Microsoft Sends Flowers To Internet Explorer 6 Funeral

Several readers have written with a fun followup to yesterday's IE6 funeral. Apparently Microsoft, in a rare moment of self-jest, took the time to send flowers, condolences, and a promise to meet at MIX. The card reads: "Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven. The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft."

Comments

Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[elrous0]

Considering the reckless life it lead, is it any surprise it finally succumbed to all those viruses?

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[teknopurge]

You think IE would have used some protection.....

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[lorenlal]

Sadly, you have to posses the protection and know how to use the protection for it to be effective.

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[jmactacular]

Reckless? Please. Everyone likes to hate on IE, but that's because we all have short memories. Back in the day, when IE 6 was released, it was easily the best browser around. And IE 5, and IE4. It is naive to think any software company can prevent every security hole at the time of release. There will *always* be a determined and clever attacker who finds a way after it enters the market. And being the biggest in the market obviously makes them the biggest target. IE also takes a lot of heat for "standards", but that's because sometimes they are inventing the thing that will turn into the standard, like the XMLHttpRequest object, the foundation of AJAX. Believe me, supporting IE6 in 2010 is the bane of my existence, but I don't think it's fair to assign blame years later, for something that was created so long ago. In fact, I am thankful they put so much work into backwards compatibility, otherwise I think things would be even worse. Ultimately, IE6 will be replaced by IE8 in the next 1-2 years as the corporate world rolls out Win7 deploys.

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please! The word is "led". Unless you're talking about a dense grey metal, "lead" is pronounced with a long E.

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[mdwh2]

Back in the day, when IE 6 was released, it was easily the best browser around.

IE 6? I was happily using Opera at the time.

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[elrous0]

Stop being such a grammer nazi.

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[Virtual_Raider]

Stop being such a grammer nazi.

I invoke Goodwin on you, sir!

Re:Hate to speak ill of the dead, but...

[amasiancrasian]

No worries, IE6 will come back from the dead. It's not truly dead. It just wants you to think it is. Ever see the movie I Am Legend?

Translation

[iamapizza]

And by "a little piece of IE heaven," they actually mean "any other browser".

Re:Translation

[amicusNYCL]

Not true. I actually know what the announcement is going to be, and it's going to make a lot of people who visit sites like Slashdot happy (or surprised).

Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

Maybe a new version as well..

Re:Translation

[isama]

do you mean is will finaly support xhtml? yes i know IE8 has good xhtml support but i personally just don't like it...

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

IE9 is entirely rebuilt with 100% HTML5 support. SVG support.

Re:Translation

[amicusNYCL]

I've already said too much. They're looking for me now, I can hear the helicopters.

Re:Translation

[PRMan]

it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

HTML?

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late. Windows 7 ships with IE8, that piece of shit which doesn't even support CSS right.

Re:Translation

[guruevi]

OGG Theora? SVG? PNG?

Microsoft will have to follow the standards this time because people (web developers and knowledgeable customers) won't put up anymore with custom development for specific browsers. ActiveX bit and will bite many corporate customers in the behind and with the plethora of portable devices, computers are not the only hardware that receive the web anymore.

Re:Translation

[sconeu]

ODF?

Re:Translation

[omnichad]

That's OK, corporations are starting to move on....to Silverlight ;-)

Re:Translation

[denis-The-menace]

Don't you mean MS' flavour of HTML5
and MS' flavour of SVG?

Re:Translation

[plague3106]

Nothing wrong with that. SL will work on FF, IE or Safari, and on Windows or Mac.

Plus its a great way to use all those MS devs out there, who (like me) don't know Flash.

Re:Translation

[omnichad]

I agree it's an improvement. But why can't corporate types just use HTML/CSS/minimal Javascript and let their software run on ALL platforms? Why does the core of any web-based corporate software have to be some plugin-dependent binary?

Re:Translation

[Dorkmaster Flek]

You jest, but according to rumours, that's exactly what it is!

Re:Translation

[idontgno]

+1 Funny Because It's True

Re:Translation

[HaZardman27]

it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

W3C standards?

Re:Translation

[HaZardman27]

For one, because Silverlight makes writing web-apps much easier.

Re:Translation

[Tumbleweed]

Microsoft will have to follow the standards this time because people (web developers and knowledgeable customers) won't put up anymore with custom development for specific browsers.

Wishful thinking. That's exactly what was said before IE7 came out. And then again before IE8 came out. I'll believe it when I test their next browser myself and see that it works. This is the realist in me talking.

The cynic in me says that even if they DO start supporting realistic standards, they'll probably turn around and try to patent 'complying with standards' (or have someone else do it and fun their lawsuits against others so they appear innocent).

I would _love_ to see them actually put out a decent browser, though. I'm just not getting my hopes up (again).

