6 ms·

If anything the amount of bias is way to low, MS singlehandedly crippled progress on the web for many many years and would deserve to be burned to the ground by

by iboga 14y ago

If anything the amount of bias is way to low, MS singlehandedly crippled progress on the web for many many years and would deserve to be burned to the ground by an angry mob of webdevs for it. You can develop in Chrome and it just works in Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc., but without fail things are always broken in IE (yes also in 6+ versions). Any webdev could tell you about the horrors. IE versions have always been DOA compared to what’s possible in competing browsers at the time. Microsoft's fault of not getting people to upgrade is their own doing by not anticipating and adequately reacting to the problem… or frankly just not giving a shit™. Others don’t have these upgrade problems. Also, we can be very thankful that they failed in their ploy to make the whole web IE-specific, but we should not forget and it’s to soon to forgive.

jacquesm 14y ago
If microsoft had not shipped a couple of hundred million graphics terminals the web would have never taken off. Arguably windows was one of the key ingredients in the soup that allowed the web to take off (the others: universal access to the net, Peter Tattam's trumpet winsock, the mosaic browser and ncsa httpd).
- iboga 14y ago
  Right, because Microsoft invented it all (OS-tech) and nobody else would have been able to produce a graphical OS in it’s place… there is a difference between actually innovating and making a difference and simply being there because you were able to dominate the market trough shady practices. As I pointed out these things rather happened despite Microsoft than because of it.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    Look, I'm about as anti MS as is possible, on a scale of 0 to 100 I'm stuck near the 100 end and nothing Microsoft or Bill Gates will do can change this. They're beyond redeeming themselves as far as I'm concerned. I routinely return mail to sender because people insist on sending me something that only a proprietary reader or application can open. I'd rather use linux and bloody open-office (or libre office or whatever they decide to call it today) because I very well remember the tricks that Microsoft pulled. And yet, in spite of all that I have no problem with crediting them with those things they actually did. I did not claim Microsoft invented it all, I did not say that nobody else would have been able to produce an alternative, I did not say it was very innovative, nor did I claim they got there in an ethically sound way. But they did what they did and no amount of living in denial is going to undo that.
    - iboga 14y ago
      You are living in denial when you claim that the web would have never taken off were it not for Microsoft, especially when it was/is probably the biggest threat to the open web we now know. Every possible alternative OS would have been at least as capable of propelling the web, probably more so as katbyte points out. Your argument is about the same as telling North Korean citizens they have to thank the Dear Leader for the good things they have. Technically correct but horribly lacking in perspective.
      - jacquesm 14y ago
        > You are living in denial when you claim that the web would have never taken off were it not for Microsoft Reading comprehension fail. I said that the web took off when and in the way it did in part because of microsoft, not that it would not have happened without microsoft.
        iboga 14y ago
        > If microsoft had not shipped a couple of hundred million graphics terminals the web would have never taken off. I don’t even...
        sbuk 14y ago
        Like it or not, Microsoft totally dominated the home computer market in the 1990's, which is when the internet began to take hold. I'm no Microsoft fan, but to deny that they has a significant impact on the adoption of the web as we know it today is extremely short sighted. I suppose that you may be too young to remember of course...
  - berkut 14y ago
    Without a doubt MS used anti-competitive measures, but I grew up and was using their stuff during the time (late 90s), and I'm still not convinced bundling a browser made that much difference for the average person who was buying a new computer at the time. I say this because I used to help out a lot of family/friends with their computer issues, and the vast majority of them during the time were using AOL or Compuserve for their internet access which had its own browser and didn't use IE at all (until several years later when they started using it). Similarly, packages from BT (in the UK, the main phone line provider) shipped installs of Netscape, and to use it, the average user would have to use that (because they couldn't cope with the Dial-up-networking part of Windows as it was too complicated). They'd just double-click the "BT Internet" icon on the desktop, which would start Netscape and automatically dial up to their ISP. In fact, I distinctly remember trying to convert several people from Netscape to IE, and this was with Windows 98. (I remember showing them active desktop).
