6 ms·
And yet you still have a "command prompt" so that you can run your DOS programs as well as "compatibility mode" so that older applications can run on the post-X
by smoyer 14y ago
And yet you still have a "command prompt" so that you can run your DOS programs as well as "compatibility mode" so that older applications can run on the post-XP systems.
- ajross 14y agoThat's backwards, though. MS wants to enable new systems to run old software, and they do this very well. The case in hand is running old software against new content, which they don't care about. The relevant comparison would be running IE10 against a cached copy of some website from 1999. I suspect that test would work rather well.
- smoyer 14y agoWell ... I do agree that both the standards and best-practices for creating web content have changed, but I'm pretty sure the most recent version of Excel will open a document I created in the '90s. You could argue they have complete control of both the software and the document format in that instance, but the IE browsers never bothered to be standards compliant anyway ("older IE browsers" - I've been pleasantly surprised by IE9 and IE10).
- bashinator 14y agoBut the point is that a '90s copy of Excel running would not remotely be able to consume and display a modern .XLSX data file. Going back to the original point, this is why it's impressive that Wikipedia are able to display their site to such an old browser, and ironic that MS doesn't.
- mhurron 14y ago> I'm pretty sure the most recent version of Excel will open a document I created in the '90s. Backwards compatibility is not the same as forwards compatibility, you seem to be confusing them. You expect an application like Excel to open something made before by an earlier version. MS knows how to handle that format. However, you do not expect Excel 95 to open a xlsx file, it was a format that did not exist when Excel 95 was created.
- LekkoscPiwa 14y agoI think that you are confusing backwards/forwards compatibility with the point the OP seemed to be making: Microsoft never bothered to follow the web standards.
- magic_haze 14y agoAgreed, but... the standards themselves have changed since 1999.
- LekkoscPiwa 14y agoYeah, it seems Microsoft always has had good excuses. I wonder if other browsers from that period would have as poor results as IE5 does. I seriously doubt it.
- yuhong 14y agoWell the main competitor was Netscape 4, which was even worse.
- LekkoscPiwa 14y agoWhat exactly was worse in Netscape? Because I just loved using it.
- yuhong 14y agoIt's extremely bad and buggy CSS support, which was even worse than even IE4, let along IE5.
- atesti 14y agoUnfortunately Microsoft has disabled or removed quite some import filters. e.g. you can't open a PowerPoint 4 file anywhere anymore. They also disabled Works and Word Perfect filters. Probably a victim of the secure coding guidelines: Might have bugs ==> remove feature
- yuhong 14y agoIt is because of security issues with old code that probably mostly dates back to Office 97 or older. How often do you receive Word 6.0 documents via email nowadays?
- andyroid 14y agoHow one receieves such documents is irrelevant. Some years ago a relative passed away, leaving hundreds of such documents on her antique computer. Luckily there was free software available that would still allow us to take part of her legacy. But of course, we could just as well have burnt her computer to ashes, as something so ancient must obviously be a security issue.
- yuhong 14y agoThese files came from a source that can be trusted and are much different from random email attachments. Look up "spear phishing" for example. Most of the converters that still exist can be reenabled in the registry in case you still need to open these files. Office 2010 even provides UI for these options.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago"Command prompt", i.e. terminal, is what makes you toy a computer. If you don't have one, it's still a toy. MS did a lot to turn their lame "DOS command prompt" into a command line terminal; not enough, but a lot. So no, "command prompt" has nothing to do with DOS. You can run DOS programs from the GUI as well.
- warfangle 14y agoJust because the computer in my microwave doesn't have a GUI or a CLI doesn't mean it isn't a computer. The first computers dealt with input via switches and levers. I don't think anyone would call the Colossus[0] a toy, and it had nothing resembling the command prompt that we know today. 0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer
- guard-of-terra 14y agoYour computer in microwave is not a computer. You can't run custom programs on it, it's not turing complete for you in this sense. To run custom programs on it, you'll need to add a terminal to it or succumb to the sin of batch processing. Colossus wasn't actually turing complete. It wasn't a computer except in historic sense.
- to3m 14y agoYou can use a GUI-based programming system. An example might be Devpac (68000 assembly language editor/assembler/debugger) on the Atari ST. (You could get command shells for the ST, because it was a programmable computer, so of course you could make it do pretty much whatever you wanted if you were willing to put the effort in. But the system didn't ship with a command line interface and (as I recall...) most of the programming environments - at least the ones popular in Europe - didn't include one either.)
- guard-of-terra 14y agoGUI-based system still needs command shell or it will lose a lot of flexibility arising from being able to evaluate small bits of code and therefore code incrementally. "Immediate mode" counts.
- mbell 14y agoWindow's console app has nothing to do with the ability to run DOS applications and the bit that actually does, the DOS virtual machine, doesn't exist on 64-bit versions of windows.
- jpswade 14y agoNo. MS-DOS programs won't run on Windows. CMD isn't DOS. You need something like FreeDOS or DOSbox to run the old DOS programs these days.