Internet Explorer Turns 15 271
An anonymous reader writes "Software giant Microsoft's Internet Explorer turned 15 years old on Monday. The company recently said it would launch the Internet Explorer 9 public beta version on September 15, 2010. The software giant launched the first version of the browser, Internet Explorer 1, on August 16, 1995. It was a revised version of Spyglass Mosaic, which Microsoft had licensed from Spyglass Inc."
Re:Mid 90's (Score:2, Insightful)
yes but we all not what happened to Netscape. We can only pray IE suffers the safe fate.
That it gets abandoned, and a team of open source coders picks it up?
And greatly improves it, and uses it as a wedge to prod other browser developers into developing faster/more open/more extensible/more standards-compliant products?
Yeah. that's what I'd like. Pipe dream maybe, but it would be nice.
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows XP is coming up to a decade old itself - its been replaced twice over, there is no commercial reason why Microsoft should continue to support it with new features.
Perhaps not, but most people are still using XP, hardly anybody has moved to Vista or Windows 7. Not having new versions of IE isn't going to stop people from using XP, they'll just use FIrefox or IE6 instead.
Re:IE for other platforms (Score:2, Insightful)
Knowing Microsoft, IE9 on Mac OS X and IE9 on Linux wouldn't be the same as IE9 on Windows. All three version would also be partially incompatible with standards but each in its own way.
I would very much mind, IE9 on more platforms is asking for insanity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Happy birthday IE. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, how is silverlight doing, by the way ?
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not matter when the first copy of XP was sold, it matters when the last copy was sold. You cannot drop support for something that you sold a few months ago just because it has been on sale for 8 years and there are two newer versions.
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty accurate - and that's from a long-term Opera user.
Shame that Opera sees such little take-up. It has 99% of the functionality of the common addons for Firefox already built-in (and has for years), it is a damn sight faster on low-end machines than Firefox, it's cross-platform, it's got a built-in mail client that is more than good enough for the average joe (with super-fast searching for EVERYTHING), and it's normally first with any innovation (WebM, Acid-compliance, HTML5, etc.) - hell, for the last version they discovered myriad websites with a common javascript bug that preventing them providing a 10.x version number in the user-agent, so they had to stick with 9.8 and some extra gumfph elsewhere to tell you the real version number. No other browser's spotted that yet.
If someone could tie Pidgin into Opera, I'd never need another bit of software again.
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:0, Insightful)
You don't seem to understand what support means. XP support has not been dropped. Development for XP has largely stopped as it's a dead end. It should have come years sooner, as frankly all you technological bygones are like the trash that holds everyone else back. Hardware and software advance, sometimes irreversibly... get over it.
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's hard to believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with IE6 is not that it was bad but that people wrote ActiveX applications for it and those applications are still needed.
The problem now is that many organizations have clueless IT departments that do not know how to deploy those old applications via Terminal Services and instead insist that desktop machines stick with IE6.
Re:It's hard to believe... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with IE6 is that it doesn't render CSS properly, has ugly javascript quirks, and is STILL FUCKING USED BY 30% OF THE DAMN INTERNET.
And yes, I am a web developer.
Re:Antitrust (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, put down the bong dude.
MS is not 'out to get you'. Putting IE into the system makes sense since for 3 reasons. 1) they have a doc system built in for helping users no reason to have 2 systems (die .hlp files die). 2) it was going to be a bases for presenting all information to users, icons, desktop, everything (never was going to happen due to backwards compatibility). 3) EVERYONE and I mean everyone who actually likes and uses Windows at the time was demanding it. We were getting tired of install OS spend 2 hours installing everything else for the OS. We wanted 1 disc streamlined install. No building our own. We wanted it out of the box from MS streamlined and ready to rock. It just worked. If you think I am full of it go find magazines from that era. Not stupid junk you find on the internet. I mean things like PC World, ComputerShopper, etc... You will see article after article begging MS to put it in, or how they are missing the internet...
Not having it there would be like downloading say Ubuntu and then spending 20 mins figuring out which ftp site to go to to install a browser. Not even going to the repository to get it (remember its not built in). No that is silly, there is one built in even if it is one you 'dont like'. Web browsers come with the OS. Think you need to deal with it. Every OS since 1994 has had one cooked in even if it is some open source thing. If anything MS was late to the party (as usual) by not having one built in until 96.
The reason MS did it was because we were laughing at them for NOT doing it. It was a pain to have to install even more crap. Now it is install it let the patches update and your ready to rock. No, oh install that, install this, hmm did I get all the plug ins...
Whole install OS's have their place and the mainstream want it. They are the ones with the money. We tech guys are able and willing to tweak the hell out of a computer. But guess what most people dont want to be bothered with it. They want to buy their computer and surf the web. Thats it... If they have to stop and install extra stuff right when they first get their computer they are going to say 'this sucks'. And it will not suck because the software is junk, but because installing software is boring and not doing what they want it to do.
