Internet Explorer From 1.0 To 9.0

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.

Comments

TFA?

[Ksevio]

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

Re:TFA?

[surgen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5QqYVurImY&feature=player_embedded

Re:TFA?

[baresi]

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?

[viablos]

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.

Re:TFA?

[viablos]

Yes, you can use separate software to do it.. You could do it with old IE's too. The fact still remains that Firefox is the only current browser lagging sandboxing and security. Even Chrome has it.

Re:TFA?

[recoiledsnake]

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/

Re:TFA?

[jez9999]

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

Re:TFA?

[gad_zuki!]

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.

Re:TFA?

[arth1]

I prefer to R TFA.

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

Re:TFA?

[amicusNYCL]

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.

Re:TFA?

[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.

• devxo (1963088)
• divxio (2016536)
• balls of steel (2016538)
• Billy the Boy (2016540)
• devtools (2018510)
• viablos (2018696)

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

Re:TFA?

[Daniel_Staal]

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.

Re:TFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you couldn't fully sandbox IE with 3rd-party Windows software, because there was no way of forcefully prohibiting an app from doing things like IPC and exploiting a vulnerability in higher-privilege programs. FYI, AppArmor was designed to work separately, because of the security problems present in tying rules and code together - software inevitably fails at enforcing its own security.

But what would a marketing publicist know...

Re:TFA?

[viablos]

Just because I said (and many people agree to this) that IE9 is an advancement over the older versions I'm now a marketing shill? Jesus...

Re:TFA?

[Shining Celebi]

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

Re:TFA?

[yoshi_mon]

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?

Re:TFA?

[Haedrian]

Webster, 1913

There's your problem. I've helpfully put it in bold for you

Re:TFA?

[Mostly a lurker]

Well, technically, I think it could be done. I created a Windows image at one point without IE and added IE7 back as a VMware ThinApp package. Even if IE invoked higher priority programs, these were also sandboxed (assuming no bugs in ThinApp).

Re:TFA?

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

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 future in it. Right now it seems that MS isnt taking extensions seriously. Their website is like most microsoft "add on" sites... it looks pathetically abandoned.

I like IE9. I almost switched to it, but Firefox 4 RC seemed to be more solid all around.

CHROME... failed everything in my eyes. its GPU acceleration is non existent/primitive. FireFox 4 RC did better on html5 features etc. Chrome let me down, and as much as I like Chrome... Its in third place and far behind at that.

Re:TFA?

[blair1q]

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.

Re:TFA?

[ArundelCastle]

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!

Re:TFA?

[breser]

What long history of advertising on Slashdot? The guy opened the account yesterday as far as I can tell. Apparently I missed the memo, people used to measure their egos with uptimes, no it seems to be the smaller your UID is the bigger your ego.

Re:TFA?

[chrishillman]

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 is really at a disadvantage over Lynx." I might not have an interest in getting you download and install Lynx (I know you already have it), but it sure seems like it.

I am sure you are not a shill or paid marketer, if you were there would be a link to this amazingly plugin-sandboxed web browser that makes Firefox look like IE8 in comparison.

Re:TFA?

[arth1]

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.)

Re:TFA?

[Fuzion]

I use a program called Sandboxie that works quite well in doing sandboxed IPC (along with file and registry operations) in any app, so it's definitely possible with third party apps, but it's nice to see that sandboxing is finally natively built into the browsers themselves.

Re:TFA?

[hairyfeet]

Noooo, you are being called a shill because your entire post reads like a press release and normal folks that aren't marketing drones don't actually talk that way.

Hell I've been a Windows guy since Win 3.x yet the folks here (well except for a few FOSSies that believe anyone who isn't dancing with RMS in a field of tulips must be a corporate spy sent from a secret reprogramming facility hidden under Redmond) know I'm not a shill because not only do I not speak marketingese I'm more than happy to point out like every other company on the planet MSFT has put out some real stinkers (Oh Vista how I hated thee, let me count the ways) as well as some gems (Windows 7 rocks).

