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

Translation

[iamapizza]

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

Re:Translation

[omnichad]

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

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

[HaZardman27]

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

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 Where it up to them IE 6 would have been superceded in 03, 04 at the latest, instead of 07.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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[clone53421]

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

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.

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: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: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: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.