- katbyte 14y ago
  Or we might be in a better place if superior graphical OS's (like OS/2) had been allowed to flourish instead of being killed off though business tactics rather then by having a better product. The same could be said for IE6. They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time. Its interesting to imagine where the web and personal computing would be today if neither of those two things had happened...
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    It's interesting, but it is also not very productive. History happened the way it did, alternatives are the realm of speculative fiction.
  - xentronium 14y ago
    > They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time. That's not true. You have false memory of things that never happened. When IE6 came out, it was nothing short of incredible.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - katbyte 14y ago
      Are you sure? It was some time ago but I remember Mozilla being a better browser overall and far more secure. Maybe I am just remembering wrong, or I'm a few years off but I don't remember IE ever being comparable in quality to Mozilla, now Firefox, until fairly recently (IE8/9). Even the wiki page for IE6 states (among many other negative things): "This version of Internet Explorer is currently widely criticized for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in "worst tech products of all time" lists, with some publications labelling it as the "least secure software on the planet." However it is wiki, so please do tell, what exactly made the release of IE6 so incredible when compared the the other browsers of its time?? (either way an interesting timeline graphic of web browsers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline)
nostrademons 14y ago
Do you not remember how much of a giant leap forward IE6 was when it was introduced? Or how massively far ahead of Netscape 4.x IE 5/5.5/6 were? IE5 gave us AJAX, and its CSS support was light-years better than the competition when it was released. I've been a die-hard Microsoft hater since I was a teenager. Even so, there was a period from 2000-2004 when I used IE, because it was so clearly better than any other browser on the Internet. I gave up Netscape reluctantly, but when it just hung on half the sites of the Internet because it was so buggy, it was time to switch. I take it you don't remember coding <layer> tags and working with Netscape's broken & nonstandard DOM implementation either, nor laying everything out with tables and spacer GIFs because it didn't support CSS. It used to be we'd get our pages to work in IE first, and then the boss would grudgingly say "And you've gotta make it work in Netscape too." (That was actually what got me my first full-time job...they called me in for an interview and during it I worked around a nasty layers bug that they hadn't been able to figure out.)
- iboga 14y ago
  Yes Netscape was having problems around that time, good luck trying to finance the development of a complex commercial software project when your competitor is abusing its monopoly by bundling a free alternative with its operating system. You are right about the ancient history timeframe but my points are valid for everything that happened with and after version 6, you know… the point when the web and broadband really started to take off. And you could have used Opera or the Phoenix/Firebird Firefox-precursor instead of IE6.
  - katbyte 14y ago
    And even before phoenix/firebird and IE6 there was the mozilla browser for years.
  - sarvinc 14y ago
    I'm not sure i agree with your over-all point, but I have to say Microsoft bundling a browser probably helped move the Internet rather than hinder it.
- katbyte 14y ago
berkut 14y ago
With IE 4/5/6, MS also made a browser that was light-years ahead from a user's point of view than the competing browsers at the time from a speed and usability perspective. At the time, Netscape 4 was a bloated, buggy joke, and was happily doing stupid stuff like re-downloading the content it was displaying when you resized the main window because its caching was so atrocious. And this was in the days of 28.8k / 56.6k modems, so if you resized the window, you'd probably be waiting 30+ seconds for the webpage to redownload and redraw, during which Netscape would either lock up or display a blank page, whereas in IE it could instantly resize with the content it had locally. That meant a huge amount in those days.
cooldeal 14y ago
From http://www.google.com/about/company/ http://www.google.com/about/company/ "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."

