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A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

blog.chriszacharias.com

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Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#81

Post by madhadron »

forgotmypw3 wrote: post #64

Yes, IE quirks were hard to deal with, especially when making complex designs. However, this is setting a precedent for restricting websites to certain "acceptable" clients, which is not a good direction.

Remember those "Best viewed with Netscape" and "Best viewed with IE" buttons that people plastered on their sites in the 1990's? Or my favorites, "Best viewed with Lynx" and "Best viewed with a Tuba."

The entire point of the end of the browser wars was to restrict websites to acceptable clients, i.e., those that provided reasonable support for web standards.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#82

Post by masklinn »

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?

It was continuing a movement and giving it visibility outside web developers. The youtube banner happened mid-2009, web developers around the world had soured on IE6 and actively trying to kill it off since 2005~2006.

What the youtube banner provided was a way to finally get the word out, and an argument to give PHBs: it became much easier to sell browser upgrades (or not supporting IE6 anymore) when you could point to Youtube / Google and go "these folks have put their foot down".

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#84

Post by AceJohnny2 »

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…

> I don't know how they didn't all get fired. Like, ALL of em, including everyone who set up the special "OldTuber" priv long before.

I can think of 2 reasons:

1. The gamble paid off. It turned out the time was ripe. Thus, there was really no negative impact on the organization that people had to be punished for.

2. The OldTubers were the experienced backbone of the group. Firing everyone with that privilege would likely have destroyed the group's technical expertise. YouTube as it was would have died.

That latter point is a bit of a strong negotiation position that many engineers don't realize they have. For example in my team we're having a lot of difficulty filling job openings (we're picky and frankly our interviewing pipeline sucks). As such, there's a significant cost/benefit calculation to firing someone. Maybe the person did something egregious, but is it likely to happen again? I know some people in my team are... not great, but are they so bad that we would be better off without them? (I must reluctantly admit, no)

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#85

Post by saagarjha »

darawk wrote: post #78
ljm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#86

Post by fpgaminer »

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.

In this context the comparison is not about the quality of IE6 as a browser, but the control it allowed Microsoft to exert on the internet ecosystem by virtue of its market share. Chrome is now in the same position, holding the vast majority of the www "hostage" to the whims of Google.

The longer Chrome stays popular, the more websites will optimize for Chrome, bringing back the days of "Best viewed in Internet Explorer". And as more and more sites become accessible only in Chrome, user share tilts further in Chrome's favor, and so on in the vicious cycle we experienced in the browser dark ages.

That's the fear, at least. I don't think anyone is concerned that Chrome is going to start BSoDing Windows anytime soon.

The omens of monopoly are certainly here, though. All of Google's websites, which constitute a large percentage of web traffic, have been a "best viewed in Chrome" affair for a few years now. Microsoft recently dropped support for Firefox on the Skype web client. And I've seen my fair share of niche/corporate/etc websites that are Chrome-only.

(FYI, I'm not personally worried that we'll see the same browser dark ages as before, but it's something we should be vigilant against.)

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#88

Post by lewiscollard »

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'm glad you've actually measured this, because you've saved me from doing it! Killing off our "update your browser" nag on our sites has been something I've been considering for a while.

Over the last week we hit the jackpot at work, in that we had errors come into Rollbar caused by every version of Internet Explorer we don't support all the way back to 6. Yes, there was a little celebration in our dev team when we scored our first IE6 exception. :)

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#89

Post by reaperducer »

mherdeg wrote: post #56
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

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'm not sure what the term for the tech world is, but something similar seems to exist in many areas of many fields.

It's one of the reasons I stopped accepting lawyers and law firms as clients. Every other client would pay on time. Those in the law field would consistently slow-pay, I believe because they knew they wouldn't get sued over it.

"That overdue invoice? Oh, we never received it. Send it again." "Oh, Jenna in accounting must have it, but she's on vacation for two weeks." "Oh, that's in process." "Oh, we still haven't received it." "Oh, you have a signature on a certified mail delivery? It must be upstairs for approval." "Oh, we've already run all the checks for the month, it'll be in next month's batch."

I eventually went to a pre-paid hours, payable by credit card-only model. It was the only way to stay afloat. Plus it was delicious when someone would use up all their hours and give give some excuse.

"Oh, we really need this on the site today." "No problem. I can do that as soon as you buy more hours."

"Oh, we'll get that paid next week." "No problem, your website went offline an hour ago and will be back when you buy more hours next week." Poof! payment comes through three minutes later.

Re: A Conspiracy to Kill IE6

#90

Post by UncleMeat »

partiallypro wrote: post #73
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

Google has coincidentally made their products not work on Microsoft's Chromium based browser...and it's not even out of beta.

"Website suddenly breaks on browser that is still in beta and likely isn't baked into all of the acceptance tests" seems like a completely expected result.

Are you suggesting that a new browser that isn't out of beta should be less likely to weirdly break on some websites?

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