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Microsoft Internet Explorer The Internet Upgrades Technology

Internet Explorer From 1.0 To 9.0 129

FrankNFurter writes "Remember the video of Andrew Tait upgrading Windows from 1.0 to 7. He did another one — this time installing all major versions of IE from 1.0 to 9.0." He actually does some interesting packet sniffing to see why sites aren't rendering, and amusingly shows MSIE 1.0 getting a 93/100 on the acid test... pretty impressive considering it lacks JS and CSS.
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Internet Explorer From 1.0 To 9.0

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  • TFA? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ksevio ( 865461 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:03PM (#35518682) Homepage
    This story would be a lot more interesting with a link to an article where we could see some of these things.
    • Re:TFA? (Score:5, Informative)

      by surgen ( 1145449 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:04PM (#35518700)
      • Re:TFA? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by viablos ( 2018696 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:08PM (#35518774)
        The interesting thing is how good IE9 actually is compared to the older versions. It's a huge advancement from Microsoft and provides browser for casual people that also supports all the newest standards like HTML5 and is extremely secure. Firefox is currently the only browser lacking plugin sandboxing.. They're really lagging behind, and Microsoft has taken over Firefox.
        • I remember an interesting moment when Netscape was all the rage at college, and I first was hearing of IE 3 etc, and figuring it was some sort of Microsoft me-too effort like their later consumer offerings. I had it mentally pegged like the Zune. Then a couple of years passed, and by IE5 suddenly all these "optimized for IE, if you use something else you're not worth bothering with" sites.

          I personally didn't see magic between IE5 and IE6 as a consumer, but I did vaguely notice that once it hit IE6 i

          • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

            by cpu6502 ( 1960974 )

            >>>"optimized for IE, if you use something else you're not worth bothering with" sites.

            I used Mosaic/Netscape all the way from 1993 (Commodore Amiga and Mac) to 2006 (PC). I never had any problem rendering those "IE only" sites, and did try IE5/6 from time to time but never felt any desire to switch. IE5 rendered poorly on the mac, and IE6 crashes a lot.

            Then I moved to Netscape's "child" known as Mozilla Seamonkey and eventually Firefox. Still see no reason to switch to IE, even though we have v

          • Yeah, back then, Microsoft was working really hard to make sure the Internet worked best on Windows, by making their servers and web development tools that used IE-specific html, so your site by default would pretty well in IE, but look wrong and not work so well in other browsers.

            See also their work on Java. Oops, you used some Microsoft-specific Java library. No, we can't tell you where. And no, we can't prevent you from doing so.

            Then once the world woke up to this crap, and started checking for html c

        • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

          I don't like the minimalist toolbar interface. The only browser I can still customize to get away from that is Firefox.

          • Re:TFA? (Score:5, Informative)

            by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:27PM (#35519108)

            Right click on the toolbar area. You'll see options to bring back the menu bar, various toolbars, status bars, etc. Its not as user hostile as Chrome.

            • To my mind, describing Chrome/Chromium as 'user-hostile' is a tad exaggerated ; the browser is indeed customisable and allows one to choose from thousands of add-ons. The only thing preventing me from using it as my default browser is the fact that no option to create a side panel in which, e g, can bookmarks is offered....

              Henri

              PS : Opera was, if I remember correctly, the first browser to pass the Acid3 test....

              • The only thing preventing me using it for my browser is that Notscripts has a shitty user interface.

                The web without noscript is a nightmare. Even moreso on a netbook, but even on my fairly ballsy desktop just one crap website can choke everything. Amusingly I find this to be more true in Chromium than in Firefox 4.

                As an aside, the new kernel really is provably more responsive. Firefox 4 didn't choke at all during an aptitude dist-upgrade with root on a USB2 flash stick. It used to choke every time there was

          • Pretty much every browser these days is customizable, with Chrome being an obvious exception. You can change virtually everything about Opera, for example, but you're apparently myopic regarding Firefox if you think it's "the only browser" you can do that with.

            • For IE9 or Opera (or better yest both) do you know of a good program like Flashblock? I'm pretty laid when it comes to what I need for webbrowsing, and I don't use many addons, but that is one I can't seem to live without. I don't want to get rid of Flash, I just want it to be on-click.

              Any suggestions?

              While IE can enable it per-site that is rather annoying in the way it works particularly because it is hard to tell if you are authorizing the site or the embedded ad site and you can't remove a site once auth

              • Not sure about IE9, but I set Opera to load all plugins on-demand. That's Preferences -> Advanced -> Content -> Enable plugins only on-demand

                • Same in IE9. Tools -> Safety -> ActiveX Filtering. Blocks everything, including Flash and Java, just fine. It can be toggled on and off for individual sites quite easily; the little circle-with-a-line-through-it icon in the location bar (between the Search drop-down and the Compatibility Mode toggle button) works as a button to control it, and turns blue when filtering anything.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Hi viablos! I see you've created another sockpuppet account, in the fine tradition of astroturfing Slashdot. I'll update the known list of alts.

