5 ms·

Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors. It was great for users, a free browser! And it was great for developers, it spearheaded DHTML and brows

Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors. It was great for users, a free browser! And it was great for developers, it spearheaded DHTML and browser based application development with powerful for the time ActiveX controls. If you didn't mind that stuff being non-standard, and as a dev I just liked doing cool stuff with tech. It wasn't until 2005 when they stopped caring about making browsers better and it started lagging behind Firefox in all the new design fads at the time - transparent PNGs, rounded corners - and the dev tools couldn't keep up with Firebug. That is when IE started to be annoying, in my opinion anyway.

lostgame 6y ago
The lack of transparent PNG support was awful for a while. I believe IE8, maybe even IE7 supported it, but IE6 was still everywhere in the wild at the time, and your site could look strange without transparent PNG support. I’m honestly grateful for where we are at right now with major browsers and web standards.
- userbinator 6y ago
  with major browsers More like browser --- or two, if you count Firefox... and web standards ...are being wielded as a weapon to maintain a monopoly. The fact that it's a standard means nothing more than... the fact that it's a standard. The ones in control are still those at Google, and they can change the standards however they want. At least the stagnation of the IE6 times meant that most pages were designed specifically to a more lowest-common-denominator, which also helped greatly with accessibility and letting the even smaller minorities of browsers be useful. These days far too many sites are being turned into JS-heavy SPAs when they absolutely don't need to be, because a lot of web developers are assuming everyone has/wants(?) to use a monster-browser like Chrome.
anthk 6y ago
Also a security nightmare with Active X OCX malware.
echelon 6y ago
> Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors. Not true. IE was part of the embrace-extend-extinguish campaign when Microsoft wanted to win computing and the nascent World Wide Web. Thankfully, the antitrust case threw them for a loop and they never realized their dream. I'm convinced that if they'd have won that case they'd have squashed Google, Apple wouldn't have had its chance to thrive, and the web would look like a Microsoft version of AOL. We'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile. Balmer lacked the tenacity and the vision of Gates (you can see it in the historical stock price), and the government forced them from building an unstoppable empire. We need the DOJ to revisit antitrust and direct it at Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. They're using their power and platform to disenfranchise and steal, just like Microsoft wanted and historically enjoyed: - App stores need to stop being an exclusive gate and required tax. - You can't lie to your customers about ad impressions or views, nor can you disregard robot and fake account activity when it benefits your bottom line. - You can't control the world's most popular browser and be the default search engine, most widespread ad platform, and most popular mobile operating system. It's all bad behavior that hurts small and independent business as well as the web. Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently, and Nadella is absolutely killing it. There's no reason the other giants can't be more open. Google doesn't need Chrome as a moat.
- userbinator 6y ago
  We'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile. With Messenger, the official client wasn't that bad, and MSNP was a surprisingly nice and simple protocol --- plenty of third-party clients were available, and I wrote one too. Perhaps if Microsoft got Windows Mobile out first, it would be more like WinCE and not the locked-down iOS/Android clone that it tried to chase after. Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently I wouldn't call their user-hostile spyware/adware OS "nice", nor let all the stuff they're open-sourcing[1] distract from the fact that MS is tryng to head towards being a Google too. [1] The fact that people have been modding DOS/Windows and applications for literally decades without source suggests the value of it is not as high as the FSF and so forth would believe.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
pjc50 6y ago
> browser based application development with powerful for the time ActiveX controls These were Windows-only. They had all the security of Flash, but at least you could run Flash on Mac and Linux. If ActiveX had won out as the default web authoring platform, non-MS smartphones would have been crippled from launch; they wouldn't be able to run "real web pages" containing ActiveX, and relegated to a WAP-like second class citizen status.

lostgame 6y ago

The lack of transparent PNG support was awful for a while. I believe IE8, maybe even IE7 supported it, but IE6 was still everywhere in the wild at the time, and your site could look strange without transparent PNG support. I’m honestly grateful for where we are at right now with major browsers and web standards.

userbinator 6y ago
with major browsers More like browser --- or two, if you count Firefox... and web standards ...are being wielded as a weapon to maintain a monopoly. The fact that it's a standard means nothing more than... the fact that it's a standard. The ones in control are still those at Google, and they can change the standards however they want. At least the stagnation of the IE6 times meant that most pages were designed specifically to a more lowest-common-denominator, which also helped greatly with accessibility and letting the even smaller minorities of browsers be useful. These days far too many sites are being turned into JS-heavy SPAs when they absolutely don't need to be, because a lot of web developers are assuming everyone has/wants(?) to use a monster-browser like Chrome.

anthk 6y ago

Also a security nightmare with Active X OCX malware.

echelon 6y ago

> Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors. Not true. IE was part of the embrace-extend-extinguish campaign when Microsoft wanted to win computing and the nascent World Wide Web. Thankfully, the antitrust case threw them for a loop and they never realized their dream. I'm convinced that if they'd have won that case they'd have squashed Google, Apple wouldn't have had its chance to thrive, and the web would look like a Microsoft version of AOL. We'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile. Balmer lacked the tenacity and the vision of Gates (you can see it in the historical stock price), and the government forced them from building an unstoppable empire. We need the DOJ to revisit antitrust and direct it at Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon. They're using their power and platform to disenfranchise and steal, just like Microsoft wanted and historically enjoyed: - App stores need to stop being an exclusive gate and required tax. - You can't lie to your customers about ad impressions or views, nor can you disregard robot and fake account activity when it benefits your bottom line. - You can't control the world's most popular browser and be the default search engine, most widespread ad platform, and most popular mobile operating system. It's all bad behavior that hurts small and independent business as well as the web. Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently, and Nadella is absolutely killing it. There's no reason the other giants can't be more open. Google doesn't need Chrome as a moat.

userbinator 6y ago
We'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile. With Messenger, the official client wasn't that bad, and MSNP was a surprisingly nice and simple protocol --- plenty of third-party clients were available, and I wrote one too. Perhaps if Microsoft got Windows Mobile out first, it would be more like WinCE and not the locked-down iOS/Android clone that it tried to chase after. Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently I wouldn't call their user-hostile spyware/adware OS "nice", nor let all the stuff they're open-sourcing[1] distract from the fact that MS is tryng to head towards being a Google too. [1] The fact that people have been modding DOS/Windows and applications for literally decades without source suggests the value of it is not as high as the FSF and so forth would believe.
- cycloptic 6y ago

pjc50 6y ago

> browser based application development with powerful for the time ActiveX controls These were Windows-only. They had all the security of Flash, but at least you could run Flash on Mac and Linux. If ActiveX had won out as the default web authoring platform, non-MS smartphones would have been crippled from launch; they wouldn't be able to run "real web pages" containing ActiveX, and relegated to a WAP-like second class citizen status.