Re:Translation

[Tumbleweed]

For one, because Silverlight makes writing web-apps much easier.

No, what you get when you use Silverlight are *Silverlight* apps. There's a difference, and not knowing that difference is why we're in the "Can't move away from IE6" problem. Learn the lesson, please.

Re:Translation

[Myopic]

Awesome. So Microsoft is planning to release IE9 sometime in early 1998?

Re:Translation

[mcvos]

They're going to use the Webkit renderer.

Re:Translation

[paxcoder]

What is MIX anyway?
Also I'll be very angry at myself if I get excited that MS finally decided to support SVG or any other W3C standard. Their browser should just die.

Re:Translation

[unix1]

Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

About the only things that can possibly fall into that category for me would be Theora and XUL.

Re:Translation

[mikael_j]

What? Are you saying embedded .NET applications stored as Base64-encoded strings in XML aren't in the SVG standard? (Yeah, I made that up but I develop .NET apps eight hours per day and sometimes I can't tell if the larger Java frameworks or C#.NET is worst when it comes to that kind of "enterprise ready" behaviour)

/Mikael

Re:Translation

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Not true. I actually know what the announcement is going to be, and it's going to make a lot of people who visit sites like Slashdot happy (or surprised).

Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

Maybe a new version as well..

Dear Christ, while everyone else is off supporting HTML5 H.264 video they are only going to support Ogg Theora.

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

It supports CSS 2.1 better than any other browser out there. But you should really pick a standard where IE8 isn't actually in the lead in to complain about.

(It doesn't support the CSS 3 not-quite-yet-a-standard as well as some).

Re:Translation

[AVryhof]

Here's a hint: it's about supporting a standard that no one thought Microsoft would support.

I'm guessing Theora

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing wrong with that. SL will work on FF, IE or Safari, and on Windows or Mac.

For now!
I remember the ever behind IE4.5 and IE5 for the Mac. Eventually they pulled support because IE6 was Windows only.

Plus its a great way to use all those MS devs out there, who (like me) don't know Flash.

Imagine what would happen if people like you learn SL and never Flash. Flash will one day be as obscure as RealPlayer for everything except ads. MS will soon say the don't want FF, Linux and Mac users getting around without owning a current IEWIntel system.

MS already leverages "unstuck on Windows-only" policy for Windows Media Player (defunct on Macs at versions 7 and 9 depending on MacOS release.) DirectX 10 requires Vista and above, IE9 won't work on XP but will be OK on Vista. Any free only as in beer version could be discontinued, and as history has taught us in all these cases for MS, the backward compatibility just ignored.

Re:Translation

[The Wild Norseman]

I've already said too much. They're looking for me now, I can hear the helicopters.

Dude, relax. They're Microsoft helicopters. They'll crash long before they get to you.

Re:Translation

[echnaton192]

If this rumor is true: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/04/internet-explorer-9-html5-compatible-microsoft-joining-antiflash-movement/ and IE9 passes (!) Acid 3, it needs SVG-compatibility, or am I misinterpreting Wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_3 As for the png-part, MSIE 8 has not so many problems with png, but a few minor probs: http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/ So *if* MSIE 9 would be HTML 5 compliaqnt and if it would pass acid 3, it would be a good thing. Mind you, I only use Firefox unless I visit Windows update or a page that insists on MSIE crap (happened once in two years, not visiting again), but MSIE > 9 would force standards down the throat of all companies that are forced to upgrade to Windows 9 10 11 or whatever version MSIE 9 would be shipped with...

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Partially because developing for platforms like Flash and Silverlight are a lot easier than browsers which might only support specific subsets of HTML and CSS. If your website has to be viewed by a wide range of people that means supporting the quirks in every browser likely to reach your site.

Re:Translation

[Spykk]

Hmm... Theora perhaps?

Re:Translation

[Anonymous Coward]

Is being fast a standard? If so ...

Speed.

Re:Translation

[amicusNYCL]

That's correct, SVG support is required in order to pass Acid3.

Re:Translation

[Blakey Rat]

Assuming you're talking about HTML5 in IE9, isn't that (almost) common knowledge right now? You act as if it's some huge secret.

Re:Translation

[Blakey Rat]

Out of curiosity, what do you have against IE8?

I haven't had to jump through any hoops for it, but on the other hand I'm working mostly in Javascript and DOM, and less in layout/CSS-type stuffs.

Re:Translation

[Tumbleweed]

Out of curiosity, what do you have against IE8?
I haven't had to jump through any hoops for it, but on the other hand I'm working mostly in Javascript and DOM, and less in layout/CSS-type stuffs.

