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Retro Browser War: IE6 Vs. Netscape In 2011
jbrodkin writes "What if you took the raw, pre-patched, 10-year-old versions of Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 6.1 and tried to surf the modern Web? What would happen? You might think firing up IE6 or Netscape would lead to an immediate onslaught of viruses, but just for fun, I decided to spend some time using these two ancient browsers. It turns out IE6 is still capable of surfing much of the modern Internet, and can play Flash and Java content, but Netscape's troubles show it probably died a justified death."
Possibly, the fact that large numbers of corporate desktops still have IE 6 means that a non-trivial number of Web programmers code to where IE6 will still work, whereas no one is using old Netscape, even for fun, except for this dude.
Up until relatively recently you absolutely had to include whatever hacks were necessary to get IE6 running on your site because it was the default browser on Windows and had a huge market share. Netscape hasn't had that sort of status in a really long time. So of course IE6 probably looks pretty good in comparison.
Now, look at more recent sites that don't include that kludge and see if it still looks OK.
The reason IE6 still works is because it HAD to work. People made web apps that only work in IE6 and then Microsoft broke the compatibility in every version after. I admit that if companies were more willing to update their apps IE6 would not still be required by some companies, but you tell them they have to spend their money porting apps.
Didn't work, did it?
This week I had to do a Win 98 install to test some software. My install came with IE4 and I had some fun trying various sites to see what would and wouldn't work. It was interesting to see how well (and not well) sites degraded to an utter crap view.
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As the article mentions, IE6 is still used by millions of users. Website designers still try to retrofit at least some of their functionality to work w/ this ancient scourge. You don't hear anybody trying to make sure their website will work with Netscape.
No viri or malware here! I was.... uh,popup... *click* ..I was just say... what the?..*click*...*click*... I was just going to sa... *click*..*click*... +++ ath0
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Posted from SeaMonkey. Personally I still like having an HTML editor, browser and email client all in one package.
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If you had a Win98 machine that you'd like to access the web from occasionally, what would be the best browser to do so? Firefox 2.0? Are there any projects still targeting OSs this old? What about something really crazy, like Mac OS 7? Or Amiga OS?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I just re-installed XP sp 2 last night on an old laptop which comes with IE 6. I didn't really think of it as old. It worked fine until I was able to update,restart,update,restart,update,restart,update,restart,update,restart and then update to IE 8.
After AOL bought Netscape, they decided to keep the Netscape browser on life support (but strangle it anyway) by releasing versions 6.0 and later, which were cut from the maturing Mozilla 5 codebase:
At this point (May 2005) Netscape was irrelevant, as Firefox had taken over among the tech savvy, and word was spreading beyond us. Also, AOL had seen fit to saddle Netscape with ugly, ad-infested themes.
The 6x and 7x lines were premature at best, almost as if they were designed to nail the brand's coffin shut, which they did.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_timeline, and my own memory of the time.
That's the way it's been in the past, but assuming these statistics are correct, it will hopefully be left to die soon.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
In the real world people expect more out of html than simple text.
In the real world shitty corporations didn't know what crap to shovel on consumers next, so came up with the idea of merging the interactivity and responsiveness of an early '90s PC with the service model of a '70s mainframe.
They expect interactive applications with instant gratification. As a developer, if you want to get paid and stay employed, you do what the boss tells you to do, no matter how ridiculous you think it is.
If this is your career and you can't get a better job than one where you feel you have to shovel shit, you're doing your life a disservice. Find something else which you do better, enjoy more and is more in line with your beliefs. If you respond with some excuse for why you "can't do that" then you've already failed life.
I did exactly that last year in a Virtual PC VM. ISTR I had to install IE, Win32s, and MS's 16-bit TCP/IP stack to get it all working. The result was surprisingly usable, considering the OS dates from the early '90s. Not to say that it rendered everything well, or that it didn't crash, but it was an interesting exercise in retrocomputing.
It did a lot better than Mosaic 3 on WinXP, which would crash upon loading /any/ website, so far as I could tell.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
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