4 ms·

I always feel like these timelines miss an era. The era where Netscape stagnated and MS came in with a superior, free, non-standards compliant browser that actu

I always feel like these timelines miss an era. The era where Netscape stagnated and MS came in with a superior, free, non-standards compliant browser that actually pushed the evolution of HTML/JS forward. IE 4.0-IE 6.0 pretty much pioneered features that would become HTML 4. For example: dynamically modifying the DOM and XML async requests. IE pretty much ushered in the era of truly dynamic websites. Granted, IE 6 sucked (eventually), and thus began the era of IE stagnation. MS got the market share they wanted, then basically sat on their hands for a decade (as the other browsers started innovating again and W3C got off its ass). Shit on IE all you want, but there was a forgotten era when it was the pioneer. Also, I'm generally finding Edge on Android a better experience than Chrome on Android after having played with it for a month or so. I still prefer Chrome vs Edge on my Windows desktop. Obviously, YMMV, but these are my personal observations and experiences.

zamber 9y ago
On Android and Windows I'm finding Firefox better than both. Extensions in Firefox on Android are particularly helpful. There's an issue with not-always-60fps scrolling in Firefox on Android and the UX is not ideal, but having uBlock Origin and Stylus on Android in my opinion beats that.
forgotmypw 9y ago
I think that Microsoft stagnated for the same reason that Netscape did: Their codebase was not flexible enough to implement new features well. It's a big decision to pull the plug on a codebase of that size, so browser developers tend to resist doing it until stagnation happens. It happened with Netscape, it happened with MSIE, it happened with Opera, it happened with Firefox, can you guess who's next in line?
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Safari? I honestly don't know.
  - sebazzz 9y ago
    I think he is referring to Chrome.
- hsivonen 9y ago
  The plug was pulled on Presto and on Mariner (except for NSPR, SpiderMonkey and NSS parts). The plug was not pulled on the IE and Firefox code bases. In both cases, the plug was pulled on legacy extensions permitting major changes, but neither Edge nor Quantum are new code bases. (WebKit deprecated on Mac and obsoleted on Linux its first embedding API and replaced it with thr WebKit2 API.)
psyc 9y ago
Microsoft has scripted automation of their apps, and exposing apps’ components to programmers, deep in their DNA. VBA, DDE, COM. It does count as innovation in the browser space, and it’s also a natural extension of what they’ve always done.
wahern 9y ago
Netscape Navigator had layers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_element) long before Internet Explorer made the innerHTML property mutable. And unlike layers, IE's innerHTML was unusable for dynamic updates because it leaked memory like a sieve and after dynamically reloading content a few times IE would grind to a halt.[1] Layers lost out and innerHTML won the day, but it's a stretch to say IE was more innovative than Netscape. Arguably innerHTML won because this was the era where Microsoft was throwing its monopoly weight around to push IE and kill Netscape. [1] People were building amazing DHTML games using JavaScript and layers in Navigator 4. IE 4's innerHTML seemed more powerful but it was just plain unusable in practice. Using the DHTML games as a model, I built a timesheet entry and management application for Navigator (layers) and IE (innerHTML) that never reloaded the page. This was circa early 2001. With Navigator you could reload timesheets all day long; with IE the application became unusable after just a few timesheet changes. IE 4 dominated the landscape so long that, in truth, you couldn't build real dynamic web applications until many years later. From my perspective, IE delayed the emergence of the modern web.
- wahern 9y ago
  EDIT #2: The games I was thinking of were Dan Steinman's. Here's StarThruster: https://web.archive.org/web/20010215013449/http://www.dansteinman.com:80/dynduo/demos/starthruster/ https://web.archive.org/web/20010215013449/http://www.danste... He had turned his proofs of concepts into a cross-browser (Navigator 4, IE 4) library called DynAPI along with a tutorial: https://web.archive.org/web/20010413015916/http://www.dansteinman.com:80/dynduo/ https://web.archive.org/web/20010413015916/http://www.danste...
- wahern 9y ago
  Looking at Wikipedia I see that IE 6 came out in 2001, so I must be misremembering some context. But I know I left that job not long after 9/11, and I know that whatever version of IE we had to target was unusable for serious DHTML work.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    windows only had ie4 and then 6. mac had a great version of ie5 (really) but ie crashed if you used xmlhttprequest or innerhtml too much. so despite them forcing it on the world since ie4, it only became usable on later ie6 versions (windows service pack ftw), a little later than 2001.
weinzierl 9y ago
I don‘t know about Edge, but I think you are spot on about the IE4, IE5 era. At least what you write fits very well with what I remember from that time: Even outspoken Netscape proponents used IE 5 secretly. On the other hand the article is about the UA string and isn‘t meant to be an accurate browser timeline anyway. For example, it says: „And the followers of Linux were much sorrowed, because they had built Konqueror, whose engine was KHTML [..] Then cometh Opera and said, “surely we should allow our users to decide which browser we should impersonate, [..]” If I remember correctly, Opera came before Konqueror and KHTML.
saurik 9y ago
It is better than that: Netscape was actually the browser ignoring standards (and in particular was refusing to implement CSS) and Microsoft with IE came in as what someone from the W3C at the time called the "white knight" with a browser that cared about standards and published their DTDs and really implemented stuff like CSS. They (of course) ran into the typical-MS problem of "we implemented a draft and then they made a major change (to the box model, which ironically later got a configuration flag for and many many people actively prefer the old MS way ;P) and couldn't update very well as we now had existing users", but what I claim really caused them to stagnate was the massive lawsuit against them, which demoralized the IE team in a company that doesn't force people to work on project teams where they don't want to work (the culture in Microsoft was "if you want to build a new product, poach a team worth of people from other, more boring teams"). For more information and a million references, here is a comment I left detailing this history five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718968
- BrandonM 9y ago
  Do you still plan to write that article?
zeveb 9y ago
> IE pretty much ushered in the era of truly dynamic websites. I'd call that inferior, not superior: it's what destroyed the web as a document-viewing platform and turned it into the modern privacy-destroying, JavaScript-laden application-deployment platform we have today. Every time I see a blurry image, every time I have to enable scripts to view text & images — I can blame IE. > Also, I'm generally finding Edge on Android a better experience than Chrome on Android Firefox on Android is also cool, and free software to boot.

