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Not even close. IE6 was a browser that was set in stone. It only ran on Windows. It's legacy that we live with today is the ActiveX controls that are basical

by taf2 8y ago

Not even close. IE6 was a browser that was set in stone. It only ran on Windows. It's legacy that we live with today is the ActiveX controls that are basically parts of Windows. MS stopped innovating on the browser part of IE6 and focused on ActiveX e.g. native Windows components that you could use in the browser. You can't talk about IE6 and not mention how embedded it was with Windows. That is what made IE6 bad. You could not use your Mac or Linux environments to browser the internet. Lots of great ideas came out of IE6 XMLHTTPRequest. Access to the native desktop devices. Storage APIs, realtime communication anything you can do on the desktop you should be able to do through the Web. That is what we see happening today with Chromium and Mozilla. These two teams and now with MS being more involved as well. There is a huge amount of collaboration it's nothing at all like IE6 days.

nl 8y ago
This reaction is pretty interesting. I was doing some webdev back then, and whilst everything you said was true it was the lack of cross browser CSS and Javascript testing which led to the real frustration. Back in 2002/03 IE6 had over 90% marketshare, and justifying testing in anything else was a constant battle.
- taf2 8y ago
  As developer back then I had the same experience but with some reflection ie 6 was the better browser in 2002 - Firefox css got better but that was more like 2005 after many years of zero development on IE6. Reflecting back to that time period the most lasting damages were active x. There are still governments and corporations that can’t migrate from IE 11 because of this legacy.
  - nl 8y ago
    Oh, absolutely IE6 was the better browser. That's exactly the same situation with Chrome. It's faster than Firefox, has less CPU issues etc (and I say that as a long time Firefox user). The mono-culture is the problem, and it's embarrassing that we've forgotten this.

by taf2 8y ago

nl 8y ago

This reaction is pretty interesting. I was doing some webdev back then, and whilst everything you said was true it was the lack of cross browser CSS and Javascript testing which led to the real frustration. Back in 2002/03 IE6 had over 90% marketshare, and justifying testing in anything else was a constant battle.

taf2 8y ago
As developer back then I had the same experience but with some reflection ie 6 was the better browser in 2002 - Firefox css got better but that was more like 2005 after many years of zero development on IE6. Reflecting back to that time period the most lasting damages were active x. There are still governments and corporations that can’t migrate from IE 11 because of this legacy.
- nl 8y ago
  Oh, absolutely IE6 was the better browser. That's exactly the same situation with Chrome. It's faster than Firefox, has less CPU issues etc (and I say that as a long time Firefox user). The mono-culture is the problem, and it's embarrassing that we've forgotten this.