5 ms·

>As for shrunken browser xhoice, isn't it easier for developers to target a few platforms than a host of diverging ones? You dont remember IE6 do you?

Kye 3y ago
There's a growing number of people who are adults years into their careers who have only known a world with a dominant Chrome. Stuff like this is cyclical because new generations come, and no one tells them about this stuff. Or if someone does, they don't take it seriously.
azangru 3y ago
The IE6 situation happened because Microsoft lost interest in the web. Plus, Microsoft was developing its browser in disregard of web standards. With Google, at least for now, we have a company that is heavily invested in web, AND, what the article strangely complains about, is heavily involved in web standards, to the point where it becomes a driver for some of them. IE6 was stagnant and non-standard-compliant. The horror for developers, as far as I understand, came from the fact there was another, much more rapidly evolving, web browser, and they had to maintain compatibility between the two.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  Part of the problem is that when Google really wants a feature for themselves, they'll plow through and implement it in Chrome regardless of any concerns raised or input offered by Mozilla and Apple, creating "nonstandard standards" much like those created by IE.
- taeric 3y ago
  This is a bit inaccurate, oddly. At least, for my memory, IE6 was genuinely better than Netscape at the time. They did make some odd choices, such as border-box, but by and large Netscape was stagnating hard. That said, I remember the fieldset and legend styling was much better in IE than it was in Firefox. And, amusingly, I have grown to prefer border-box for sizing. Now, as time went on, IE became very stagnate and upset folks by not adding more and more. So maybe it depends what time we are talking about here?
  - icedchai 3y ago
    Yes, there was a dark period (early 2000's) where IE 6 was basically the only usable browser. Netscape was far behind, and also incredibly unstable (crashing hourly.) Firefox wasn't out yet. Chrome was years and years away.
    - doctor_eval 3y ago
      From memory, Netscape decided to pivot to open source via Mozilla/Firefox but IIRC, the development process took much much longer than expected. I remember reading Mozillazine back in the day, breathlessly anticipating the shiny new version. Some years later I stopped waiting, and gave up.
      - toyg 3y ago
        They did a Big Rewrite which was somewhat bogged down by feature creep. They were rewriting not just a browser, but also an Outlook competitor and a WYSIWYG webpage editor - and while doing that, they decided it would be cool to create a universal GUI runtime for all of them, powered by the browser engine itself! In a way, it was an amazing effort (without which we wouldn't have Firefox and Thunderbird), but it was definitely more than most people expected of them.
- asdajksah2123 3y ago
  IE6 becoming standards non compliant was deliberate. Not because MS lost interest in the web. And IE6 becoming stagnant was a result of MS's deliberate attempt to bake IE6 into the OS itself, which made it a ridiculously complex piece of software to change safely. Again, not because MS lost interest in the web, but because MS thought they could use their ownership of the desktop OS to own the web, rather than by innovating through a web browser. And frankly, if it wasn't for the EU they may even have succeeded. You can already see how they would have done that with some of their actions today, where opening a link from a Windows search will open the link in Edge irrespective of what your default browser is, etc. If it wasn't for the EU antitrust ruling forcing them to separate IE from Windows I suspect their actions to push IE6 would have been even more aggressive.

Kye 3y ago

There's a growing number of people who are adults years into their careers who have only known a world with a dominant Chrome. Stuff like this is cyclical because new generations come, and no one tells them about this stuff. Or if someone does, they don't take it seriously.

azangru 3y ago

The IE6 situation happened because Microsoft lost interest in the web. Plus, Microsoft was developing its browser in disregard of web standards. With Google, at least for now, we have a company that is heavily invested in web, AND, what the article strangely complains about, is heavily involved in web standards, to the point where it becomes a driver for some of them. IE6 was stagnant and non-standard-compliant. The horror for developers, as far as I understand, came from the fact there was another, much more rapidly evolving, web browser, and they had to maintain compatibility between the two.

kitsunesoba 3y ago
Part of the problem is that when Google really wants a feature for themselves, they'll plow through and implement it in Chrome regardless of any concerns raised or input offered by Mozilla and Apple, creating "nonstandard standards" much like those created by IE.
taeric 3y ago
This is a bit inaccurate, oddly. At least, for my memory, IE6 was genuinely better than Netscape at the time. They did make some odd choices, such as border-box, but by and large Netscape was stagnating hard. That said, I remember the fieldset and legend styling was much better in IE than it was in Firefox. And, amusingly, I have grown to prefer border-box for sizing. Now, as time went on, IE became very stagnate and upset folks by not adding more and more. So maybe it depends what time we are talking about here?
- icedchai 3y ago
  Yes, there was a dark period (early 2000's) where IE 6 was basically the only usable browser. Netscape was far behind, and also incredibly unstable (crashing hourly.) Firefox wasn't out yet. Chrome was years and years away.
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    From memory, Netscape decided to pivot to open source via Mozilla/Firefox but IIRC, the development process took much much longer than expected. I remember reading Mozillazine back in the day, breathlessly anticipating the shiny new version. Some years later I stopped waiting, and gave up.
    - toyg 3y ago
      They did a Big Rewrite which was somewhat bogged down by feature creep. They were rewriting not just a browser, but also an Outlook competitor and a WYSIWYG webpage editor - and while doing that, they decided it would be cool to create a universal GUI runtime for all of them, powered by the browser engine itself! In a way, it was an amazing effort (without which we wouldn't have Firefox and Thunderbird), but it was definitely more than most people expected of them.
asdajksah2123 3y ago
IE6 becoming standards non compliant was deliberate. Not because MS lost interest in the web. And IE6 becoming stagnant was a result of MS's deliberate attempt to bake IE6 into the OS itself, which made it a ridiculously complex piece of software to change safely. Again, not because MS lost interest in the web, but because MS thought they could use their ownership of the desktop OS to own the web, rather than by innovating through a web browser. And frankly, if it wasn't for the EU they may even have succeeded. You can already see how they would have done that with some of their actions today, where opening a link from a Windows search will open the link in Edge irrespective of what your default browser is, etc. If it wasn't for the EU antitrust ruling forcing them to separate IE from Windows I suspect their actions to push IE6 would have been even more aggressive.