3 ms·

At the time IE 6 was released, it was the best browser available. The problem was Microsoft acted is they had “won” and stopped updating it for years, where it

At the time IE 6 was released, it was the best browser available. The problem was Microsoft acted is they had “won” and stopped updating it for years, where it calcified and became the hot mess we all knew and disliked.

prox 5y ago
That I never got. You are a market leader and you just stop whatever you are doing? How did that happen? Arguably the biggest mistake of MS.
- dangrossman 5y ago
  IE6 was wrapping up development when the US government sued to break up the whole company for giving it away with Windows. Perhaps not a coincidence they stopped work then?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- techsupporter 5y ago
  At the time, and perhaps still today but greatly lessened, Microsoft was used to both becoming the victor by crushing the opposition and then staying the victor because no one dared take a second swing. Anyone else who thought about challenging usually thought against and then went and carved out a quiet niche elsewhere. Besides, nobody got promoted at Microsoft for staying the course and making incremental improvements. Once there were no more balls to be knocked out of the park, developers moved elsewhere to buff up reviews and get bullet points for major projects.
  - prox 5y ago
    What a story… It’s crazy when no one owns something, it just gets abandoned. If there ever was a time for microsoft to have done things differently, it was then. Might even have helped transition to mobile better.
Jetrel 5y ago
From what I've heard, MS's whole idea was that ultimately, "the web" was broadly going to be scrapped. What people were actually going to be using, "in a few years", was going to still be IE, but the webpage would just be a thin wrapper that would load in ActiveX controls delivering actual windows apps, in the browser. Apparently they got close enough to getting this working that a bunch of South Korean banks and such bought into it heavily, which meant you could only do online banking in that country, for a while, on either a windows phone or an actual windows machine. However, they narrowly missed getting developer buy-in on that stateside, before the whole "XMLHttpRequest" thing went crazy, and we started building javascript apps for everything.
kccqzy 5y ago
IE 6 for Windows was never the best browser. At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac was way better. It was written by a different team (including almost celebrity programmers like Tantek Çelik). It had way better support for CSS. It even supported PNG alpha transparency.
- alwillis 5y ago
  At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac Yes, it was better but it didn’t really count, as Apple just emerged from its near-death experience and Steve Jobs cut the deal with MSFT to make IE 5 the default browser for the Mac. Apple’s marketshare was tiny back then and many people in the industry didn’t think Apple would be relevant much longer. Ironically, after the 5-year deal had expired, Apple shipped Safari 1.0, which was better than the vaunted IE 5 for Mac.

prox 5y ago

That I never got. You are a market leader and you just stop whatever you are doing? How did that happen? Arguably the biggest mistake of MS.

dangrossman 5y ago
IE6 was wrapping up development when the US government sued to break up the whole company for giving it away with Windows. Perhaps not a coincidence they stopped work then?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
techsupporter 5y ago
At the time, and perhaps still today but greatly lessened, Microsoft was used to both becoming the victor by crushing the opposition and then staying the victor because no one dared take a second swing. Anyone else who thought about challenging usually thought against and then went and carved out a quiet niche elsewhere. Besides, nobody got promoted at Microsoft for staying the course and making incremental improvements. Once there were no more balls to be knocked out of the park, developers moved elsewhere to buff up reviews and get bullet points for major projects.
- prox 5y ago
  What a story… It’s crazy when no one owns something, it just gets abandoned. If there ever was a time for microsoft to have done things differently, it was then. Might even have helped transition to mobile better.

Jetrel 5y ago

From what I've heard, MS's whole idea was that ultimately, "the web" was broadly going to be scrapped. What people were actually going to be using, "in a few years", was going to still be IE, but the webpage would just be a thin wrapper that would load in ActiveX controls delivering actual windows apps, in the browser. Apparently they got close enough to getting this working that a bunch of South Korean banks and such bought into it heavily, which meant you could only do online banking in that country, for a while, on either a windows phone or an actual windows machine. However, they narrowly missed getting developer buy-in on that stateside, before the whole "XMLHttpRequest" thing went crazy, and we started building javascript apps for everything.

kccqzy 5y ago

IE 6 for Windows was never the best browser. At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac was way better. It was written by a different team (including almost celebrity programmers like Tantek Çelik). It had way better support for CSS. It even supported PNG alpha transparency.

alwillis 5y ago
At that time Microsoft's own IE 5 for Mac Yes, it was better but it didn’t really count, as Apple just emerged from its near-death experience and Steve Jobs cut the deal with MSFT to make IE 5 the default browser for the Mac. Apple’s marketshare was tiny back then and many people in the industry didn’t think Apple would be relevant much longer. Ironically, after the 5-year deal had expired, Apple shipped Safari 1.0, which was better than the vaunted IE 5 for Mac.