I deal almost entirely in HTML/CSS issues, which is my problem with IE8. I'd dearly _love_ to be able to use border-radius without having to load some javascript hack to make it work with IE (all versions). It's not that the browser can't DO them, it just requires a javascript hack to make it understand the standard way of doing it.

For a product of a company that participated in the creation of CSS, it's remarkably behind on CSS support. Border-radius, multiple background images and border images would be great, as would css3 columns. But even if IE9 is perfect in this regard, it's still going to be years before we're able to use those standards because of the laggards still using IE6 and 7. *sigh*

Re:Translation

[Acaeris]

You do realise all of that CSS is from an unfinished specification for CSS3? Firefox, Webkit and Opera only support them through temporary names so you can experiment with them, the naming and usage hasn't been finalised. At the moment, IE's aiming at being at least complete in its support for CSS2 (the current standard) and THEN adding some of the new features for CSS3 when it's finalised (Microsoft have avoided trying to support unfinished parts of the CSS and HTML specifications for a while now).

Yes, this does mean we are unlikely to see Video and Audio tags finalised any time soon unless the other browser vendors can make up their minds without MS' vote

Re:Translation

[HaZardman27]

Because IE6 is the only browser that supports Silverlight? Last time I checked, ever major browser had Silverlight support.

Re:Translation

[plague3106]

Because I can write and test it ONCE on Silverlight, instead of dealing the sthe stupid idosynocies of each browser. Oh, and with Silverlight I can do most of my UI testing automatically if I use patterns like MVVM. Seriously, testing a website blows because its so time and resource invensive; I literally have to sit down with each browser (and usually mutiple versions of the SAME browser) and MANUALLY test.

In other words, its much cheaper.

Something was missing....

[voodoo cheesecake]

They should have send a blue screen of death dressed up as the grim reaper!

Nobody is completely evil

[Locke2005]

The Internet Explorer team has got to be the coolest group in Redmond... unless, of course, you believe the cake is a lie!

Re:Nobody is completely evil

[PPalmgren]

The firefox 2 cake was pure evil. Cake with black icing stains teeth and it is very hard to remove with anything but a long brushing. Pretty much any bakery will advise you to not use black icing for an office party for this reason.

Re:Nobody is completely evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't our fault. We ordered over the phone, and that's what the bakery did.

For Firefox 3, we had an IE alum living in the area who could go talk to the bakery, so you got a better cake.

Re:Nobody is completely evil

[clone53421]

You couldn’t just tell them to “put the internet icon” on it?

(Don’t ask me “what internet icon”... you know exactly what icon.)

Such a pity

[ilikebees]

It's so sad when a parent outlives a child.

Re:Such a pity

[rabidmuskrat]

It's so sad when a parent outlives a child.

Not in this case...

Re:Such a pity

[BearRanger]

Better than the child outliving the parent. That's how zombies are made...

Re:Such a pity

[Chris Mattern]

Um, no. In fact, the child outliving the parent guarantees that it *won't* become a zombie, unless you've broken init.

Re:Such a pity

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to spoil your fun, but init doesn't die during startup. It spawns the initial processes and simply wait(...)s on them (and /dev/initctl) until you decide to halt the machine.

The flowers I'd send

[greenguy]

And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flower by the snail mail
Say it with dead flowers at my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave
No I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Re:The flowers I'd send

[cayenne8]

"Ah, I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon

And another girl to take my pain away

Take me down little Susie, take me down

I know you think you're the queen of the underground

And you can send me dead flowers every morning..."

IE 9 perhaps?

[dmgxmichael]

Hmm.. So they might show up with a build of IE 9? Would be appropriate (turn a 6 upside down).

I feel sorry for the IE team at Microsoft - they get a lot of flak for a situation they didn't cause. They didn't choose to discontinue browser development in 2003. Where it up to them IE 6 would have been superceded in 03, 04 at the latest, instead of 07. And if IE 7 had come sooner IE 6 wouldn't have become as entrenched as it is now.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[ircmaxell]

I feel sorry for the IE team at Microsoft

I don't. They openly ignore standards, because they don't see it as necessary. I was at an event where the IE team lead (this was a month or two before IE8's release) gave a talk and was answering questions. He said that IE8 will support "most" of CSS 3. Someone asked why not all of it, he replied to the effect that they don't think the parts they left out "mattered". When asked how it did on the ACID test, they said that it didn't matter, because that test doesn't test anything that's necessary (and it requires things that they didn't see a reason for)... Keep in mind, this was a developer, not a manager. So unless management has it so ingrained in their heads that "This IS the only way", these decisions are being made at the development team level... And you wonder why IE sucks so hard in comparison (and is a thorn in the side of every web developer). It's not that they don't follow standards. It's that they purposely don't follow them... They know better, but make the rational choice to be different. I have no pity for someone who thinks like that...

