Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

blog.chriszacharias.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 386 posts

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#161

Post by TheKarateKid »

tsmarsh wrote: post #41
umvi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (And now we’re back where we started with Chrome as the new IE.) Except for the part where you get BSoD and infinite recursion or any of the other stated IE6 nightmares... Really, the only thing Chrome and IE have in common are market share. Chrome is magnitudes better than IE in every other way as far as being a web dev goes.

It is. There is a focus on standards, pushing the technology forward then sharing that with other browsers. Rapid updates. A focus on security and performance. And Chrome is the product, not the operating system its running on. Arguably, you could say that Chrome is actually designed to push you towards the Google Search and Gmail. But its a soft nudge in comparison to IE6 and Windows. I'm sure we'll find that a Pare…

> And Chrome is the product, not the operating system its running on.

Not quite the case. Chrome + Extensions create a very OS-like environment, hence not even needing Chrome OS.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#162

Post by prolepunk »

sergiotapia wrote: post #127
mherdeg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good catchy name for this "oops" stuff? It's very interesting, an interesting modern take on "embrace and extend" or "FUD".

I call it Last Jedi'ing. GOTCHA https://youtu.be/5ECwhB21Pnk?t=323

Why do you even bring this up? What you linked isn't funny.

The video is titled -- 'Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a Complete Cinematic Failure'. I believe I know where this is all going.

Putting aside all the anti-feminist crap that I'm sure I'm going to find if keep watching this video, what I'm seeing is a very angry dude screaming 'Gotcha' while old-timey piano music is playing in the background and some starwars clips are shown.

Everything about this is really annoying.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#163

Post by umvi »

mattmanser wrote: post #33
umvi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (And now we’re back where we started with Chrome as the new IE.) Except for the part where you get BSoD and infinite recursion or any of the other stated IE6 nightmares... Really, the only thing Chrome and IE have in common are market share. Chrome is magnitudes better than IE in every other way as far as being a web dev goes.

And IE6 was similarly tons better the Netscape Navigator. It had XmlHttp, inventing Ajax, which revolutionised the web. Easy to forget that now. Also, did you know IE6 pioneered the browser web dev tools? IE6 was the first browser you could debug your JavaScript, css and html, which was copied by firebug about 12 months later. I can't even remember what it was called now, IE Dev toolbox? Something strange, you had to…

Easy to forget because I was in elementary school when Netscape Navigator was a thing

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#166

Post by incompatible »

settsu wrote: post #144

I'm not one for hero worship, but I want to buy everyone involved a beverage. From '08-'10, I was in web design & development at a company that was neck-deep in IE6 dependency. The animus I harbored for IE6 was so intensely palpable that there were days where I was mere moments from getting a tattoo permanently documenting my burning hate for what I still reckon as the worst piece of software ever known, based on rea…

Well, they are heroes, they deserve more than a beverage. Some kind of medal at least.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#167

Post by [deleted] »

ljm wrote: post #39
jrochkind1 wrote: post #2

Oh my, this is amazing. I'm not sure the engineers realized despite their secrecy, it would be noticed by the press immediately after deploy. But the best part is how Google engineers immediately on seeing it figured "oh yeah, we should do that too" (although they apparently got the necessary approvals however that was done at Google, it was easier to do because they figured "well, youtube must have done due dillegen…

It's a fascinating tech story, but it would easily turn into a horror if we weren't talking about something like a video hosting platform. Imagine working at a medical or financial company and having secretive 'old timer' permissions that basically backdoored the company's engineering processes. Even if the engineers saw a good reason to do so. I mean, who are we to say that this was doing it right ? It turned out to…

[deleted]

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#168

Post by Cyberspy »

saagarjha wrote: post #85
darawk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the sort of riskless sentiment that causes something like IE6 to persist forever. > I mean, who are we to say that this was doing it right? It turned out to be beneficial but there are thousands of ways that this could explode in your face if you tried it yourself. How would this explode in your face, exactly? What was the risk here?

From what it looks like, this is quite literally the ability to get code into the main codebase with no oversight. Even without malicious intentions, it seems very easy to do something awful by accident.

This is why I like to work at small businesses, where I'm either the only developer or one of just a few. Even with annual turnovers, through the website, of approaching $10million/year (in my current and last role) there is very little oversight of what I do - there's literally no-one to challenge me on a technical level. That doesn't mean I abuse my position, but it does give me a lot of technical freedom in how I create the functionality the business asks for.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#169

Post by fgonzag »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #46
dfabulich wrote: post #24

This is the first example I've ever heard of where a browser-upgrade banner worked . Every time I've tried it on sites I've worked on, the "please upgrade" banner does nothing. Years ago, we even tried turning it into an intrusive pop-up for a percentage of users. They just clicked through the pop-up, presumably without reading it. I wonder if it worked in this case because it started a movement? > Between YouTube, G…

> I wonder if it worked in this case because it started a movement? I think this is the answer. Most people at the time weren't on IE6 out of choice. The fact that youtube (or more likely google docs) had this banner, gave disgruntled employees a better excuse to force IT to upgrade than "I don't like this browser"

It might have even gotten IT the budget to upgrade, too. I bet it was pretty hard for IT to ask for many millions of dollars to upgrade in-house apps to be cross-browser compatible when there was no urgent need. A banner on every exec's page makes it easier.
Post reply on HN