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A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#41

Post by tsmarsh »

umvi wrote: post #25
acheron wrote: post #16

I like the lawyers being concerned about the possibility they were pushing Chrome. Obviously Google soon decided that wasn’t a problem. (And now we’re back where we started with Chrome as the new IE.)

> (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 Pareto Distribution is an unavoidable market phenomenon, but I still believe its healthy for technologists to remain skeptical when one client massively outperforms others.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#42

Post by jrochkind1 »

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…

Yes. I love the story, and if I had been in charge I don't see how I could do anything but fire the whole lot of them.

Although... the number of people involved in the "OldTubers" backdoor seems to have been pretty substantial, I don't know if they could really have fired all of them...

But who is anyone to say if doing anything is "right"? We're all equally qualified to have a moral compass.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#43

Post by xeeeeeeeeeeenu »

timw4mail wrote: post #11

IE 6 rightfully deserved this. However, the modern policy of supporting only the latest browsers can also be too extreme. Web browsers have gotten to be MUCH more resource intensive than the IE6 days. Try loading any "modern" site on a "modern" browser on a netbook. (Or any computer with an Atom processor). While its "compatibility" has waned, I really appreciate Opera 12 for its performance on humble machines. No mo…

>Web browsers have gotten to be MUCH more resource intensive than the IE6 days. Try loading any "modern" site on a "modern" browser on a netbook. (Or any computer with an Atom processor).

They didn't, the current web browsers are faster than ever. The problem is that websites are getting heavier and heavier.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#44

Post by rdiddly »

cpeterso wrote: post #10

Is this a charming story about helping users upgrade to modern web browsers or a dark parable about the influence of tech giants? Compare with ex-Firefox VP Johnathan Nightingale's recent thread about Google "amateur hour" and "oopses" that only affected Firefox: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686

Yeah the part about giving the whole web "permission" to deprecate IE6 should ring alarm bells, even though it's not literal.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#45

Post by TimTheTinker »

wvenable wrote: post #28
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.

This is the problem when looking back on the past; you miss the context. IE6, at the time in 2001, was the fastest most stable browser out there. It was magnitudes better than Netscape Navigator, which was bloated and far more crash happy. IE6 wasn't always terrible; it was just terrible compared what came after -- which is exactly how things should work.

> IE6 wasn't always terrible

For web apps, IE6 and anything that came before was always terrible. It used to be hard to build a decent web app, even if most of your code ran on the server. There is a huge qualitative difference between building for an ad-hoc platform and one that is rigorously built and tested against some externally defined standard.

Sure, Chrome may be lagging in some areas, but--like all modern browsers--the platform it provides conforms rigorously to the standards it supports. And that makes all the difference.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#46

Post by shawabawa3 »

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"

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#47

Post by jrochkind1 »

cpeterso wrote: post #10

Is this a charming story about helping users upgrade to modern web browsers or a dark parable about the influence of tech giants? Compare with ex-Firefox VP Johnathan Nightingale's recent thread about Google "amateur hour" and "oopses" that only affected Firefox: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686

Both?

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#48

Post by skullt »

dTal wrote: post #40
mpol wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IE7 was only for a short time the newest Microsoft browser. IE8 lived for a long time, untill eventualy IE9 came about. IE7 didn't have tabs, IE8 did.

Yeah, but the effect of the banner on the graphs of each was sharp and immediate.

The graph is measuring in six month intervals, so the March 2009 release of IE 8 needs to also be considered.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#49

Post by DuskStar »

behringer wrote: post #37
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…

There's no way this banner did anything in reality. Corporations didn't upgrade because of their tooling, not youtube. What corporation upgraded to make sure their employees could youtube harder?

Did the graph of browser marketshare at the end not mean anything to you? IE6 dropped by half over the next month

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#50

Post by jrochkind1 »

apo wrote: post #27

Beautiful illustration of what keeps bad ideas going, and what it takes to break them. > Our boss, in on the conspiracy with us, had thoughtfully recommended that we randomize the order of the browsers listed and then cookie the random seed for each visitor so that the UI would not jump around between pages, which we had done. It's not exactly clear whether the boss was in on the conspiracy - or whether this was a st…

Also, do it as right and professionally as you can.

I mean, randomizing the order is obviously the right thing to do when you hear it. The reason companies don't want people doing this without going through the proper channels is... what if the boss hadn't happened to think of it, or hadn't been in on it?

Of course, in reality in this case, they would have just fixed it when they noticed, it in fact wouldn't have been a legal disaster. But anyway.

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