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel sorry for the IE team at Microsoft - they get a lot of flak for a situation they didn't cause.

They didn't cause the lock-in with proprietary IE only mechanisms? I'm sorry but they DID cause much of the greif associated with IE 6 by making it so difficult and costly to migrate from it.

The bad design is bad.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[lorenlal]

Actually, they did cause a lot of that situation. IE 6 was implemented to use completely proprietary standards, and it was a focal point for MS vendor lock-in. It was designed to pretty much launch anything that said "you should launch me." Years were spent patching its numerous security holes, and that comes back to the team that developed and supported it.

Yes, they might not be at fault for the discontinuance of development. Yes, newer editions may have lessened the impact. But the browser was designed, built, and forced down on many of us for years, and they made it that way.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Thaelon]

They didn't choose to discontinue browser development in 2003.

No, they did it in 1998, yet shat out IE 6 after.

It's not like IE 6 was some first, beta version that they sent out that got adopted before it was ready. It was the sixth major release! They stopped caring because they had market share based on monopoly, not a superior browser. It wasn't until Firefox gave them serious competition that they started trying to fix it.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't choose to discontinue browser development in 2003.

That shouldn't have mattered. It should have been easy to migrate from. The fact that the discontinuance was significant simply points out how flawed the design was. "IE only" is bad design. Bad design for those that used it and bad design by MS for making it all possible.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[e2d2]

yeah but in fairness most developers don't get to choose feature sets. Those are chosen by "business people" that know it all.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[jpmorgan]

But perhaps he's right? Everybody likes to jump on ACID as some ultimate measure of a webbrowser's worth. Neither ACID2 nor ACID3 were based on the most important or commonly used features of HTML, JavaScript and CSS, but a sampling of obscure little bits that most webbrowsers were doing wrong at the time.

As useful as ACID are, it's important to realize that they are NOT proper compliance tests. It could be argued that one of the real failings of the W3C standardization process is that they never produce a compliance test suite. So you can't accurately state that a browser (like IE) poorly supports relevant standards, without relying heavily on anecdote.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[clone53421]

Hell, if they even made a halfhearted effort to comply with standards it would be an improvement.

I’m not asking for 100/100 on Acid3 (Firefox is only at what, 94/100)... Internet Explorer is only just finally passing Acid2.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

or maybe because getting close to a decade later the 1 thing that's an official recommendation isn't technically part of css3:
http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work#CSS3

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/Test/

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. How many people do you think are on the IE team now that were on the IE team that did IE6? Particularly since there was no IE team in the interim.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a programmer who has tried to implement HTML/CSS with ACID2, I can say that it's easy to pass these tests. Actually I passed 90% of ACID2(the remaining 10% is the table layout that I didn't spend the time to do), but it was still far from being able to render yahoo.com.

Microsoft just wants to set its own standard. It's that simple.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Blakey Rat]

You missed the parent's point completely. If the test is useless, or mostly-useless (which I personally believe ACID is), then who gives a shit what score IE gets? And, more importantly, why should the IE team waste their precious time caring about it?

Since there's no good reference implementation, and since the W3C is fucking awful at writing standards, frankly I don't blame the IE team for anything that's happened. My only gripe is that they stopped development for so long, but then again-- why would they have bothered to developer it since their major competitor, Netscape, gave up? So even that I have trouble criticizing them for.

Microsoft are masters of pragmatic code. The W3C is nothing but pie-in-the-sky good intentions that don't actually get day-to-day business done. (Proof: pick a successful website, any random website, check to see if it validates. It doesn't.) While the W3C was dinking around with some moronic plan to make HTML XML compatible, for several years and for God-knows what reason, Microsoft was creating real useful code.

Look, I have no problem with people writing perfectly compliant websites, or perfectly compliant browsers, but peopel on Slashdot act as if your perfect renderer is Jesus. It's not even a tenth as important as this forum thinks it is.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I know it's completely out of place when discussing adherence to web standards, but the last part of your post:

It's not that they don't follow standards. It's that they purposely don't follow them... They know better, but make the rational choice to be different. I have no pity for someone who thinks like that...

It sounds like a citizen in a totalitarian state with stockholm's syndrome. ;-)

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Anonymous Coward]

So um, that's actually the way most browser devs look at things. Mozilla developers have a similar outlook.... a sadly citation needed excerpt from wp:

At the time of Acid3's release, Mozilla Firefox developers had been preparing for the imminent release of Firefox 3, focusing more on stability than Acid3 success. The resulting 3.0 release consequently gained a score of 71.[31] The performance of Firefox was improved in version 3.5, which scores 93/100, and version 3.6, which scores 94/100. The current trunk builds of Firefox score 96/100 with the default configuration and 97/100 with html5.enable set to true.

