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> At the time they merely shipped the browser with the OS. > They were also accused of adding new features only in IE which forced websites to deal with incomp
by prof-dr-ir 3y ago
> At the time they merely shipped the browser with the OS.
> They were also accused of adding new features only in IE which forced websites to deal with incompatible browsers
I do not think this is an accurate representation of history.
First, Microsoft was fighting against the whole concept of a browser as separate from its OS. The fact that one can 'change your default browser', as you so casually say, without changing your OS was a major victory in itself that people worked very hard to ensure.
Second, it was not just 'features' that Microsoft added to IE. They were actively ignoring standards and with Frontpage people could easily generate web pages that looked fine in IE but were a complete mess of impenetrable HTML for other browsers. And when you complained about this the owner would simply add a 'best viewed in IE' icon on their website and start blaming you instead...
In short, at the time it was not at all obvious that a large majority of the web would remain accessible using any other browser than IE. (And similarly for email clients, by the way.) I agree with you that there is still plenty of shady behavior going on, but I am not sure that I would classify the old practices as 'fairly benign'.
- ikari_pl 3y ago> First, Microsoft was fighting against the whole concept of a browser as separate from its OS you mean, just like the Good Guy ChromeOS?
- amadeuspagel 3y agoYou can install other browsers on ChromeOS in the Linux VM.
- lupusreal 3y agoIt feels like your comment is about 10 years too late, most people here are now very sour towards Google. They no longer have their sterling "good guy" reputation.
- ikari_pl 3y agoYes, it was a little sarcastic and under an article about Internet Explorer, which isn't exactly the number one public enemy anymore either. A few thoughts: At some point, the ideas of a browser, and an OS, seemed to converge a lot - expose more of the machine to the browser (webapps), provide task and memory management for the sites and webapps... More and more functionality overlapped. From that point of view, maybe the argument to see them as connected made a lot of sense - the deeper the integration, the less double work might be happening, maybe. The cost, however, is always portability, or at least interoperability. But as much as "having common code everywhere is good", I think switching all browsers to Chromium is not the way to go either.
- AlexandrB 3y ago> And when you complained about this the owner would simply add a 'best viewed in IE' icon on their website and start blaming you instead... History repeats itself, and this is now commonplace with Chrome.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> and with Frontpage people could easily generate web pages that looked fine in IE but were a complete mess of impenetrable HTML for other browsers FrontPage wasn't a Microsoft product, and was doing its whole thing with the "_vti_" directories before Microsoft acquired them.