zamber 9y ago

On Android and Windows I'm finding Firefox better than both. Extensions in Firefox on Android are particularly helpful. There's an issue with not-always-60fps scrolling in Firefox on Android and the UX is not ideal, but having uBlock Origin and Stylus on Android in my opinion beats that.

forgotmypw 9y ago

I think that Microsoft stagnated for the same reason that Netscape did: Their codebase was not flexible enough to implement new features well. It's a big decision to pull the plug on a codebase of that size, so browser developers tend to resist doing it until stagnation happens. It happened with Netscape, it happened with MSIE, it happened with Opera, it happened with Firefox, can you guess who's next in line?

paulddraper 9y ago
Safari? I honestly don't know.
- sebazzz 9y ago
  I think he is referring to Chrome.
hsivonen 9y ago
The plug was pulled on Presto and on Mariner (except for NSPR, SpiderMonkey and NSS parts). The plug was not pulled on the IE and Firefox code bases. In both cases, the plug was pulled on legacy extensions permitting major changes, but neither Edge nor Quantum are new code bases. (WebKit deprecated on Mac and obsoleted on Linux its first embedding API and replaced it with thr WebKit2 API.)

psyc 9y ago

Microsoft has scripted automation of their apps, and exposing apps’ components to programmers, deep in their DNA. VBA, DDE, COM. It does count as innovation in the browser space, and it’s also a natural extension of what they’ve always done.