Acid3 intentionally tested edge portions of css3, and ie8 was feature frozen (as were Firefox 3 and 3.5), you don't go off and try to crash land major features to a product right before shipping (especially if you haven't even started implementing them...).

There's an 80-20 rule somewhere here.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[clone53421]

Acid2 was mostly focused on getting stuff like CSS layout to work correctly, if I’m not mistaken.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Blakey Rat]

When I looked into it back when it was new (and my memory might be fuzzy here, bear with me), I remember it being primarily about how browsers handled rare edge cases and errors, more intended to test error-handling than whether or not the page was rendered how its creator wanted it to be rendered.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[clone53421]

Well... considering the number of ugly CSS hacks that had to be done to make a page compatible with both compliant browsers and IE... I don’t think the IE team was “only” ignoring the standards that weren’t “important” or not widely used.

Re:IE 9 perhaps?

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not saying they were. In fact, I really have no clue what you're replying to. For example, you bring up standards, but the ACID test isn't one.

What I'm saying is that the ACID test doesn't necessarily test anything that Microsoft is interested in testing. Or anything required to make a quality web browser. That's all I'm saying.

"Thanks for the good times IE6"

[Arancaytar]

Oh yeah... good times, good times.

It's funny they didn't bother showing up.

[voodoo cheesecake]

They could have at least sent someone to offer condolences, but after allocating $9 Billion to the clouds we see their priorities are elsewhere.

Were the flowers sterilized?

[stefanlasiewski]

And shortly afterward, plants surrounding the funeral began to wither and die from a exotic new fungus.

Re:Were the flowers sterilized?

[DCstewieG]

Sadly, Microsoft has a working fungicide but they refuse to ship it until next Tuesday.

Re:Were the flowers sterilized?

[TheSpoom]

The fungus immediately bloomed into advertisements, and funeral organizers had difficulty pruning quickly enough to keep up with what they are now calling "deadware".

Human moment

[trurl7]

I think that's a fantastic gesture on their part. Yes, it's all in good fun, but look - one of Redmond's lawyer types could've gotten a hold of this, and gotten some judge to issue an injunction based on a combination of ip violation/unfair competition/market image tarnishing/some other frankly-my-dear-I-just-don't-give-a-damn excuse. Yeah, it'd never hold up, but nothing stopping them from just being dicks.

Instead, they took it in good fun, and did the human thing - exhibited humor. Yes, they're still evil, blah blah. But this has that WWI 1914 Christmas Eve soccer-game feel. So let's acknowledge it with good cheer.

Re:Human moment

[lucian1900]

Not suing is not a "fantastic gesture on their part".

Re:Human moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple would have gone the "sue them" route for sure.

Actually, I am posting this Anon because Apple might sue me for using the word "Apple"

Re:Human moment

[idontgno]

Agreed. "Not Suing" is a fantastic gesture the precise way "not rolling up with AKs and blowing everyone away" is a touch of kindness.

No one deserves credit for not doing the wrong thing.

Re:Human moment

[clone53421]

Perhaps not, but joining in on the festivities was certainly more than anyone expected.

Re:Human moment

[Anonymous Coward]

Redmond wouldn't sue... this isn't Apple we're talking about... *ducks*

Re:Human moment

[jpmorgan]

You sound surprised... the IE team at Microsoft does stuff like this all the time. I was under the impression that they habitually send the Firefox development team congratulatory cakes upon major releases: http://www.intothefuzz.com/2008/06/17/let-them-eat-cake/

Re:Human moment

[IronHalik]

I think that's a fantastic gesture on their part. Yes, it's all in good fun, but look - one of Redmond's lawyer types could've gotten a hold of this, and gotten some judge to issue an injunction based on a combination of ip violation/unfair competition/market image tarnishing/some other frankly-my-dear-I-just-don't-give-a-damn excuse. Yeah, it'd never hold up, but nothing stopping them from just being dicks.

Instead, they took it in good fun, and did the human thing - exhibited humor. Yes, they're still evil, blah blah. But this has that WWI 1914 Christmas Eve soccer-game feel. So let's acknowledge it with good cheer.

You pretty much defined Stockholm syndrome.

Re:Human moment

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Hey everybody! I'm announcing an iPod, iPhone, and iPad funeral service over at my house! I'll supply the food, but it's BYO dr#(^$^%*^ **NO CARRIER**

Re:Human moment

[blackraven14250]

"Not Suing" is much different than "Not Suing + Joining In".

Scapegoating 101

[fserb]

I don't think this is self-jest. Microsoft and IE team love this... the current message is "yes IE6 is broken, you should upgrade to IE8/9 because it's much better". Except that it isn't. So the funeral flowers serve them well, because they can pretend the real problem is with IE6, where in fact the problem is with them.

