Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#81

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #10

angularly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, exactly my thought when I saw the headline. As a webdeveloper since 1995, I can only say "phew, finally" - that browser probably cost me 2-3 years of my life, spent hacking various webprojects to make them work in IE.

You forget the fact that IE used to be the best browser out there.Netscape ended up being total shit.

MSIE was never the "best" browser. It may have been better than Netscape, but there were numerous alternatives -- Opera, Galeon, Konqueror, and more.

Eventually Mozilla / Phoenix / Firefox picked up the mantel. Then (somewhat) Chrome, though it's getting really effing annoying these days.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#82

Post by ams6110 » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

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.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#83

Post by JohnBooty » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #50

Absurdly, users have to install Windows 10 to use this new browser. Why not write it in .net and have it work on all versions of Windows typically found in the wild?

I wish it worked on other versions of Windows as well (just like Firefox and Chrome do) but a .NET version would likely be vastly inferior to a C/C++ browser in performance.

.NET is great but this isn't really what it's meant for.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#84

Post by integraton » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:06 PM UTC

hasenj wrote: post #39

baldfat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that Netscape lived on and became Firefox.

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.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#85

Post by Sammi » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:07 PM UTC

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #80

Spartan is still Trident, right? So then it's still Microsoft using Microsoft stuff, but eliminating a ton of cruft that builds up over the years due to backwards compatibility. Historically, Apple (at least under Jobs) were the ones to declare an old standard dead while dragging us kicking and screaming into the future. Microsoft always proudly stood by and told you that your crappy program from 1992 would still be…

Yes, Spartan is a fork where they cut out old cruft.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#86

Post by CHY872 » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:09 PM UTC

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 maintain your own browser so that you can influence the development of the web. For example, Apple used Safari's influence to push touch events, Microsoft tried to use its influence to standardise pointer events, Google's been pushing NaCL, Dart etc.

In order to consistently have weight with changing CSS, HTML rendering etc you basically need your own browser - and most of the changes we've seen in the last few years have come out of Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#87

Post by mattmanser » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #81

aikah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget the fact that IE used to be the best browser out there.Netscape ended up being total shit.

MSIE was never the "best" browser. It may have been better than Netscape, but there were numerous alternatives -- Opera, Galeon, Konqueror, and more. Eventually Mozilla / Phoenix / Firefox picked up the mantel. Then (somewhat) Chrome, though it's getting really effing annoying these days.

They invented ajax, at that time it was the best.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#88

Post by EdSharkey » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:31 PM UTC

stupidcar wrote: post #76

jbinto wrote: 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

IE has been evergreen since version 10. The biggest change is that this is not Trident. It is a new rendering engine, called EdgeHTML, which started as a fork of Trident. That might sound odd, but Trident and the rest of IE had accumulated years of technical and backwards-compatibility debt: All the different document modes and obscure features from the ActiveX era that couldn't be removed because enterprise intranet…

They should have done this EdgeHTML rewrite/legacy cruft split with IE9 rather than layering on more kludges.

They should eliminated native code apps in user mode in Vista and forced developers to ship only managed code with legacy native code apps running in a virtual machine sandbox.

They should have finished WinFS and transcended the files and folders thang. (No, SQL Server does not count as WinFS, it should have been THE file system in Vista.) They should have fixed the file locking thing on open files, geez I hate hate hate that DOS backwards compatibility.

They should have done something/ANYTHING amazing with WinCE beyond pocket office with the insane lead they had. I was running .exe's and playing DOOM at a decent clip on my Samsung phone in, when, 2004?

There's so many wouldda couldda shoulddas I have lined up in my mind wrt Microsoft. Makes me sad.

I truly hope Microsoft wants to win this new browser war. I truly hope there is some fire left in you M$. Show me what money combined with hardcore computer science can really achieve!

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#89

Post by archagon » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:32 PM UTC

mhomde wrote: post #79

You know the world is going crazy when Google is evil, Apple is doing tacky devices and Microsoft makes the best browser

Honestly, that's true enough to be pretty funny.

Re: Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand

#90

Post by sliverstorm » Tue, Mar 17, 2015, 10:35 PM UTC

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.

With the browser so ubiquitous, it has become a huge part of your platform experience. Consider IE's big power consumption advantage. If people spend all their time in the browser, offering a browser that makes Windows work as well as possible, is good for Windows.