So unless you spend your 9 to 5 as a marketing drone or have spent so much time ass deep in corporate butt kissing you honestly think you boss's booty smells like roses, well then folks have a legitimate right to call you things like shill and astroturfer. Nearly all the major corp have been involved in astroturfing and your post reads like an ad cooked up on Madison avenue. Hell you might as well have ended it with "Microsoft: We build excitement!"

As for TFA? Cute video but frankly getting burnt having to clean up IE 6 infections for years after MSFT abandoned IE after winning the browser war frankly I just don't trust them in the browser dept anymore. I have also found due to the faster update turnaround of the other guys my customers infection rate goes down when IE goes bye bye.

Now I give out Mozilla Firefox but frankly after all of the memory sucking and bloat of the last couple of 3.6.x releases I'm testing Chromium based Comodo Dragon, which has the sandboxing and low rights like IE and a lower memory and CPU footprint than FF. Add in the fact it runs both Adblock Plus and ForecastFox which are the two most popular plugins around here? If FF isn't better on the memory and CPU hogging come 4.0 RTM I'll be switching everyone over to Dragon. I already give out Dragon to all Vista and 7 users since FF doesn't support the safer low rights mode.

But go back to IE? Sorry, fool me once and all. They'd have to do a hell of a lot better than just some HTML V5 fish demos for me to risk IE again for my customers and family, and the fact they've abandoned XP while everyone else works fine on XP makes me just dislike it even more.

Re:TFA?

[gravis777]

ur cmmnt is 2 lng. Plz post utube vid.

Re:TFA?

[treeves]

Out of curiosity, how do you link all those accounts to the same person?

Re:TFA?

[palegray.net]

Sir, I actually clapped as I read this. Well done, seriously.

Re:TFA?

[nEoN nOoDlE]

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

Re:TFA?

[Daniel_Staal]

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 doing a great job, of course, but trying.)

But yes, Microsoft isn't doing anything unique to them in this. I mainly wanted to point out they are capable of turning out good products, and always have been. It's just their last choice in any market scenario.

Re:TFA?

[YoshiDan]

That's just how freetards think. You must be new here...

Re:TFA?

[Nyder]

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.

Re:TFA?

[sootman]

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.

Re:TFA?

[mhenriday]

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....

Re:TFA?

[drinkypoo]

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 any significant I/O. Natty Narwhal to the rescue!

Re:TFA?

[mhenriday]

Perhaps Giorgio Maione could be convinced to port NoScript to Chrome/Chromium ?... Henri

Re:TFA?

[Ed Avis]

Yes, IE9 isn't too bad. A shame it doesn't run on the operating system most businesses use, Windows XP.

Article is here:

[fiordhraoi]

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

Re:Article is here:

[mmj638]

Actually, the original is here: http://rasteri.blogspot.com/2011/03/we-are-ie-comparing-every-version-of.html

Where's the content?

[pz]

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

Hello?

Anyone?

Ulp.

Re:Where's the content?

[NevarMore]

You were eaten by a grue.

Nobody ever...

[giuseppemag]

...reads TFA, so no need to add it to the post. A byte saved is a byte earned!

Re:Nobody ever...

[need4mospd]

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.

Re:Nobody ever...

[treeves]

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.

watching the video didn't help

[craftycoder]

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.

Re:watching the video didn't help

[craftycoder]

in a word, no

Re:How good

[TaoPhoenix]

  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 it stalled out pretty badly. I only much later learned about concepts like Enterprise Lockin, but the short time period is amazing to me now - between about 1996-1999.

Not strange.

[rolfc]

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.

Re:Not strange.

[BlackHorse]

I got that shirt too! No idea what happened to it... I wonder if it'd be worth anything these days :P

Re:Not strange.

[shutdown -p now]

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

Re:Not strange.

[gravis777]

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)

Re:Not strange.

[rolfc]

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 a download from the MSN service or as part of the Windows 95 Plus! package"

We are IE

[Boigaz]

bet i'm the only one to get the reference (lennie de ice)...

Link to the actual article:

[FrankNFurter]

winrumors

7 days

[sakdoctor]

7 days after you watch that youtube video, YOUR BROWSER WILL CRASH.

Re:7 days

[valinor89]

If you are using firefox it will crash after 3 days. I still love firefox but it crashes a lot.