Microsoft has been using this "network admins don't upgrade from IE6, it's not our fault" type of argument for too long as an excuse for the mess they keep putting web standards into.
If everybody suddenly upgraded to the latest and greatest IE8/9 we would still be in the same place regarding IE not following web standards. We would be free of "IE6 doesn't have a clue about the box model". But we would be at "IE8 doesn't support canvas (or proper event bubble)". Just so 9 years from now they will be sending flowers to the IE8 funeral and saying sorry for not supporting canvas...
A proper solution for Microsoft now would be to completely ditch IE backend, use one of the current available libraries like Webkit, and put in place an IE frontend that can have IE6/7/8 tabs and a proper standard backend (defaulting to the proper backend). Any other move on this area coming from Microsoft seems to be either evilness or PR (which I think it's the case).

Re:Scapegoating 101

[Locke2005]

How much can you bitch about Microsoft forcing you to upgrade, or about the features in the upgrade, when Microsoft is giving it to you for free? If you want a browser with a different feature set, then use IE just long enough to download one of the many alternatives out there! Personally, I use Firefox, but keep IE around to handle the broken webpages that only work in IE. The only reason people are clinging to IE6 is they are still accessing pages written to expect IE6's broken behavior, and they either know or suspect that those pages will not work properly with ANY other browser.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[OrwellianLurker]

How much can you bitch about Microsoft forcing you to upgrade, or about the features in the upgrade, when Microsoft is giving it to you for free? If you want a browser with a different feature set, then use IE just long enough to download one of the many alternatives out there! Personally, I use Firefox, but keep IE around to handle the broken webpages that only work in IE. The only reason people are clinging to IE6 is they are still accessing pages written to expect IE6's broken behavior, and they either know or suspect that those pages will not work properly with ANY other browser.

Because Microsoft does everything in its power to force people to use IE. This is especially true in the workplace. After my mom had gotten trojan after trojan, I tried to switch her to Ubuntu (easy distro imho). Sadly, her work required her to use a website that only works through Internet Explorer 6. She works from home, so she doesn't get technical support (except from me) and I don't want her to risk her job calling them incessantly. All she needs is a fucking web browser-- but thanks to Microsoft's shitty, broken IE anything developed for it only works for shitty, broken IE. This is intentional. It's called their business plan.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[Locke2005]

Sadly, her work required her to use a website that only works through Internet Explorer 6. Unless she works for Microsoft, that sounds like more her work's fault than Microsoft's fault. Is it Microsoft's fault that businesses a) Were stupid enough several years ago to implement systems that relied on the crufty behavior of a specific browser, rather than open standards, and b) now are too cheap and/or risk averse to redesign their systems, and therefore continue to use tools that by their very design can't possibly work in a secure browser environment? Remember, this crap was built with .ASP code that just naturally assumed it could do whatever the hell it wanted to your computer. Fixing the browser security model means breaking these crufty app's fundamental design.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[Anonymous Coward]

No-one should fall for their hypocritical gesture of sending flowers for the funeral, because it is Microsoft itself that killed the poor bastard.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[jonwil]

From Microsoft's point of view (and the point of view of most web designers), IE7 and IE8 ARE better than IE6. The only people who dont think that IE7 and IE8 are better are the idiot managers in large IT companies who refuse to authorize the work necessary to upgrade the ONE remaining corporate intranet website that doesn't work right in IE7 or IE8.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[echnaton192]

Ever heard of a concept called virtualization? Do that and mom could use MSIE for business purposes only. And no, it's not M$ fault companies built browser based software that depended on MSIE 6 and that these companies didn't change their ways in the years (!) between.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[Ant P.]

Oh, it's self-jest alright. They're just laughing at a different joke than everyone else there. Laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Scapegoating 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Not supporting a web standard is a whole other kettle of fish than not following a web standard, and there are no problems whatsoever with browsers not supporting particular standards. The only thing is that we are missing a way of indicating the standards which each browser supports, for all that this information would be useless to most people anyway.

It's similar to the image element and so on. Browsers are free to support whichever sorts of images they want, and they can not be held in contempt on standards grounds if they support some image type which others don't or don't support some image type which others do. They can, however, if they don't support a particular image type correctly. Of course, it's in the best interests of the majority of people if everyone supports the same set of images, but the standard was designed for whatever reason for that to not be the case.

They did choose to build the piece of shit

[SmallFurryCreature]

IE6 is a piece of shit and the devs who build would either have to be criminally incompetent or they did it on purpose.

And IE7 is little better. It is just XP compare to Vista. When you are the bottom, every direction is up.

Re:They did choose to build the piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

IE6 is a piece of shit and the devs who build would either have to be criminally incompetent or they did it on purpose.

