10 ms·

Heh, exactly my thought when I saw the headline. As a webdeveloper since 1995, I can only say "phew, finally" - that browser probably cost me 2-3 years of my li

Heh, exactly my thought when I saw the headline. As a webdeveloper since 1995, I can only say "phew, finally" - that browser probably cost me 2-3 years of my life, spent hacking various webprojects to make them work in IE.

aikah 12y ago
You forget the fact that IE used to be the best browser out there.Netscape ended up being total shit.
- baldfat 12y ago
  I would say that Netscape lived on and became Firefox.
  - hasenj 12y ago
    This interpretation entails that IE will live on and become Spartan
    - integraton 12y ago
      Except that Netscape was open sourced years before it became Firefox. That happened January 1998, which was 17 years ago, and 4 years before Firefox was released, which itself was over 12 years ago.
      - have_humility 12y ago
        March 1998, and it underwent a pretty well-publicized rewrite as well... Firefox is not built on top of what was released back then (Communicator 4.x); it's built on top of its rewrite.
        yuhong 12y ago
        Ah, the fiasco that was the Mariner cancellation.
  - whoopdedo 12y ago
    Netscape lives on as Seamonkey.
    - nashashmi 12y ago
      I cannot believe that Seamonkey still lives! In fact they just had a release a week ago. And by looking at the features, I think you are right. Netscape lives on as Seamonkey in its most complete form.
- JimboOmega 12y ago
  I remember a day when the most compelling reason for me to use Windows (over Linux) was that Windows had IE.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  MSIE was never the "best" browser. It may have been better than Netscape, but there were numerous alternatives -- Opera, Galeon, Konqueror, and more. Eventually Mozilla / Phoenix / Firefox picked up the mantel. Then (somewhat) Chrome, though it's getting really effing annoying these days.
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    They invented ajax, at that time it was the best.
    - integraton 12y ago
      Sort of. IE was actually a big part of the reason developing Ajax applications was an expensive pain for many years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) The original idea came from ActiveX, but it didn't take off until it was implemented across browsers via JavaScript as XMLHttpRequest over the next 6 years, and didn't become "Ajax" until the Adaptive Path blog post about Google's innovations with Maps and Gmail in 2005. Microsoft then added support for XMLHttpRequest a year and a half later in late 2006 with IE7, which of course had very little adoption, particular among businesses, because of IE6 (see IE6 @ 49.8% and IE7 @ 17.1% IE market share at beginning, March 2007, of this graph: http://www.w3counter.com/trends http://www.w3counter.com/trends).
      - brc 12y ago
        It's funny, I'm sitting here desperately trying to remember what AJAX stood for without resorting to a search. And I can't. Was it Async Javascript and XML? Or was it ActiveX related. It did change things immensely.
        integraton 12y ago
        Asynchronous JavaScript and XML The name comes from this post: http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applications/ http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-appl...
xxxyy 12y ago
Isn't this just a marketing stunt? The article contains no engineering facts, just the branding thing. I mean: I expect the "new IE" to inherit code and practices from the "old IE". Unless I'm proven otherwise.
- jbinto 12y ago
  While it is mostly marketing (i.e. still using Chakra and Trident engines), the biggest change from a web developer's perspective is that the new Spartan browser will be evergreen[1]. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+PaulIrish/posts/f15yUhu4tE3 https://plus.google.com/+PaulIrish/posts/f15yUhu4tE3
  - molmalo 12y ago
    I may be wrong, but I believe that they replaced the old rendering engine (Trident), with a new one (EdgeHTML.dll).[1] But Trident will still be around, for compatibility with old websites (especially for enterprise applications). So, it's not just marketing... [1] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts-new-rendering-engine-project-spartan/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts...
    - gsnedders 12y ago
      EdgeHTML.dll is just a fork of mshtml.dll, which started somewhere after IE11 and stripped out all the compatibility modes (except quirks and limited-quirks, both of which are starting to get properly standardised) and then started refactoring the code to get rid of all the less nice design decisions caused by having to keep the IE7 code working through a bunch of ifs.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      Wonder which rendering engine they'll use for desktop email?
  - stupidcar 12y ago
    IE has been evergreen since version 10. The biggest change is that this is not Trident. It is a new rendering engine, called EdgeHTML, which started as a fork of Trident. That might sound odd, but Trident and the rest of IE had accumulated years of technical and backwards-compatibility debt: All the different document modes and obscure features from the ActiveX era that couldn't be removed because enterprise intranet sites relied on them. So what Microsoft have done is create an entirely new browser, using the EdgeHTML fork, while keeping IE around only for enterprise installs. Then they went on a killing spree in the EdgeHTML source, ripping out all the crap that they were previously stuck with, then adding new features into their newly cleaned-up codebase. This will then form the basis for the new, consumer facing browser in Windows 10.
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> webdeveloper since 1995 Those were terrible, terrible times. Mostly due to IE.

