49 ms·

"Long story short, it hurt their IE brand. MS no longer has to worry about reputation management for the XP brand, but they sure do for IE." Maybe I'm being a

by chasing 12y ago

"Long story short, it hurt their IE brand. MS no longer has to worry about reputation management for the XP brand, but they sure do for IE." Maybe I'm being a little off-topic, here, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Internet Explorer has destroyed Microsoft's brand. Apart from it being their largest consumer-facing brand apart from Windows (I think), I suspect that more people came into programming through web development between 1995 and 2005 than via any other path -- and for that decade IE was basically a big advertisement for the worst sides of Microsoft during those years -- the side that steamrolled competition with their lower-quality software, the side that tried to destroy open source and open standards, the side that attracted customers by manipulation and force.

Arainach 12y ago
Huh? I think you're off by a decade. Microsoft burned a lot of reputation by letting IE stagnate between 2001 (IE6) and 2011 (IE9), but at the time IE5 and IE6 shipped, they were legitimately faster, more compliant, and all-around better browsers than the Netscape versions of the time. I don't remember IE4 to comment on that, but there was certainly a time where IE was the best browser, both to users and developers. They simply failed to keep innovating on it.
- drblast 12y ago
  When IE4 came out there was no comparison. Netscape Communicator was already a bloated, unstable mess. IE4 was a giant leap forward at the time with a cohesive DOM. And IE 5 brought xmlhttprequest, which became kinda popular.
- aleem 12y ago
  > They simply failed to keep innovating on it. This was not a failure. Web browsers are a direct threat to the Windows platform and Microsoft consciously chose to drop out of the browser wars.
nivla 12y ago
I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying <blink> and <marquee> tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox came into scene with a faster, secure and more progressive browser than IE. Although, I personally feel if firefox doesn't catchup with the webkit browsers, we will soon be taking a full circle.
- ConceptJunkie 12y ago
  Yeah, MSIE was the best browser through version 4. The real reason Netscape lost the browser wars was that it became a huge bloated mess. Now it probably couldn't have beat IE regardless of how good it was because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices, but IE was the best browser for a few years in the mid-90s. Of course, they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade...
  - nivla 12y ago
    >they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade... That is one of the side effects of being on top without the worry of competition AKA being a monopoly. Despite Chrome being my favorite browser, this is one the things that worries me the most when everyone yells "Port all browsers to Webkit!!!", we will inadvertently repeat history. Southpark best visually described it in one of their episodes [1]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_Way_Comes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_Way_Co...
    - dblohm7 12y ago
      +1. I try to figure out where the "Port all browsers to WebKit!" crowd is coming from, but the only reasonable speculative theory that I can think of is that they weren't there for the first go-round.
- nandhp 12y ago
masklinn 12y ago
> the side that steamrolled competition with their lower-quality software That's not true at all, IE was the superior alternative (and the "standard-following" browser) when it steamrolled Netscape. The problem came after that and was a great demonstration of what happens when you give the keys to the kingdom to a single profit-driven entity. I doubt anybody's learned shit though, considering how fast people jumped to a Chrome-based monoculture and started arguing for the blessing of any and all Google proprietary dropping.
FollowSteph3 12y ago
You're thinking techies vs the average user who just uses IE cause it's there. The average user barely knows there's other browsers, or even that xp is no longer supported. How many people still use xp :(

by chasing 12y ago

Arainach 12y ago

Huh? I think you're off by a decade. Microsoft burned a lot of reputation by letting IE stagnate between 2001 (IE6) and 2011 (IE9), but at the time IE5 and IE6 shipped, they were legitimately faster, more compliant, and all-around better browsers than the Netscape versions of the time. I don't remember IE4 to comment on that, but there was certainly a time where IE was the best browser, both to users and developers. They simply failed to keep innovating on it.

drblast 12y ago
When IE4 came out there was no comparison. Netscape Communicator was already a bloated, unstable mess. IE4 was a giant leap forward at the time with a cohesive DOM. And IE 5 brought xmlhttprequest, which became kinda popular.
aleem 12y ago
> They simply failed to keep innovating on it. This was not a failure. Web browsers are a direct threat to the Windows platform and Microsoft consciously chose to drop out of the browser wars.

nivla 12y ago

I wouldn't go as far back as 1995. I remember using Netscape those days and IE was considered the "hip & modern browser" just like we do now for Chrome. It was the best viewed in IE days and since there were no real standards or committee back then, everyone wrote their own feature set including MS. It did sure give us the annoying <blink> and <marquee> tags but remember it also gave us Ajax. The shit only really blew when Firefox came into scene with a faster, secure and more progressive browser than IE. Although, I personally feel if firefox doesn't catchup with the webkit browsers, we will soon be taking a full circle.

ConceptJunkie 12y ago
Yeah, MSIE was the best browser through version 4. The real reason Netscape lost the browser wars was that it became a huge bloated mess. Now it probably couldn't have beat IE regardless of how good it was because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices, but IE was the best browser for a few years in the mid-90s. Of course, they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade...
- nivla 12y ago
  >they then proceeded to let it stagnate for the better part of a decade... That is one of the side effects of being on top without the worry of competition AKA being a monopoly. Despite Chrome being my favorite browser, this is one the things that worries me the most when everyone yells "Port all browsers to Webkit!!!", we will inadvertently repeat history. Southpark best visually described it in one of their episodes [1]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_Way_Comes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wall-Mart_This_Way_Co...
  - dblohm7 12y ago
    +1. I try to figure out where the "Port all browsers to WebKit!" crowd is coming from, but the only reasonable speculative theory that I can think of is that they weren't there for the first go-round.
nandhp 12y ago

masklinn 12y ago

> the side that steamrolled competition with their lower-quality software That's not true at all, IE was the superior alternative (and the "standard-following" browser) when it steamrolled Netscape. The problem came after that and was a great demonstration of what happens when you give the keys to the kingdom to a single profit-driven entity. I doubt anybody's learned shit though, considering how fast people jumped to a Chrome-based monoculture and started arguing for the blessing of any and all Google proprietary dropping.

FollowSteph3 12y ago

You're thinking techies vs the average user who just uses IE cause it's there. The average user barely knows there's other browsers, or even that xp is no longer supported. How many people still use xp :(