And IE7 is little better. It is just XP compare to Vista. When you are the bottom, every direction is up.

well, someone at MS built IE6 of course, but then they closed the IE-team down. The current IE-team started with IE8, as a quick placeholder, before IE9..

Re:They did choose to build the piece of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say devs, do you include the project managers, or do you just mean the software writers?

The Mac/PC IE5 mess was a debacle of internal politics, little known on the outside, although sometimes accurately alluded to and guessed online. IE6 was simply a continuation of that disaster.

Absolutely go ahead and blame Microsoft for IE6, but it's not right to blame the people who wrote the code. They already suffered enough by having to live through that hell.

IE Heaven?

[CopaceticOpus]

I seriously doubt the existence of IE Heaven. But I hope it's there, because that would mean that IE6 is now rotting in IE Hell.

Word of the day.

[fahrbot-bot]

• Oxymoron: Noun, a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in "cruel kindness", "to make haste slowly", or " IE Heaven ".
• Serendipity: Noun, making desirable discoveries by accident, as in finding the first two examples above illustrate the third.

Re:Word of the day.

[clintp]

obJoke, and clarification:

Luck is finding a needle in a haystack.
Serendipity is finding the farmer's daughter.

"Thanks for the good times IE6"

[Chris Mattern]

"I think there were three."

Cause of Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Killed by unknown infectious viruses and chronic immune system deficiency.

It never succumbed to viruses

[MillionthMonkey]

It's being buried alive... you haven't heard the last from IE6.

BTW the roses from Microsoft are infected with a plant virus.

Re:It never succumbed to viruses

[martas]

it's not being buried alive. it's been undead for a looong time now.

Send all IE users a fish ion a news paper

[plopez]

"IE 6 sleeps with the fishes"

You know you've been a bad boy...

[Drethon]

When your parent (godparent?) is trying to help hammer the stake deeper into your heart.

On a note for a similar funeral: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20070211

(Unfortunately posted by a zombie, would someone please talk to my IT people?)

If you want the results...

[PHPNerd]

The site has split up the article into a million pages. If you don't care to click a jillion times, here's the link for the results.

Waaah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and you know who wasn't at the funeral? The web developers, all too busy to come OR to order flowers because they're fixing IE6 bugs in their web sites.

I know...

[mr_lizard13]

I know IE6 is dead, but I can't help but think it will pop up again.

I will never upgrade my IE6.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not until I am given the option in IE8 to revert the GUI to match IE6's EXACTLY.

There is NOTHING I hate more than a forced interface change.

If anyone knows how I can do this without installing a 3rd party application let me know.

Otherwise IE6 will remain on my machine forever...

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[Anonymous Coward]

it isn't 2001 anymore.

You're right, a black man is president now.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to ask: What's so great about the IE6 interface to make you feel so strongly about it?

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[BlackSnake112]

Probably misses the file, edit, view.. across the top. Tools-->toolbars-->menu bar puts those back.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[martas]

dude, if you're so masochistic as to like using the ie6 POS interface, then the whole "kill ie6" movement is actually good for you. more websites you can't use => more pain => more sick perverted pleasure.

also, try chopping off your balls. i hear it huts real nice.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[mcvos]

What is it about IE6's interface that you like so much? The lack of tabs? The bizarre rendering?

Incidentally, I recently needed IE6 to test a website for a customer that's somewhat stuck in the past. So I install VMWare Fusion, Win XP, and discover this particular copy of WinXP already comes with IE8. After a bit of googling I find a couple of ways to uninstall IE8, and one of those seemed to work. Unlike promised, however, it didn't free up a hidden IE6. Instead, I had no IE at all. So I got the IE6 installer from MS' download page. Apparently, despite its widely publicised death, IE6 is still being distributed by MS, but this time I was happy about it. Or would have been, if the installer worked. It didn't. It complained I had a more recent version already installed.

So, next step: take regedit en remove IE8 from the registry. Install again, but again the installer refused, because it claimed not to have an internet connection to download something it needed. Of course it had an internet connection, it just didn't have a browser. I reinstalled IE8, but that didn't seem to work. Looks like I managed to create a Windows installation that had no version of IE at all, and unwilling to accept the installation of one. I got IEtester instead, and that works fine.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[smisle]

I sort of agree, I can't stand the new interfaces for 7 or 8 ... but I also can't use IE6 since it's not secure... enter Firefox and Chrome. You can get a Firefox theme that makes it look like IE6 if that's really what floats your boat.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[smisle]

yes ... which puts the menus UNDERNEATH the back arrows and the address bar. wow, it looks like crap, and is annoying to use.

Then, they added the shortcut buttons (home, page, tools, RSS, etc) to the right of where the tabs go. What's the use of adding tab support if you're going to cut the tab space in half?

