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Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

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Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#131

Post by mreiland »

nostromo wrote: post #48
aikah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple implementations of a standard is a good thing. Except that is hardly the case.Competition is good,that's what forced IE to evolve as it was losing marketshares. But let's not kid ourself thinking all the players are in it for web standards. > Yes, let's all use Webkit. Much better....... Because IE supremacy used to be better...

I think IE supremacy was different and much worse than a Webkit supremacy would be because Webkit isn't controlled by a single company and is open source. Different Webkit implementations still compete for marketshare. I dare say that if all operating systems were nix, that might also be a good thing. It certainly would make life easier for developers. I understand the problems of monocultures when they are controlle…

> I dare say that if all operating systems were nix, that might also be a good thing. It certainly would make life easier for developers.

How?

Windows and Unix have evolved entirely different ecosystems. Most developers have a tendency to exist entirely in 1 or the other with only a little interaction between them.

I personally am able to use either environment comfortably, but that's actually a big part of the value I bring to certain environments. But that isn't the norm.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#132

Post by throwawaymsft »

joshuapants wrote: post #110
throwawaymsft wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are going to stick on the old OS no matter what. Their computer still works, why buy another? We can stamp our feet or work with that reality. We have 70% of China on Windows XP with no hope of a modern browser from MS ( http://www.computerworld.com/article/2484761/microsoft-windo... ). At least Chrome will work on those old systems. At least web devs can use modern features on those systems. If the brows…

First, you don't have to buy a new computer to get a newer version of Windows (especially since 10 seems to run just as well as 7/8 on the same hardware, if not better). Second, since MS is apparently offering free upgrades to 10 for consumers on 7/8 it doesn't seem like cost is really a factor. The China case is interesting, but I'd like to see some more recent figures on usage, since that article is about 2 years o…

1/2: I'd posit the people using XP in 2015 are probably not the ones capable of upgrading their existing OS. New OS means new computer for them.

3: Users of every other OS are enticed by features other than the browser. Only Windows ties the OS to the browser.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#133

Post by CHY872 »

nostromo wrote: post #48
aikah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple implementations of a standard is a good thing. Except that is hardly the case.Competition is good,that's what forced IE to evolve as it was losing marketshares. But let's not kid ourself thinking all the players are in it for web standards. > Yes, let's all use Webkit. Much better....... Because IE supremacy used to be better...

I think IE supremacy was different and much worse than a Webkit supremacy would be because Webkit isn't controlled by a single company and is open source. Different Webkit implementations still compete for marketshare. I dare say that if all operating systems were nix, that might also be a good thing. It certainly would make life easier for developers. I understand the problems of monocultures when they are controlle…

Webkit is controlled by Apple, basically. If you want to make big changes (i.e. Chrome) you're going to have to fork it and merge Apple's changes periodically.

This will make things harder to maintain, and if you have enough investment, you'll eventually want to fork it (Blink).

People don't really use different Webkits - there's Chrome and Safari (incompatible forks) and Opera (declining market share) and that's about it, really.

Making all OS' Nix would again be a bad thing, because there'd be no level playing field.

The current Unix players are similar in some ways, but have different APIs and behaviours (so OpenBSD has better randomness, Linux has some cool perf monitoring stuff, OS X has its GUI lib) and what you'd essentially find is that there'd be loads of incompatibilities that'd make developing cross-platform a nightmare. Since not all devs run all common operating systems, it'd be hard to motivate fixes.

So, you'd develop for one of them, not all - and then you're not in a much better place than the situation with Windows - where you can share a lot of your code cross-platform anyway, or write in a JIT'd language etc.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#134

Post by freehunter »

cssmoo wrote: post #35
nostromo wrote: 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…

Is that really any different than if enterprise clients were demanding support for Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Firefox 4, etc? I've actually been in that situation, a place I worked in 2011 had a web app that only worked properly in Firefox 2.something.

Blame companies for demanding an app specific to one version. Blame the developers for writing apps that only work on one version. Blame Microsoft for making breaking changes between versions. But only one of those things is Microsoft's fault. They've been pushing people hard to update their browser since IE7 was released.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#135

Post by FireBeyond »

badsock wrote: post #105
badloginagain wrote: post #53

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…

Leaving aside the greater Windows thing, let's be honest - all the major browsers in that era basically said FU to the standards and raced ahead deploying their own stuff. There was greater interplay between the non-IE browsers, but that was because of marketshare and grim realities. Every browser was guilty of releasing features and functions that were "Best viewed in Browser X"

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#136

Post by crag »

ams6110 wrote: 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.

You'd be surprised how much development is centered around IE in the enterprise market. Many users are using IE and don't even know it.

And this is one area MS hasn't clarified yet, how long will they support IE. It's gonna take time for enterprise to switch to a new platform.

But that's why I love tech.. one day Silverlight (as an example) is flying high, the next it's dead.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#137

Post by seanmcdirmid »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #127
zemoo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But it's for people running 7 and up, for one year. The 70% of Chinese users on XP aren't going to see the benefit of this. (Why didn't Microsoft make it for XP too? They want to squeeze that last sale out of people. They don't realize the greater threat is people leaving their platform entirely.)

Even Google doesn't support new versions of Chrome on XP anymore. There is just a point where the OS is outdated.

Not many people run XP in China anymore. Maybe some netcafes with pirated versions that they don't want to upgrade. Its really been a while since I've seen anyone run XP in Beijing.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#138

Post by userbinator »

brianbreslin wrote: post #2

I would be curious to see how well browser brand names have associated/resonated with the average computer users over time. I know my mom uses chrome because I made it her default web browser and hid explorer. However she doesn't refer to it as chrome, just "the web".

I'd say that Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and many of the other browser names are nowhere near as descriptive as Internet Explorer.

I know people who refer to IE as "the internet", and it's not very hard to make that association since "internet" is in its name.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#139

Post by have_humility »

integraton wrote: post #84
hasenj wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interpretation entails that IE will live on and become Spartan

Except that Netscape was open sourced years before it became Firefox. That happened January 1998, which was 17 years ago , and 4 years before Firefox was released, which itself was over 12 years ago.

March 1998, and it underwent a pretty well-publicized rewrite as well... Firefox is not built on top of what was released back then (Communicator 4.x); it's built on top of its rewrite.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#140

Post by elpool2 »

lsdafjklsd wrote: post #64
badloginagain wrote: post #53

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…

What's the word with Firefox performance? My company's app is critically slow in JUST Firefox. It's an Ember app, but we use D3 and Immutable.js. We aren't doing anything weird AFAIK

My company's app is slowest in Firefox too. Most noticeably its the CSS3 transitions that are slow and chunky compared to all the other main browsers. It doesn't really affect the usability too much, but it still annoys me that I can't get the transitions to be nice and smooth like they are in Chrome or IE.
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