You ask how many hours were wasted because of IE not being kept up to date. I ask how many would have been wasted on 'hmm did I get everything installed I wanted'. Or 'how do I install this?'
Also apparently you never used Netscape 4. *THE* only other browser from the time that anyone could say competed with IE. It was a massive suck crash fest. 3-4 crashes per surfing session were not uncommon. Using IE was seriously a no brainier at the time. Do I still use IE, no. Why not? It stagnated and became a trojan magnet.
IE could have been the best browser out there. Now it is merely playing catchup. That was MS's game to loose. They will have a hard time getting the 'best browser' reputation back if ever.
Re:It's hard to believe... (Score:3, Insightful)
Your problem is not that it is bad. Netscape 4 was just as bad. Your problem is that it is still widely used.
Re:IE turns 15... (Score:3, Insightful)
Er... yeah, if you leave the default memory cache enabled - Opera does its own in-memory caching where some other browsers rely on the underlying filesystem to cache for them, and Opera loads QT which counts as "memory used" on Windows but not under the vast amount of Linux distros that already have it in memory to be shared. There are a million and one ways to tweak Opera, which is another plus for it, including disabling quite a lot of functionality that you wouldn't want active on low-memory machines.
Opera on my computer, as an upper bound, never takes as much as an equivalent FF process with the same windows open. I have memory (in fact, all) caching disabled.
Yes there is (Score:3, Insightful)
It's called listening to your customers and not dictating to them what they want. Now I don't use it, but XP is still widely used, because it got "good enough" for companies and individuals to use and rely on. Same with upgrading hardware. If what you have is good enough, not broken, and does the job, there is no overwhelming need to upgrade, even if the hardware guys want you to.
Comes a time that corporations and stockholders, etc should put the fork down, push back from the table, and realize they have eaten enough, and go into maintenance mode. Still make some money but not the boatloads they got used to. Like GM..just realize you got bloated, and cut back a lot to stay relevant. Reach a level of market share and be content with that, because all corporations can't endlessly grow forever and two days, it just isn't possible, and it is ludicrous to expect that.
The planet has given hundreds of billion$ to microsoft..perhaps it is time they wound down and enjoy what they made so far and not expect this huge gravy train to go on forever.
IE's Real Problem (Score:2, Insightful)
IE 1 - 3 Were garbage compared to what Netscape was offering at the time IE 4 was substantially better than Netscape Navigator. With IE 5 crushing it as Netscape imploded.
Microsoft was late to the game but threw everything at it to crush their competition. They had much better technology once they got to IE 4. (They also used other business tactics to run Netscape out of business with OEM agreements and giving away their web servers).
The CSS we complain about - Microsoft invented it. The Browser wars took HTML from a markup that didn't even have tables to close to what we have today. The Standards were a joke. Each browser came up with innovations and then copied their competitors. Standards were an after effect of what web developers adopted (down with Blink). Websites were best with IE or best with Netscape.
Once Microsoft drove Netscape out of business they just sat there and didn't put any effort into it like any Monopoly - there was no reason to.
The Standards bodies created a host of specs CSS 2 and 3 being some of the most important that differed from what Microsoft had in IE. This was different from the rubber stamping of the implementations we had before during the browser wars. I suspect a combination of better design and(just sour grapes - do it differently just because). Microsoft largely ignored the standards, in their mind they were the only browser and were the standard.
So IE just sat there with a slow release cycle and no desire to implement the standards - they had VML implemented so why bother with SVG - a paper spec when they have an actual implementation for years. Microsoft was busy trying to address all the security problems of their features first mentality with the trusted computing initiative and not making any forward progress on functionality.
So While Microsoft idled, Firefox and WebKit/Safari grew. The Standards bodies continued to work now they were a head of the browsers now, not way behind. Microsoft woke up to see its market share slipping and suddenly It's Browser wars II
Now Microsoft has a couple of problems keeping up
1) Backward compatibility - this is arguably a good thing as it keeps you from breaking old stuff, but also makes fixing older 'quirky' behavior.
2) Release cycle tied to OS - the slow release cycle compared to the opensource alternatives means their browser is always behind.
3) Standards games - It's not all Micosoft's fault - the standards bodies don't always play fair. Why does IE not have Canvas? When every other browser does? Because Apple has a patent on it. Apple's agreement with W3C is to license that patent once it becomes a standard (not just a proposal) but until canvas is an official standard, Microsoft is open to lawsuit if they implement it. But while the all the other browsers are implementing Canvas (opensource bodies don't have any cash to lose if Apple files a lawsuit ) their not pushing it through the standards commitee to make it official. This leaves Microsoft as the odd man out.
The IE team is working hard to catch back up, but the above 3 points are holding them back. Windows 7 is a decent OS so finally we have a chance of replacing all those OEM Windows XP computers still running IE 6.
Re:Update often please! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad they didn't implement those form elements, because once they implement a part of a standard, their implementation becomes the rule. If they implemented HTML5 form elements now, that essentially means marking the current HTML5 draft as finalized. I don't think that would be good for HTML5.