          Please keep participating, viablos. You make Slashdot a better place!

        • When presented with a competitor who they can't defeat in some other fashion, Microspft is capable of putting out some very good products. This has always been the case.

          Unfortunately, Mircrosoft will only do this if they have a real competitor who they cannot defeat in some other fashion.

          • by blair1q ( 305137 )

            This is not any different from any other company. If you don't know what you have to beat, you just do what you want. And if what you want is driven by $_in / $_out = performance, then you minimize $_out.

            • Microsoft has a slightly worse case than most, in my opinion. Competing on the merits of their product always seems to be their last choice, given all options. They'd rather drive you from the market, spread FUD, undercut your prices, anything they can to avoid actually doing anything on their product.

              And they have the habit of not doing anything without competition, where there are many companies who operate without meaningful competition while continually trying to improve their products. (Not always d

        • Firefox is currently the only browser lacking plugin sandboxing.. They're really lagging behind, and Microsoft has taken over Firefox.

          Huh? Firefox has had plugin sandboxing since 3.6

        • Actually Firefox 4 is ahead of IE9. Just try the Html 5 demos on Firefox's site in both both browsers. They only work in Firefox4 :)

          IE9 is very impressive, but when it comes to real performance and features... Firefox is better, even in GPU acceleration. Although I will admit IE9's gpu acceleration is very good in general, even faster in some ways than firefox, but it is often slower in many tests, and even fails to work at all at others.

          IE9 though is quite impressive coming from MS. I think there is a futu

        • I am laughing so hard! This needs a "funny", amirite?

          It sounds like marketing. Build up product, talk of how modern/new/shiny product is. Pick one aspect superior product from competition where there might be an advantage, and pretend that alone, that one feature makes the product superior to everything.

          "With all this IE9 talk, I am constantly surprised by how textual Lynx is. The latest version of Lynx is the most text-oriented of all the Lynx versions. IE9 lacks a decent text-only interface... it
        • by Nyder ( 754090 )

          The interesting thing is how good IE9 actually is compared to the older versions. It's a huge advancement from Microsoft and provides browser for casual people that also supports all the newest standards like HTML5 and is extremely secure. Firefox is currently the only browser lacking plugin sandboxing.. They're really lagging behind, and Microsoft has taken over Firefox.

          That's great.

          But based on past experience, I will NOT EVER use a Internet Explorer version, unless it's to download firefox/chrome or something.

          Don't care if it polishes dome while you browse, i'd still get something.

        • by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
          Yes, IE9 isn't too bad. A shame it doesn't run on the operating system most businesses use, Windows XP.
      • by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:36PM (#35519230) Homepage Journal

        I prefer to R TFA.

        Have we really degenerated so badly that even /. has become a video pushing outlet for generation-ADHD?

        • Without super fast motion set to Yakety Sax how else can they do all those upgrades in less than 10 minutes?
        • Asking that there is a link for the video in question, not even on the main page but maybe after we click though to the story, is cause to call for insults?

          Really?

          • by arth1 ( 260657 )

            Because there is no story, only a video?
            (Which large parts of the audience doesn't think is an acceptable substitute, and another large part can't even see.)

            • Because there is no story...

              There is no story behind a browser war that included MS being convicted of monopolistic practices, dominating the browser world too the point that there was no major update for 6 years?!, and now finally having to fight off newcomers?

              Really?

        • ur cmmnt is 2 lng. Plz post utube vid.

        • As my userid # shows, I've been around /. for quite awhile... and people weren't reading TFA since the beginning.

      • Haha, "horse porn" at 8:02.

        He should do other non-Windows platforms that have IE too. [grin]

      • by sootman ( 158191 )

        I swear the guy sounds like an OS X text-to-speech voice but he's got some good and funny commentary. Worth watching. (And I usually never watch videos like this.) If you find a computer with MSIE2 installed you can copy the executable onto an XP machine and it'll run fine. (As fine as MSIE2 can run, that is.) Reminds me of old times.

    • by baresi ( 950718 )
      Can't have an article about IE6 or older, just by showing screen shots you will get virus, spyware and just pure ugliness
    • Re:TFA? (Score:5, Informative)

      by recoiledsnake ( 879048 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:22PM (#35519010)

      This story would be a lot more interesting with a link to an article where we could see some of these things.

      http://www.winrumors.com/man-upgrades-internet-explorer-1-0-to-9-0-video/ [winrumors.com]

    • It's right there under the tags:

      You may also like to read,
      News: Upgrading From Windows 1.0 To Windows 7
      Submission: Man upgrades Internet Explorer 1.0 to 9.0 [video]

      The link is in the original submission.
      And people say the editors don't do anything. Pshaw!

