5 ms·
> Microsoft were kind of correct in the "browser choice" lawsuit that they'd used the browser as an OS component, and everyone else was correct that this was ki
by scholia 11y ago
> Microsoft were kind of correct in the "browser choice" lawsuit that they'd used the browser as an OS component, and everyone else was correct that this was kind of a bad idea.
Unfortunately, Microsoft signed a consent decree with the DoJ in 1995 which allowed them to add features to the operating system but meant they couldn't tie a separate program to the operating system. Therefore the browser had to be an added feature.
This was only a tiny part of a much broader decree. None the less, you can thank Janet Reno and the US government for the problems this has caused ever since ;-)
- pjc50 11y agoThe consent decree is a large part of why we have browser (and OS!) choice at the moment. Imagine the world where IE6 won and use of ActiveX controls on websites was routine.
- icebraining 11y agoI don't see how that follows, seeing as the IE dominance era came years after the consent decree was signed (2000-2003).
- jessaustin 11y agoThe implication is that absent the consent decree IE would have been more dominant in that era, and that the dominance would have lasted longer than it did. This is plausible, since a world of sites built with non-web-standard crap would have been barren ground for nascent Firefox. It was for that exact purpose that IE has always been the way it has been, and would have been worse without the decree. Yeah, we're grateful for XHR, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
- icebraining 11y agoBut the consent decree didn't impede the creation of non-web-standard crap, and in fact XHR was made after it was signed, so how did it help? Remember that "the decree does not address any of Microsoft's applications software." It only regarded their dealings with OEMs.
- scholia 11y agoTo quote myself from earlier... The IE6 era (2001 to 2005 or 2006) was a period of great creativity, and it was when a lot of dominant web properties became established. Examples include Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Second Life, The Pirate Bay, MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, Gmail, Flickr, OpenStreetMap, YouTube, MegaUpload, Pandora and Twitter. Web 2.0 became popular during that era (2004 onwards). That "stagnation" compares rather well with much of the flashy, transient rubbish being launched nowadays. Also, when it came out, IE6 was the most standards-compliant browser and generally performed better than its main rivals.