a browser for the power user, not your mom- which is basically the only browser that actually targets me as it's intended audience. The downsides are it's only in technical preview mode and they pretty openly admit to tracking yo…

Try Otter Browser too, it also follows the philosophy of the old Opera but it's free software and cares about your privacy. It's also in an incomplete alpha stage though (it has quite a bunch of features but still doesn't have some convenient stuff, remarkably autocompletion in the address field).

http://www.otter-browser.org

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#120
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. At least it may not be worth $200. Apple's $25 or free updates are much more reasonable and get people to actually stay current. The older hardware slows down gradually and people warm up to the idea of faster/newer hardware gradually, rather than thinking that the new OS broke their working computer. Please, Microsoft, switch to an evergreen OS model like Apple has.

Windows has moved to an evergreen OS model: http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/01/21/the-next...

Oh wow that is great news!
Post reply on HN