And, one more thing while I'm ranting - what's up with the "call home" connecting that IE 7 and 8 do when they start up? I expect to be able to use my browser as soon as it opens, not be locked out while it looks for updates or loads extensions or whatever else it might be doing.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Not until I am given the option in IE8 to revert the GUI to match IE6's EXACTLY.

There is NOTHING I hate more than a forced interface change.

If anyone knows how I can do this without installing a 3rd party application let me know.

Otherwise IE6 will remain on my machine forever...

I answered this for you last time: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1571348&cid=31366314

I don't know if this is a joke or not, but in WindowsXP, if you upgrade to ie8, navigate to c:\windows\ie8\iexplore.exe

This will load the IE6 UI, but it will be the IE8 rendering engine. It's located in c:\windows\ie7 if the computer has IE7 installed.

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[hairyfeet]

Actually I'm really glad they changed the interface, as it has helped me tremendously with getting folks off of IE and onto Firefox! Thanks IE Team! Oh, for those having trouble convincing an older relative to switch, old hairyfeet has a little trick that seems to work everytime. Don't bother talking about security, their little eyes will just glaze over, what you need is a juicy carrot, or in this case ForecastFox! Just install ForecastFox with their Zip Code at the top (menubar) and you'll find that having the 3 day forecast and weather alerts makes FF sell itself.

Now as for your problem, I'm sorry but IE8 is pretty much IE8. What I CAN do is point you to the page that will let you make Firefox look like IE6. It is an experimental, but if you really want the IE6 look without running an out of date insecure browser this is probably your best bet. Good luck!

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[Riachu_11]

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser\] “ITBar7Position”=dword:00000001

Re:I will never upgrade my IE6.

[Anonymous Coward]

yes ... which puts the menus UNDERNEATH the back arrows and the address bar. wow, it looks like crap, and is annoying to use.

Yes, because having the frame colours stripe across the top of the window looks so pleasant. What exactly do you use the menu for so often?

Then, they added the shortcut buttons (home, page, tools, RSS, etc) to the right of where the tabs go. What's the use of adding tab support if you're going to cut the tab space in half?

Unlock the toolbar. Shift the shortcut buttons up. Lock the toolbar. Or do you have the favourites bar/etc turned off? Then where exactly do you expect them to go.

And, one more thing while I'm ranting - what's up with the "call home" connecting that IE 7 and 8 do when they start up? I expect to be able to use my browser as soon as it opens, not be locked out while it looks for updates or loads extensions or whatever else it might be doing.

It is loading resident addons, not 'calling home'. If you don't want them to load, then turn them off. If you do want them to load, then complain to the creators that their addons are slow.

BOO!

[Ogive17]

Here I am! Posting from IE 6.0. I'm not quite dead. (still have IE6 at work)

I was giving it some thought as to why we haven't upgraded at work... what do the bosses not want employees to do? One answer is surf the internet all day. How do you prevent that but maintain internet connection so the intranet still is accessible as well as any other networked programs.. use IE6! Web pages have slowly stopped working correctly the past year or two.

Re:BOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, everyone who cared and is able has installed Firefix despite the corporate policies that prohibited their doing so.

Just wait.

[flimflammer]

Just wait till IE6 rolls around in its grave and becomes IE9.

Assuming IE9 gets some of it right...

[zero0ne]

it means one less attack vector for the baddies.

Every Windows user should be happy about that.

It just became a ZombIE

[Requiem18th]

Now that it is officially deceased all the thousands of instances still around are to be considered undead.

IE heaven!

[Juln]

IE heaven would be: they cancel the Trident rendering engine and announce they're using WebKit.

Come on MS, you can do it!

That's kinda cute

[Cyberllama]

It's funny, I never thought I'd live to see the day when Microsoft became the plucky underdog and Apple became the evil empire but that seems to be exactly what's taken place . . . Sure, it's not true of the Desktop OS market, but by pretty much any other metric . . .

What color of flowers?

[jonadab]

Black ones? Black roses, perhaps? That's what I would have sent IE6...

Was the card w3c compliant?

[SlappyBastard]

Because I'd be let down if the card weren't improperly rendered.

The good times?

[Hurricane78]

Must be the Russian cracker teams who actually sent the flowers.

Or some marketing dudes who just love advertising.
Oh... wait... ;)

Oh please...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most devices will be mobile devices, that means all the usual suspects (Symbian, Android, iPhone, RIM, etc).

If you think they will welcome yet another botched propietary tool under the control of Micorsoft then you need a lobotomy. Or a trepanation....

they even copied apples idea for a funeral (OS9)

[johnrpenner]

Apple WWDC 2002-The Death Of Mac OS 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl7xQ8i3fc0

Re:they even copied apples idea for a funeral (OS9

[johnrpenner]

...and probably less successfully. :-^