aikah 12y ago

You forget the fact that IE used to be the best browser out there.Netscape ended up being total shit.

baldfat 12y ago
I would say that Netscape lived on and became Firefox.
- hasenj 12y ago
  This interpretation entails that IE will live on and become Spartan
  - integraton 12y ago
    Except that Netscape was open sourced years before it became Firefox. That happened January 1998, which was 17 years ago, and 4 years before Firefox was released, which itself was over 12 years ago.
    - have_humility 12y ago
      March 1998, and it underwent a pretty well-publicized rewrite as well... Firefox is not built on top of what was released back then (Communicator 4.x); it's built on top of its rewrite.
      - yuhong 12y ago
        Ah, the fiasco that was the Mariner cancellation.
- whoopdedo 12y ago
  Netscape lives on as Seamonkey.
  - nashashmi 12y ago
    I cannot believe that Seamonkey still lives! In fact they just had a release a week ago. And by looking at the features, I think you are right. Netscape lives on as Seamonkey in its most complete form.
JimboOmega 12y ago
I remember a day when the most compelling reason for me to use Windows (over Linux) was that Windows had IE.
dredmorbius 12y ago
MSIE was never the "best" browser. It may have been better than Netscape, but there were numerous alternatives -- Opera, Galeon, Konqueror, and more. Eventually Mozilla / Phoenix / Firefox picked up the mantel. Then (somewhat) Chrome, though it's getting really effing annoying these days.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  They invented ajax, at that time it was the best.
  - integraton 12y ago
    Sort of. IE was actually a big part of the reason developing Ajax applications was an expensive pain for many years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) The original idea came from ActiveX, but it didn't take off until it was implemented across browsers via JavaScript as XMLHttpRequest over the next 6 years, and didn't become "Ajax" until the Adaptive Path blog post about Google's innovations with Maps and Gmail in 2005. Microsoft then added support for XMLHttpRequest a year and a half later in late 2006 with IE7, which of course had very little adoption, particular among businesses, because of IE6 (see IE6 @ 49.8% and IE7 @ 17.1% IE market share at beginning, March 2007, of this graph: http://www.w3counter.com/trends http://www.w3counter.com/trends).
    - brc 12y ago
      It's funny, I'm sitting here desperately trying to remember what AJAX stood for without resorting to a search. And I can't. Was it Async Javascript and XML? Or was it ActiveX related. It did change things immensely.
      - integraton 12y ago
        Asynchronous JavaScript and XML The name comes from this post: http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-applications/ http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/ajax-new-approach-web-appl...

xxxyy 12y ago

Isn't this just a marketing stunt? The article contains no engineering facts, just the branding thing. I mean: I expect the "new IE" to inherit code and practices from the "old IE". Unless I'm proven otherwise.

jbinto 12y ago
While it is mostly marketing (i.e. still using Chakra and Trident engines), the biggest change from a web developer's perspective is that the new Spartan browser will be evergreen[1]. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+PaulIrish/posts/f15yUhu4tE3 https://plus.google.com/+PaulIrish/posts/f15yUhu4tE3
- molmalo 12y ago
  I may be wrong, but I believe that they replaced the old rendering engine (Trident), with a new one (EdgeHTML.dll).[1] But Trident will still be around, for compatibility with old websites (especially for enterprise applications). So, it's not just marketing... [1] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts-new-rendering-engine-project-spartan/ http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/26/inside-microsofts...
  - gsnedders 12y ago
    EdgeHTML.dll is just a fork of mshtml.dll, which started somewhere after IE11 and stripped out all the compatibility modes (except quirks and limited-quirks, both of which are starting to get properly standardised) and then started refactoring the code to get rid of all the less nice design decisions caused by having to keep the IE7 code working through a bunch of ifs.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    Wonder which rendering engine they'll use for desktop email?
- stupidcar 12y ago
  IE has been evergreen since version 10. The biggest change is that this is not Trident. It is a new rendering engine, called EdgeHTML, which started as a fork of Trident. That might sound odd, but Trident and the rest of IE had accumulated years of technical and backwards-compatibility debt: All the different document modes and obscure features from the ActiveX era that couldn't be removed because enterprise intranet sites relied on them. So what Microsoft have done is create an entirely new browser, using the EdgeHTML fork, while keeping IE around only for enterprise installs. Then they went on a killing spree in the EdgeHTML source, ripping out all the crap that they were previously stuck with, then adding new features into their newly cleaned-up codebase. This will then form the basis for the new, consumer facing browser in Windows 10.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago

> webdeveloper since 1995 Those were terrible, terrible times. Mostly due to IE.