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> it was not at all unusual to see browser makers experiment with new features and ideas in the hopes of gaining some sort of advantage Another feature introdu
by Const-me 6y ago
> it was not at all unusual to see browser makers experiment with new features and ideas in the hopes of gaining some sort of advantage
Another feature introduced this way was AJAX in IE 5.0, specifically the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object.
It’s funny how the whole modern web 2.0 was enabled by an obscure feature. For the initial few years only Microsoft’s own products used that. It was implemented for Outlook web access, a component of their Exchange server that allows users to access their e-mails and relevant stuff without Outlook installed.
Then google found about it, made gmail.com, the rest is history.
- sergeykish 6y agoThere were other interfaces too - RSExecute should have worked with IE3+ and NN3+ [1]. And XMLHTTP while shipped quickly was hardly accidental. MSXML was Microsofts big push for XML, it was always meant to fetch data without page reload (XML data islands in IE4). And it was ActiveX component which was bringing Microsoft to the Web strategy. Another famous ActiveX-based software - Flash. [1] https://daurril.org/wrox/ASPToday/990930-191.htm https://daurril.org/wrox/ASPToday/990930-191.htm