  • There's no content... Hello, Taco? You there?

    Hello?

    Anyone?

    Ulp.

  • by giuseppemag ( 1100721 ) <giuseppemag@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:05PM (#35518718)
    ...reads TFA, so no need to add it to the post. A byte saved is a byte earned!
    • I take it one step further and I don't even read the summary. Based on the title, I'm assuming this story is about how the Internet is more powerful than the 8.9 earthquake in Japan.
      • by treeves ( 963993 )

        I think the earthquake was upgraded to 9.0 from 8.9 (at least by the USGS), so someone thought they see if IE could keep up, and lo and behold, it upgraded all the way from 1.0 to 9.0, ergo, more IE is more powerful than the earthquake.

  • I found the video and watched it. I don't feel any more enlightened as a result. While the video of upgrading through all the OSes was really quite interesting to me, this one fell flat. Sorry amigo, but you can't strike gold in every vein.

  • I thought it was going to be lame. But I ended up watching the whole thing.

    I was mainly curious to see if Doom2 would keep running. It only failed with one upgrade (XP I think), and started working again after the next upgrade (2000).
    • The article was about the IE video not the Windows one; despite only linking to the Windows. Also Doom2 quit working in 2000 and started working in XP (which was an upgrade to 2000)

      • Just curious but since Windows XP was released to bridge the NT and Win/Dos lines and Windows 2k was marketed more towards business with Win ME being marketed towards consumers, why would he even upgrade through Win 2k. Shouldn't he have gone through 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 9x/ME then XP. If he included Win 2k, why not NT 3.1, 3.5, 3.51, and 4.0? I understand that many people used Win 2k as a consumer OS but it wasn't really marketed that way and would explain why the NT based OS would have issues with a DOS game
        • I think he mentions one reason is that you can't upgrade from ME to XP. So to continue the upgrade path, going through 2K is the best option. And it is a valid one since, even though it was marketed more for business, there always seemed to be a lot of 2K machines browsing the decidedly non-business related websites I've managed.

          I remember there was another one that he didn't have an upgrade copy of. Maybe 98SE? But he was able to fudge an install version into an upgrade, which I've seen fairly straight

          • Besides, Me was a bit like Vista - virtually everyone who had it had it because it came with their computer. If you weren't satisfied with Windows 98, Windows 2000 was the obvious upgrade path, being superior in every area but DOS support.
  • by rolfc ( 842110 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @12:23PM (#35519030) Homepage
    I don't find it strange that 1.0 is good. Microsoft was caught without a browser when they realized that no one wanted MSN. So they bought Spyglass Mosaic which was a good browser, but they didn't have the time to ruin it before the release. Curiosly, I was one of the first 10 000 that downloaded it and was rewarded with a T-shirt.
    • I got that shirt too! No idea what happened to it... I wonder if it'd be worth anything these days :P
    • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Thursday March 17, 2011 @01:43PM (#35520210) Journal

      Yeah - Mosaic was so good that it implemented most of specs involved in Acid test correctly before they were even conceived!

    • Uh, The Microsoft Network was bundled with 95, and unless I am much mistaken, did not work on older versions, meaning it was released on August 24, 1995. Internet Explorer 1 was released on August 16, 1995, but was not originally included with Windows 95, although it was in the Plus pack that many OEMs shipped with their system.

      Therefore, Microsoft had already licensed and released Internet Explorer before The Microsoft Network was released on the public. (Albeit only by a week)

      • by rolfc ( 842110 )
        Microsoft realised that MSN was dead before its release and licensed Spyglass Mosaic as a quick Fix. They had the idea to lock users in to their own network and provide services for pay. When Internnet took off, they wondered where their customers went. Wikipedia writes " Open access to the World Wide Web was not originally included in the classic MSN service at the time of its initial launch, but Internet access was quickly offered through Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, which was available as
  • bet i'm the only one to get the reference (lennie de ice)...
  • From Fire and Wheel to Space. there. get to upgrading.
  • A score of 93 from a first generation browser?
    • Yeah, if you ignore FAIL FAIL FAIL YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS AT ALL FAIL.

      Filter error: Don't use so many caps.

    • Actually, it's IE2 that gets 93. IE1 fails to render the Acid tests and actually crashes on the 3rd acid test. Of course, the editors couldn't bother to fact check the submission...
  • No one can tell me to RTFA, since it wasn't even given to me!
  • Does anyone remember Chrome from late '97 or sometime in '98, it wasn't used on that many sites, I remember Universal Monsters' -- or was it Horror -- site used it..?!

"The medium is the message." -- Marshall McLuhan

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