wahern 9y ago

Netscape Navigator had layers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layer_element) long before Internet Explorer made the innerHTML property mutable. And unlike layers, IE's innerHTML was unusable for dynamic updates because it leaked memory like a sieve and after dynamically reloading content a few times IE would grind to a halt.[1] Layers lost out and innerHTML won the day, but it's a stretch to say IE was more innovative than Netscape. Arguably innerHTML won because this was the era where Microsoft was throwing its monopoly weight around to push IE and kill Netscape. [1] People were building amazing DHTML games using JavaScript and layers in Navigator 4. IE 4's innerHTML seemed more powerful but it was just plain unusable in practice. Using the DHTML games as a model, I built a timesheet entry and management application for Navigator (layers) and IE (innerHTML) that never reloaded the page. This was circa early 2001. With Navigator you could reload timesheets all day long; with IE the application became unusable after just a few timesheet changes. IE 4 dominated the landscape so long that, in truth, you couldn't build real dynamic web applications until many years later. From my perspective, IE delayed the emergence of the modern web.

wahern 9y ago
EDIT #2: The games I was thinking of were Dan Steinman's. Here's StarThruster: https://web.archive.org/web/20010215013449/http://www.dansteinman.com:80/dynduo/demos/starthruster/ https://web.archive.org/web/20010215013449/http://www.danste... He had turned his proofs of concepts into a cross-browser (Navigator 4, IE 4) library called DynAPI along with a tutorial: https://web.archive.org/web/20010413015916/http://www.dansteinman.com:80/dynduo/ https://web.archive.org/web/20010413015916/http://www.danste...
wahern 9y ago
Looking at Wikipedia I see that IE 6 came out in 2001, so I must be misremembering some context. But I know I left that job not long after 9/11, and I know that whatever version of IE we had to target was unusable for serious DHTML work.
- gcb0 9y ago
  windows only had ie4 and then 6. mac had a great version of ie5 (really) but ie crashed if you used xmlhttprequest or innerhtml too much. so despite them forcing it on the world since ie4, it only became usable on later ie6 versions (windows service pack ftw), a little later than 2001.

weinzierl 9y ago

I don‘t know about Edge, but I think you are spot on about the IE4, IE5 era. At least what you write fits very well with what I remember from that time: Even outspoken Netscape proponents used IE 5 secretly. On the other hand the article is about the UA string and isn‘t meant to be an accurate browser timeline anyway. For example, it says: „And the followers of Linux were much sorrowed, because they had built Konqueror, whose engine was KHTML [..] Then cometh Opera and said, “surely we should allow our users to decide which browser we should impersonate, [..]” If I remember correctly, Opera came before Konqueror and KHTML.

saurik 9y ago

It is better than that: Netscape was actually the browser ignoring standards (and in particular was refusing to implement CSS) and Microsoft with IE came in as what someone from the W3C at the time called the "white knight" with a browser that cared about standards and published their DTDs and really implemented stuff like CSS. They (of course) ran into the typical-MS problem of "we implemented a draft and then they made a major change (to the box model, which ironically later got a configuration flag for and many many people actively prefer the old MS way ;P) and couldn't update very well as we now had existing users", but what I claim really caused them to stagnate was the massive lawsuit against them, which demoralized the IE team in a company that doesn't force people to work on project teams where they don't want to work (the culture in Microsoft was "if you want to build a new product, poach a team worth of people from other, more boring teams"). For more information and a million references, here is a comment I left detailing this history five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5718968

BrandonM 9y ago
Do you still plan to write that article?

zeveb 9y ago

> IE pretty much ushered in the era of truly dynamic websites. I'd call that inferior, not superior: it's what destroyed the web as a document-viewing platform and turned it into the modern privacy-destroying, JavaScript-laden application-deployment platform we have today. Every time I see a blurry image, every time I have to enable scripts to view text & images — I can blame IE. > Also, I'm generally finding Edge on Android a better experience than Chrome on Android Firefox on Android is also cool, and free software to boot.