Re:7 days

[Inda]

It only crashed once in that 8 minute video. I thought that was impressive considering IE used to crash during a reboot.

So many nightmares compressed into a single youtube video. What will he do next?

Re:7 days

[Jesus_666]

All versions of Acrobat Reader with Tubular Bells playing in the background? It would fit...

Next project for Andrew :

[unity100]

From Fire and Wheel to Space. there. get to upgrading.

Re:Next project for Andrew :

[adavies42]

http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/uplift.html

Re:Next project for Andrew :

[SpinningCone]

try this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series)

Re:Next project for Andrew :

[drinkypoo]

"Click the mouse", seriously? Way to insert anachronism. Future generations of fantasy fans will wonder WTF a mouse was when they sing that song around the glph-fire.

So here's a question for you

[Sycraft-fu]

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 authorized (short of blowing away the list).

Re:So here's a question for you

[amicusNYCL]

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

Re:So here's a question for you

[cbhacking]

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.

Maybe ACID does not matter?

[howardd21]

A score of 93 from a first generation browser?

Re:Maybe ACID does not matter?

[_0xd0ad]

Yeah, if you ignore FAIL FAIL FAIL YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS AT ALL FAIL.

Filter error: Don't use so many caps.

Re:Maybe ACID does not matter?

[Lothsahn]

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...

Re:Not the first, not the second time

[just_another_sean]

Where is the blog post?

Re:Not the first, not the second time

[just_another_sean]

Goatse alert, don't be fooled. The goggles, they do nothing!

tuxrocks4, you're a dick.

Re:No link, and Incorrect on 1.0 Acid test:

[MetalliQaZ]

I guess it's time to stop. Buh-bye.

Video should be done Benny HIll style..

[nowen2dot]

Without super fast motion set to Yakety Sax how else can they do all those upgrades in less than 10 minutes?

Re:Suprisingly Interesting Video

[TheCycoONE]

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)

Re:Not the first, not the second time

[just_another_sean]

I already got burned by a goatse link in this thread.

So after carefully following your link from the techdrivein home page on down I see that you have actually provided something interesting. Thanks.

Horse porn?

[antdude]

Haha, "horse porn" at 8:02.

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

Re:Suprisingly Interesting Video

[similar_name]

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 until MS improved it's DOS/VESA/SB/MEM emulation in CMD.exe for XP. If I am missing some simple fact forgive me I've killed a lot of brain cells since those days.

Awesome!

[Georules]

No one can tell me to RTFA, since it wasn't even given to me!

Re:Suprisingly Interesting Video

[dreemernj]

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 straightforward instructions on in the past. I don't think fudging a path from ME to XP would have been quite as simple.

Re:How good

[cpu6502]

>>>"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 version 8 at work. There are better browsers (like opera).

Re:IE9 is naughty...

[blair1q]

He didn't do that. That's a feature of the search engine's autocorrect function that now makes it search for what you want instead of what you type.

Re:Suprisingly Interesting Video

[Jesus_666]

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.

Re:still bad

[twotailakitsune]

Opera also supports that simple tag. Apple is also behind in support.

Internet Explorer's Chrome

[mlauzon]

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..?!

Re:How good

[davester666]

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 compliance, and non-Microsoft web servers vending standard html became popular, Microsoft went 'meh', and then stopped advancing IE [at 6 I believe].

It was years later that Microsoft made a half-hearted attempt at improving standards compliance with IE 7, and more of one with IE 8 and 9. Except now the only reason they put out IE is so there's one browser that defaults to Bing [except in the EU, where you are asked which search engine you want to use up front].

Re:(OT) Flashblock on Chrome: no add-on!

[RoFLKOPTr]

I know this is horribly off-topic but for the sake of archival, somewhere, of some sorts, let me share with you this awesome piece of information: in Chrome, go to <chrome://flags>. There, find the "click to start plugin" option (and/or anything else you fancy :D). Then go to the configuration panel to find a third option: allow plugins, disable plugins and *click to enable*.

Big score!

How is that horribly off-topic? It seems to be very precisely on-topic.

Thanks for that info, by the way!