5 ms·

Internet Explorer wasn't just morally wrong. It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support. Web developers had to choose if they want to s

Internet Explorer wasn't just morally wrong. It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support. Web developers had to choose if they want to support the broken IE6 or the much more logical and easier to develop for web standards. It was a painful long time for web devs with lots of lost developer productivity until Firefox and Chrome came to the rescue. The amount of money MS lost for not continuing IE development is staggering though.

taeric 6y ago
This is somewhat disingenuous. IE was trying to strong arm web standards in much the way that chrome does today. Just back then, few folks would have it from ms. That said, div, span, xmlhttprequest... All of those came from ie, if I am not mistaken. Now, I confess I have grown to not like divs and spans. That said, I am very amenable to "border-box", which is kind of hilarious in historical context. I also remember IE actually supported fieldset and legend in sane ways well before netscape. Which was very annoying. Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. The Netscape team was faltering. Only reason folks didn't like the IE team is the rest of MS was acting in very bad faith with clear embrace and extinguish as a goal for the browser market. Which ultimately left Opera as the biggest loser who otherwise had an amazing product.
- saurik 6y ago
  A long time ago I wrote an extensive comment--with tons of documented references--here showing how broken everyone has the story of IE: Microsoft was in fact the savior that came to save us from the world of Netscape... Mozilla was great, and had to save us from the new world of post-antitrust Microsoft (which now had a dominant platform they were too afraid to maintain); but Netscape was just as much of a bully as anyone else :(, and so the W3C was pumped about MS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 (edit:) I just remembered that many years later I gave a talk that contained a follow-up to some of the thoughts about Microsoft (it is a big part of the talk, but not the beginning or the end). https://vimeo.com/310654342 https://vimeo.com/310654342 (edit again:) OMG people seem to be enjoying this comment, but I stupidly linked to the wrong old comment up there (and even that link is weird: the best part of that thread is a few parents up from that link)... and it is so sad as the actual comment was one I was so proud of... here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113
- wyqydsyq 6y ago
  > Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. Yes for a while there they were doing a great job of implementing Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy by intentionally avoiding web standards conformance and instead focusing on proprietary features (ActiveX plugins etc) in attempt to make IE "better" than the competition
  - taeric 6y ago
    This is actually compatible with what I was saying. The ie team was building a decent product. If it was being sold, it would have been a healthy competitor in the field. Instead, the company pushed it for free to basically burn the market.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support." Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic in order to prodcuce Internet Explorer. What were the "standards" at the time Mosaic was released. What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Perhaps I am wrong but I sometimes think there would be no Chrome without that help from former Mozilla employees.
- cxr 6y ago
  There are some really insidious errors in this comment. It's close enough to the truth that it runs the risk of being taken at face value, despite the errors. > Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic Not quite. They used Spyglass Mosaic, which shared only the name. Spyglass Mosaic was a from-scratch implementation. https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html > What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Not quite. Early Firefox development resembled Linux: multiple industry actors collaborating on a single codebase—pretty unlike the way it works today, where a single (bumbling) corporation is almost totally responsible for marketing, product direction, and development. Google was one of the biggest contributors to Firefox development. The Firefox lead was a Google employee being paid to do just that. When Google decided to do Chrome, they pulled their engineers off Firefox, with parallels to what later happened with the WebKit -> Blink fork: an initial cooperative effort, followed by their chafing at the overheads of collaboration and the lack of total control, followed by breaking away to do their own thing. If there was any amount of poaching/brain drain that should be mentioned but no one really talks about, it's how many ex-Mozilla Corp folks left for Facebook and is partially responsible for the engineering culture there.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
    Spyglass, Inc. licensed Mosaic from NCSA. Microsft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass. Microsoft did make some modifications to Spyglass's "from-scratch" implementation in order to produce Internet Explorer. Sounds like Mozillians are not so concerned about user privacy if they went to work at Facebook.

taeric 6y ago

This is somewhat disingenuous. IE was trying to strong arm web standards in much the way that chrome does today. Just back then, few folks would have it from ms. That said, div, span, xmlhttprequest... All of those came from ie, if I am not mistaken. Now, I confess I have grown to not like divs and spans. That said, I am very amenable to "border-box", which is kind of hilarious in historical context. I also remember IE actually supported fieldset and legend in sane ways well before netscape. Which was very annoying. Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. The Netscape team was faltering. Only reason folks didn't like the IE team is the rest of MS was acting in very bad faith with clear embrace and extinguish as a goal for the browser market. Which ultimately left Opera as the biggest loser who otherwise had an amazing product.

saurik 6y ago
A long time ago I wrote an extensive comment--with tons of documented references--here showing how broken everyone has the story of IE: Microsoft was in fact the savior that came to save us from the world of Netscape... Mozilla was great, and had to save us from the new world of post-antitrust Microsoft (which now had a dominant platform they were too afraid to maintain); but Netscape was just as much of a bully as anyone else :(, and so the W3C was pumped about MS. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7192490 (edit:) I just remembered that many years later I gave a talk that contained a follow-up to some of the thoughts about Microsoft (it is a big part of the talk, but not the beginning or the end). https://vimeo.com/310654342 https://vimeo.com/310654342 (edit again:) OMG people seem to be enjoying this comment, but I stupidly linked to the wrong old comment up there (and even that link is weird: the best part of that thread is a few parents up from that link)... and it is so sad as the actual comment was one I was so proud of... here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826113
wyqydsyq 6y ago
> Actually, my memory is essentially that the IE team was doing decent work. Yes for a while there they were doing a great job of implementing Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish philosophy by intentionally avoiding web standards conformance and instead focusing on proprietary features (ActiveX plugins etc) in attempt to make IE "better" than the competition
- taeric 6y ago
  This is actually compatible with what I was saying. The ie team was building a decent product. If it was being sold, it would have been a healthy competitor in the field. Instead, the company pushed it for free to basically burn the market.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"It was a performant browser with extremely broken standards support." Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic in order to prodcuce Internet Explorer. What were the "standards" at the time Mosaic was released. What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Perhaps I am wrong but I sometimes think there would be no Chrome without that help from former Mozilla employees.

cxr 6y ago
There are some really insidious errors in this comment. It's close enough to the truth that it runs the risk of being taken at face value, despite the errors. > Microsoft licensed the source code to NCSA Mosaic Not quite. They used Spyglass Mosaic, which shared only the name. Spyglass Mosaic was a from-scratch implementation. https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html https://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html > What never seems to get mentioned in these threads about Chrome and Mozilla is that Google hired a couple of Mozilla Firefox developers to kickstart Chrome. Not quite. Early Firefox development resembled Linux: multiple industry actors collaborating on a single codebase—pretty unlike the way it works today, where a single (bumbling) corporation is almost totally responsible for marketing, product direction, and development. Google was one of the biggest contributors to Firefox development. The Firefox lead was a Google employee being paid to do just that. When Google decided to do Chrome, they pulled their engineers off Firefox, with parallels to what later happened with the WebKit -> Blink fork: an initial cooperative effort, followed by their chafing at the overheads of collaboration and the lack of total control, followed by breaking away to do their own thing. If there was any amount of poaching/brain drain that should be mentioned but no one really talks about, it's how many ex-Mozilla Corp folks left for Facebook and is partially responsible for the engineering culture there.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  Spyglass, Inc. licensed Mosaic from NCSA. Microsft licensed Mosaic from Spyglass. Microsoft did make some modifications to Spyglass's "from-scratch" implementation in order to produce Internet Explorer. Sounds like Mozillians are not so concerned about user privacy if they went to work at Facebook.