by iboga 14y ago

jacquesm 14y ago

If microsoft had not shipped a couple of hundred million graphics terminals the web would have never taken off. Arguably windows was one of the key ingredients in the soup that allowed the web to take off (the others: universal access to the net, Peter Tattam's trumpet winsock, the mosaic browser and ncsa httpd).

iboga 14y ago
Right, because Microsoft invented it all (OS-tech) and nobody else would have been able to produce a graphical OS in it’s place… there is a difference between actually innovating and making a difference and simply being there because you were able to dominate the market trough shady practices. As I pointed out these things rather happened despite Microsoft than because of it.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Look, I'm about as anti MS as is possible, on a scale of 0 to 100 I'm stuck near the 100 end and nothing Microsoft or Bill Gates will do can change this. They're beyond redeeming themselves as far as I'm concerned. I routinely return mail to sender because people insist on sending me something that only a proprietary reader or application can open. I'd rather use linux and bloody open-office (or libre office or whatever they decide to call it today) because I very well remember the tricks that Microsoft pulled. And yet, in spite of all that I have no problem with crediting them with those things they actually did. I did not claim Microsoft invented it all, I did not say that nobody else would have been able to produce an alternative, I did not say it was very innovative, nor did I claim they got there in an ethically sound way. But they did what they did and no amount of living in denial is going to undo that.
  - iboga 14y ago
    You are living in denial when you claim that the web would have never taken off were it not for Microsoft, especially when it was/is probably the biggest threat to the open web we now know. Every possible alternative OS would have been at least as capable of propelling the web, probably more so as katbyte points out. Your argument is about the same as telling North Korean citizens they have to thank the Dear Leader for the good things they have. Technically correct but horribly lacking in perspective.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > You are living in denial when you claim that the web would have never taken off were it not for Microsoft Reading comprehension fail. I said that the web took off when and in the way it did in part because of microsoft, not that it would not have happened without microsoft.
      - iboga 14y ago
        > If microsoft had not shipped a couple of hundred million graphics terminals the web would have never taken off. I don’t even...
        sbuk 14y ago
        Like it or not, Microsoft totally dominated the home computer market in the 1990's, which is when the internet began to take hold. I'm no Microsoft fan, but to deny that they has a significant impact on the adoption of the web as we know it today is extremely short sighted. I suppose that you may be too young to remember of course...
- berkut 14y ago
  Without a doubt MS used anti-competitive measures, but I grew up and was using their stuff during the time (late 90s), and I'm still not convinced bundling a browser made that much difference for the average person who was buying a new computer at the time. I say this because I used to help out a lot of family/friends with their computer issues, and the vast majority of them during the time were using AOL or Compuserve for their internet access which had its own browser and didn't use IE at all (until several years later when they started using it). Similarly, packages from BT (in the UK, the main phone line provider) shipped installs of Netscape, and to use it, the average user would have to use that (because they couldn't cope with the Dial-up-networking part of Windows as it was too complicated). They'd just double-click the "BT Internet" icon on the desktop, which would start Netscape and automatically dial up to their ISP. In fact, I distinctly remember trying to convert several people from Netscape to IE, and this was with Windows 98. (I remember showing them active desktop).
katbyte 14y ago
Or we might be in a better place if superior graphical OS's (like OS/2) had been allowed to flourish instead of being killed off though business tactics rather then by having a better product. The same could be said for IE6. They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time. Its interesting to imagine where the web and personal computing would be today if neither of those two things had happened...
- jacquesm 14y ago
  It's interesting, but it is also not very productive. History happened the way it did, alternatives are the realm of speculative fiction.
- xentronium 14y ago
  > They again pushed a inferior product to market through questionable business tactics making a purposely broken browser the dominant player for a very long time. That's not true. You have false memory of things that never happened. When IE6 came out, it was nothing short of incredible.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - katbyte 14y ago
    Are you sure? It was some time ago but I remember Mozilla being a better browser overall and far more secure. Maybe I am just remembering wrong, or I'm a few years off but I don't remember IE ever being comparable in quality to Mozilla, now Firefox, until fairly recently (IE8/9). Even the wiki page for IE6 states (among many other negative things): "This version of Internet Explorer is currently widely criticized for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in "worst tech products of all time" lists, with some publications labelling it as the "least secure software on the planet." However it is wiki, so please do tell, what exactly made the release of IE6 so incredible when compared the the other browsers of its time?? (either way an interesting timeline graphic of web browsers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline)

nostrademons 14y ago

Do you not remember how much of a giant leap forward IE6 was when it was introduced? Or how massively far ahead of Netscape 4.x IE 5/5.5/6 were? IE5 gave us AJAX, and its CSS support was light-years better than the competition when it was released. I've been a die-hard Microsoft hater since I was a teenager. Even so, there was a period from 2000-2004 when I used IE, because it was so clearly better than any other browser on the Internet. I gave up Netscape reluctantly, but when it just hung on half the sites of the Internet because it was so buggy, it was time to switch. I take it you don't remember coding <layer> tags and working with Netscape's broken & nonstandard DOM implementation either, nor laying everything out with tables and spacer GIFs because it didn't support CSS. It used to be we'd get our pages to work in IE first, and then the boss would grudgingly say "And you've gotta make it work in Netscape too." (That was actually what got me my first full-time job...they called me in for an interview and during it I worked around a nasty layers bug that they hadn't been able to figure out.)

iboga 14y ago
Yes Netscape was having problems around that time, good luck trying to finance the development of a complex commercial software project when your competitor is abusing its monopoly by bundling a free alternative with its operating system. You are right about the ancient history timeframe but my points are valid for everything that happened with and after version 6, you know… the point when the web and broadband really started to take off. And you could have used Opera or the Phoenix/Firebird Firefox-precursor instead of IE6.
- katbyte 14y ago
  And even before phoenix/firebird and IE6 there was the mozilla browser for years.
- sarvinc 14y ago
  I'm not sure i agree with your over-all point, but I have to say Microsoft bundling a browser probably helped move the Internet rather than hinder it.
katbyte 14y ago

berkut 14y ago

With IE 4/5/6, MS also made a browser that was light-years ahead from a user's point of view than the competing browsers at the time from a speed and usability perspective. At the time, Netscape 4 was a bloated, buggy joke, and was happily doing stupid stuff like re-downloading the content it was displaying when you resized the main window because its caching was so atrocious. And this was in the days of 28.8k / 56.6k modems, so if you resized the window, you'd probably be waiting 30+ seconds for the webpage to redownload and redraw, during which Netscape would either lock up or display a blank page, whereas in IE it could instantly resize with the content it had locally. That meant a huge amount in those days.

cooldeal 14y ago

From http://www.google.com/about/company/ http://www.google.com/about/company/ "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful."