
Chrome is not the new IE - jasoncartwright
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1299136717027336192
======
n1vz3r
The article is just an opinion and some claims, supported by zero evidence.
Yes, Google is interested that Web continues to live. But article omits that
Google only wants the Web that exists on Google's terms. That's why they
practically rebuilt the web themselves, on all levels, from protocol to the
client (spdy, webp, amp, dart, chromeos & android, chromium).

~~~
badrabbit
They make changes to web standards and force it's adoption. Innovation is one
thing but this is far from a democractic internet.

~~~
blinkingled
But that is also progress. If it wasn't for Google's investment we would still
maybe running Flash. People have had a lot of time to advance the web before
Google came along.

The standard is open, the code is open - I don't understand how "is Chrome the
new IE?" even a question. It's not like they're bundling it only on ChromeOS
and Android , it's not like they have the equivalent of VbScript /ActiveX and
plenty of people are making browsers based on Chromium.

~~~
badrabbit
I do think google innovated a lot but I think htlm5 killed flash not google.
Html5 is a web standard. Chrome is very much the new IE, it use to be I was
forced to run IE for some b.s. legacy corporate webapp now I am forced to run
Chrome. Why? Because devs have to prioritize a browser and the amount of non
standard supposed engineering by google means they can't support other
browsers.

Google is playing a winner takes all game of dominance. Imagine if Ford became
so popular that mechanics can't be bothered to fix other cars because Ford
does everything differently.

People are being forced to base browsers on Chromium because no one will use
anything else due to sites depending on Chromium only features! This is very
anti-innovation.

You came up with a cool new feature in firefox (like containers) and you want
to standardize it? Well if uncle google says no you're out of luck. Standards
exist for a reason and engineers(even at google) use to have enough
professionalism to respect the concept and process of having an internet where
everyone participates democratically.

I hate to keep on coming to similar conclusions but Browsers need to be
regulated if the browser industry is always being overrun by some monopoly.

~~~
Tijdreiziger
Apple killed Flash.

HTML5 just provided a suitable replacement for Flash, but suddenly having a
large browser (Mobile Safari) that just couldn't play Flash content at all
provided the incentive for web devs to actually invest the effort to switch to
HTML5.

~~~
clankyclanker
This is the correct answer. To add historical perspective, I had friends who
would go into Apple stores and point all the demo machines at newgrounds.com
to show people that they shouldn’t waste their money on devices that couldn’t
even play flash animations as well as a low end laptop.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I kind of like seeing articles like this, where you get to see the mental
gymnastics (sometimes a simple somersault, sometimes a double twisting triple
backflip) that employees use to justify to themselves "why I am not as evil as
those people in that other company."

Sure, I don't believe Chrome has the same problems that IE did either, but I
definitely do believe Chrome uses its dominant position primarily in service
to extending Google's desires for the web. E.g. signed HTTP exchanges are more
AMP shit that nobody asked for.

~~~
gizmodo59
Sorry but I like amp. I don’t want sites like the guardian to drain my phone
battery and load in 10 seconds. I understand if it’s bad for publishers but as
a consumer I love it.

To suggest that an end user would go about disabling JavaScript and other
reasons just shows how HN is in a bubble and don’t really understand that 99%
of the users don’t care.

~~~
earthboundkid
Psst, the thing that drains your battery on news sites are the ads, which
Google is 100% responsible for by encouraging an ecosystem of third party JS.

~~~
hu3
Not just the ads but also autoplay videos, 2mb of javascript and the ocasional
fancy background fullHD video.

Amp gets ride of those.

~~~
Lammy
[https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
video/?format=w...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp-
video/?format=websites)

[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-
video-interface.md#autoplay)

~~~
hu3
A great advantage of having standards like Amp is that we can then control and
limit how things behave. See criterias for autoplay video on Amp:

\- the video is automatically muted before autoplay starts

\- when the video is scrolled out of view, the video is paused

\- when the video is scrolled into view, the video resumes playback

\- when the user taps the video, the video is unmuted

\- if the user has interacted with the video (e.g., mutes/unmutes,
pauses/resumes, etc.), and the video is scrolled in or out of view, the state
of the video remains as how the user left it. For example, if the user pauses
the video, then scrolls the video out of view and returns to the video, the
video is still paused.

Source:
[https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-v...](https://github.com/ampproject/amphtml/blob/master/spec/amp-
video-interface.md#autoplay)

~~~
Lammy
None of these features should need Google's proprietary platform. See, for
example, Mozilla's `media.autoplay.enabled` or `media.block-play-until-
visible`

------
henriquez
Of course a Google engineer would say this, because only a Google engineer has
the perspective to truly appreciate Google’s position as the world’s
benevolent steward of technology leadership - not just to maintain web
standards but drive them forward in ways that Google knows will benefit
everyone.

Sure it would be great if Google wasn’t a de-facto monopoly or that they have
massive conflicts of interests as the Internet’s biggest advertising network.
But what people need to understand is that Google knows what’s best for all of
us when it comes to what the Internet is and should be. So when Google rams
half-baked APIs into their browser well before they even have gone through
third party certification, often releasing features with glaring security
holes, they’re doing it because it’s best for all of us, not just Google.

All the nay-sayers need to just relax and know their place.

~~~
gchamonlive
I am a little confused. Is that supposed to be a sarcastic comment? Honest
question, because I am a bad judge of sarcasm

~~~
wrycoder
An example of heavy sarcasm. It would be worth your while to study it
carefully to learn the style points.

~~~
Lammy
And the tone of voice someone might use when speaking such heavy sarcasm:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnJzUPChSg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URnJzUPChSg)

~~~
henriquez
Oh by the way, I was being sarcastic.

------
candiddevmike
Safari is the new IE. Apple's ecosystem is holding back the web severely by
shipping a crippled web browser. Safari severely lags behind other browsers,
and due to how iOS and the like require other browsers (like Chrome) to use
it's archaic rendering engine, it hurts competition as much as the 30% store
tax. No PWAs, no notifications, no native experience.

I would love to see someone push for iOS to allow any browser/renderer to run.

~~~
kevincox
Also you can't test on it without paying them thousands of dollars for
hardware.

I remember maintaining a bunch of sites and university, and while IE11 was
missing a couple of APIs (like Promise) at least I could download a VM
straight from Microsoft and figure out what was going wrong. I still have no
way to test on Safari which is becoming more and more annoying as they "fall"
behind.

~~~
candiddevmike
I learned that on Linux, GNOME Web (Epiphany) is basically Safari. It will
exhibit most of the quirks and rendering issues, and it has a decent dev
console. It definitely helps avoid paying the Apple tax.

~~~
bitL
Isn't Konqueror the original webkit browser?

~~~
Lammy
It's called KHTML, but yes. Apple's fork is WebKit/WebCore:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#WebCore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#WebCore)

KHTML isn't officially dead, but it's also not very active:
[https://phabricator.kde.org/source/khtml/history/master/](https://phabricator.kde.org/source/khtml/history/master/)

------
giancarlostoro
> IE was what happened when Microsoft conquered the browser space (where there
> really was only one other serious player), without any clear sustainable
> vision of what was "next". Chrome has plenty of ideas of what's "next" for
> the web - and they're not just about Google. (cont)

This is literally the problem though. If you consider all the Chrome
derivatives and WebKit as one single browser. Then Firefox is the main
competitor and Chromes market share is at the rate of IEs.

Just because you worked on IE and Chrome doesnt mean you are not biased. The
issue we all have is that exactly that Google assumes control of what the web
will look like and other browsers are left scrambling to implement things that
were not standardized beforehand.

If you want to argue Chrome is not the new IE then Chrome needs to stop
pushing out features not yet fully approved by their respective standards
committees.

Chrome is the new IE in several ways including websites only working on Chrome
as they once only worked on IE.

Lastly... A good number of things Google has added to the web could be argued
that it is indeed about Googles own interests. WebRTC was useful for Google
Hangouts for example. AMP only exists to give Google total control. Their
adblocking changes only exist for the same reasons. Removing URLs from the URL
bar also are not part of an open web standard. This is beyond anything I
remember IE doing. Chrome is literally worse than IE for the open web.

~~~
saagarjha
> If you consider all the Chrome derivatives and WebKit as one single browser.

WebKit has a very different direction from Chromium and it is usually not very
useful to model them as being related anymore in most cases.

------
underwater
I think that Chrome is different for the web than IE was, but I'm still wary
of Google having such a heavy influence over the web as a platform.

Google have consistently shown they're great at data, struggle to build
platforms, and approach product development by throwing stuff at a wall. They
have a heavy cultural bias towards developing and shipping new initiatives
over supporting existing products.

None of these attributes are good things for supporting an open platform.
Google does a good job at firewalling their data gathering tendencies from
Chrome and web standards, but over the last ten years they've consistently
pushed new standards and experiments that no one has asked for: Dart, GWT,
Angular, Web Components, AMP, Service Workers, notifications, payments, DRM
support, web bundles, etc. The actual innovations that have helped the
platform grow have largely happened elsewhere.

Some of the stuff they do will be great, but there is going to be a long term
cost to the platform from this relentless push to use the web as Google's
personal playground for innovation.

------
naniwaduni
"It's different looking from the inside" is little consolation to those of us
on the outside.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I frequently find conversations with Googlers with regards to privacy and
trust always end this way. The assumption is if you were just a Googler, if
you knew what working at Google was like, you'd also believe it is a good
thing.

But since you don't have that inside Google knowledge, just trust them.

------
ineedasername
It's not the new IE in so far as the problems with it are not the same as the
problems IE had.

IE was a stagnant platform with proprietary technology that still haunts my
workplace: Cognos < v.11 only has complete functionality with IE. For a couple
of years we could only use our primary ERP system with a specific version of
JVM in a specific version of IE. IE failed (at least in part) because it
failed the consumer experience.

Chrome generally gives users a good experience: Page load times, better in its
own very popular apps (though apparently sand-bagged against competitors)
built in high-quality search, etc. The reasons it fails are, in my opinion,
primarily on the privacy front.

------
asddubs
this half-article just seems like pointless arguing over definitions. people
aren't saying chrome is the new IE because the two situations are exactly
alike in every way. but google, as a private entity, now effectively has a
monopoly on deciding what the web should function like.

~~~
The_rationalist
Yeah because Microsoft is a small company that has not a say in it?

~~~
leshenka
Oh do they? In what way?

~~~
The_rationalist
For example they rejected the future changes that were potentially limiting
uBlock Origin. But most of the time, chromium Google devs are just talented
engineers and Microsoft has not to conflict much with their excellence

~~~
frank2
Would you please say how you know that Microsoft has (in your words) "rejected
the future changes that were potentially limiting uBlock Origin"?

E.g., did a Microsoft executive say something to a journalist, who wrote it
down somewhere where you subsequently read it?

E.g., do you know people who work at Microsoft?

------
Lammy
> IE was what happened when Microsoft conquered the browser space (where there
> really was only one other serious player), without any clear sustainable
> vision of what was "next"

I was under the impression that HTAs were what they viewed as "next", letting
developers host and dynamically generate applications that would run over the
network on Windows (or otherwise IE-equipped, hence IE for Solaris, et al)
clients:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application)

It even has that whole super-granular "Zones" security system to e.g. trust an
intranet-hosted HTA more than a publicly-hosted one. Am I off-base here on my
historic Microsoft speculation? :)

------
csours
I feel like people don't remember how terrible IE 6 was for so long.

You can criticize Google for any number of things, but they certainly want
browsers to be as good and as capable as possible.

~~~
asddubs
I don't really think people are criticizing google for not wanting browsers to
be capable when they say that chrome is the new IE

~~~
xnx
I don't know what other people think, but IE to me is synonymous with a
browser that was good, but then stopped improving in any meaningful way for
years. The first version of Chrome showed that there was still immense
worthwhile improvements that could be made in browsers. If anything, the rate
of improvements to Chrome is accelerating, even after they established
marketshare dominance.

~~~
ineedasername
When Chrome came out I had been using Netscape -> Mozilla -> Firefox for about
10 years. Then Chrome seemed to blow it out of the water in terms of speed
improvements. I switched virtually over night.

~~~
colejohnson66
Wasn’t Chrome also the start of browsers keeping each tab in its own process?
I remember the Chrome “comic” mentioning this.

I remember when IE got tabs, a crash would bring down the whole instance.
After all, there’s no point segregating the tab from the chrome (no pun
intended) when it was single “tab” only.

~~~
ineedasername
Possibly, but I'm not sure they did that at the begining. I remember sometimes
a tab would crash with a little unhappy face with a squiggle mouth (or
something like that) and all the tabs would go down like that. But then again
the whole app didn't come crash and I could refresh the other tabs to get them
back without losing everything I had open.

------
xg15
> _... Are they all good ideas? No, probably not, and that 's why we have
> processes (that get revised - hi, that's part of my job now) to make sure
> we're including lots of external input too. The Web stagnating as a platform
> for just docs would be bad too. (cont)_

Oh, you guys have _internal processes_!

You're close to able to unilaterally set the direction the web should be
taking, but that's ok, because you have processes!

------
kryptiskt
It's worse, because this time there is no hope on the horizon.

~~~
cloudwizard
When IE6 was king, there was no hope on horizon. IE6 came out in 2001, Chrome
did not come out until 2008.

~~~
mc32
Mozilla was there.

~~~
ineedasername
I'm guessing them mean in terms of anything likely to actually unseat IE.
Netscape->Mozilla->Firefox had been around years and were still only minor
players ~20% market share. Chrome on the other hand saw nearly instant hockey-
stick growth. I remember I switched almost instantly after a quick try and
everything was so much faster.

------
francasso
I believe he is in good faith. My concern is that his opinions and what
corporate policy is going to push for in a monopoly situation are two
different things. You only have so much power as a technical person. Policies
that are good for the community align with a company bottom line only when
there is competition. Otherwise things degenerate, it might take time but I
don't see any reason why they shouldn't. Especially when the barrier to entry
is so high.

------
matlin
I will say unlike IE, Chrome (more specifically Chromium) has allowed for a
new generation of browsers to compete. Rendering / JavaScript engine is now a
commodity.

If you want try out something that feels new and different you can try out
what I'm working on! It's designed to make you more productive and feel more
like an OS than a browser...

~~~
matlin
Forgot the link to get access:
[https://www.aspen.cloud](https://www.aspen.cloud)

------
Polylactic_acid
Chrome is the opposite of IE. IE was dragging the rest of the web behind with
its glacial update pace and lack of automatic updates. Chrome moves at light
speed meaning no one else can actually keep up with all the new features
getting added. Chrome has resulted in browsers being more complex than an OS.

~~~
userbinator
Agreed 100%, and IMHO it was a _good_ thing that IE "was dragging the rest of
the web behind", because it at least gave some _stability_ to the platform and
gave the small competitor browsers a chance, while keeping sites relatively
simple. In contrast, Google's "pushing the web forward" propaganda and the
explosion of complexity and churn that has basically become a cancerous growth
is much worse.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Most of the time it doesn't actually matter that your browser is missing
support for webusb or webwhatever but every now and then you hit a site that
uses it and it creates a user experience of "Just use chrome and it always
works" A good demo is Mozilla spent about 7 years and 43,000 commits on Servo
which is JUST a rendering engine and not any of the JS apis and it still
doesn't actually work well enough to render most sites.

------
renewiltord
Not scared of an open-source engine ruining the Internet. Not gonna happen and
I'm fine with Google doing whatever they're doing. My experience with the
Webkit gang is that they're obsessed with the consumer and privacy and all
that stuff. So much that they won't entertain any adjustments to permit
adtech. That's enough for me to be convinced that browser engine development
is sufficiently separate from Google's main business.

The real problem is when things like EME make it into the standard and you
need to use Widevine and friends to see things.

Also, I hate having to stand with people who rail against everything because
then no one takes you seriously when there is a thing that needs railing
against.

Given that and given that my life is short, I'm not going to lose any sleep
over this.

~~~
saagarjha
> open-source engine

An open-source engine that is under majority control by one company.

> Not gonna happen

It is already happening!

> So much that they won't entertain any adjustments to permit adtech.

The WebKit team has created special features to essentially restore things
lost with ITP, and really has no other purpose to exist:
[https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-
att...](https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-
for-the-web/)

~~~
int_19h
WebKit is Apple, not Google, no?

~~~
saagarjha
For the most part, yes. Were you confused about something?

~~~
int_19h
The OP was talking about WebKit in the context of "an open-source engine
ruining the Internet", and how "browser engine development is sufficiently
separate from Google's main business".

------
gscott
Chrome is without a question the new IE. Worse then IE now that Chrome tracks
your Google login directly in the browser and takes away functionality if you
don't login. IE forced all other browsers to follow its standards and guess
what... Chrome does the same thing.

~~~
ineedasername
Except IE was ripe for disruption due to a fairly poor customer experience.
Various web apps of the time wouldn't work in different versions. It was slow,
and frequently locked up completely needing a force-quit or, worse, hard
reboot. Chrome isn't in that same sort of position.

~~~
CarbyAu
While true, I feel it is simply a more competent prison.

------
scoot_718
> Chrome has plenty of ideas of what's "next" for the web -

I mean, I feel like that's so much worse.

------
Hitton
It would be easier to not believe accusations like [0], if google didn't
squander it's reputation of not doing evil long time ago.

[0]: [https://fossbytes.com/google-accused-of-sabotaging-
microsoft...](https://fossbytes.com/google-accused-of-sabotaging-microsofts-
edge-browser-by-ex-engineer/)

~~~
jeffbee
Quite a bit of sloppy reasoning there. If I add a DIV to my page and it stops
your video acceleration, that's because your browser engine sucks.

~~~
asddubs
all browser engines suck in specific enough circumstances, though

------
gitgud
Many comments are saying _it 's not a technical issue_, I think it is. Chrome
is mostly developed as an open-source project (chromium), meaning features and
bugs are transparently discussed and fixed. Compare that to IE which was
closed source, meaning nothing was fixed...

~~~
wolco
Ever get your ideas on the roadmap? Ever add new features or change how
chromium or how google chrome works. I didn't think so.

Open source doesn't mean you have any infuence or say in the future of the
project. It only means you can take a copy make changes and roll your own
version.

The roadmap changes the internet unhealthy ways.

~~~
gitgud
> _" Open source doesn't mean you have any influence or say in the future of
> the project. It only means you can take a copy make changes and roll your
> own version."_

Exactly, just because you have a change you want, doesn't mean you can force
in on everyone. The maintainers of the project decide weather they want it or
not.

Unfortunately the best open-source projects have some-kind of [1] top-down
control. For example; _Linux_ is developed the same way. You can fork and
submit changes, but there's no guarantee that Linus Torvald's will accept
those changes....

What would be a better alternative? Developing in behind closed doors? Some
kind of democratic system of implementing features... these projects usually
suck as there's nobody in charge and it tries to please too many people.

Anyway, it's definitely better than the IE situation, which was much less
transparent and resistant to changes... with absolutely ZERO input from the
community...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life)

------
JMTQp8lwXL
Seems reasonable enough to me. If URLs were no longer a thing, for what reason
would I Google anything? How would google create results if they couldn't
crawl publicly accessible websites? The value of the search engine and a
public internet seem hand-in-hand.

~~~
djxfade
Well if Google is already hosting all the content in their walled garden (see
AMP), this would still be able to crawl the content, and even be able to be
the exclusive platform that could crawl that content (in theory)

~~~
xnx
This is probably straying a little off-topic, but AMP seems nothing like a
walled garden when compared to Facebook, Instagram, or Apple app store.

~~~
jeffbee
AMP is nothing like a walled garden, period. Anyone can host it.

------
ourcat
Back in the day IE always had an 'advantage' purely by the name: 'Internet
Explorer'.

When people 'got a computer' to 'get on the internet', seeing that icon on the
desktop got them where the thought they needed to be.

Very, very few people, even years after after Chrome and Firefox came out,
even knew they had a choice over the (browser) matter of getting 'on the web'.
(There are some classic videos out there of voxpops of people being asked
about 'the web' and 'the internet' etc.)

(To begin with, for me, it was Spry Mosaic then Netscape from about '93.)

~~~
Lammy
Internet Explorer 3 was even more blatant — its desktop icon label was "The
Internet"! [https://i.imgur.com/uq1AW2I.png](https://i.imgur.com/uq1AW2I.png)

------
mdoms
As long as AMP exists then Google can not be trusted stewards of the web.

------
m0zg
Twitter bio: "Web Standards at Google in my spare time".

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
on his not understanding it.

------
sukilot
Someone's going to get a friendly email from in house counsel tomorrow
morning....

------
EugeneOZ
Author doesn't understand what "the new IE" actually means.

~~~
KarimDaghari
What does it mean? (Honest question)

~~~
EugeneOZ
alias of the internet for users, main target for devs and designers. Chrome is
the new IE.

~~~
rossjudson
Uh...no. Perhaps you weren't there.

Microsoft wanted IE to be a wedge to drive Windows into enterprises. An open,
standards-based web threatened that quite deeply (particularly one where the
experiences that could be created could rival desktop apps).

Microsoft adopted a two-pronged approach. One was the inclusion of IE into the
operating system to ensure the ground was seeded, and IE would be ubiquitous
(keep in mind this was prior to Apple products being a realistic alternative
in enterprise settings, so it was PC/Windows everywhere).

The second part was investing significant engineering efforts into ensuring
that Windows- and Office-specific capabilities could emerge through IE (and
only IE).

For example, if you wanted vector graphics you could use Office to produce VML
and that could be viewed through IE (only). Pointedly, IE did _not_ support
SVG, which was the other major vector graphics standard at the time.

This neatly (and painfully) fragmented the market for anyone who wanted to
produce vector graphics as part of a solution. You had to find a way to
support VML and SVG if you wanted that to happen (and many early graphical
toolkits for the web did precisely that).

All development for IE was conducted as closed source. Microsoft had no
particular interest in making the browser compatible with the web standards,
because as synergy between Windows and IE created a development target with
benefits for Microsoft. Nobody else could create an equivalent to IE that
would replicate the Microsoft-specific capabilities. The lack of standards-
support created stickiness that kept IE around for a long time, because
enterprises couldn't (or didn't feel like paying for) the changes necessary to
bring apps into standards compliance.

A wholesale shift towards Adobe Flash was made a big crack in IE's armor.
Flash ran everywhere, and sophisticated solutions could be built with it. Real
web standards also made a lot of progress, and IE's creaking old engine was
easily outperformed and "out-standarded" by Chrome. The subsequent rise of
Apple and fall of Flash cemented Chrome (and Safari) as solid performers that
could be used to deliver enterprise solutions and worked on multiple
platforms.

Is Chrome the new IE? Well, is Chrome being used to drive Google-specific
functionality that can only be used with other Google technologies, and can't
be implemented elsewhere? Does Chrome actively avoid standards? Is Chrome
actively attempting to fragment the standards? Is Chrome developed as closed
source?

The thing is, Microsoft's strategy stood a pretty good chance of working. I'm
always amazed at how IE stuck around when there were better alternatives, and
how long it took before market pressure forced Microsoft towards web
standards. A lot of money was spent on Enterprise Windows, and a lot of
solutions used Microsoft-specific parts of IE. Enterprise dollars cast a long
shadow, over time.

------
earthboundkid
Node is the new IE.

No support for fetch. Has its own non-standard APIs. Doesn’t implement basics
like atob.

------
The_rationalist
Chromium is the exact opposite of internet explorer: Internet Explorer slowed
down progress by getting low human resources, chromium on the other hand has
more human resources than any browser has ever had (especially since Microsoft
joined them) and enrich the web through new features at an unprecedented pace.
Internet explorer was stagnation while chromium is making the web a better
platform in real-time

The new IE obviously is webkit which miraculously can still run most
websites,but for how long? After the mozilla lay offs, it's probable that they
will slowly but surely get massive webcompat issues too

~~~
userbinator
You call it "stagnation", I call it "stability" \--- something that seems to
be ignored or even actively discouraged by a lot of these "modern" trends.

~~~
esperent
I also call it stagnation. Stability suggests that you are in a good place and
don't need to move on. IE was anything but a good place, in particular for the
people that had to build things for it. Not all modern trends in web dev are
good, but there have been many, many quality of life improvements for
developers and users alike since IE finally stopped being so ubiquitously
supported.

~~~
userbinator
It was definitely a much better place back then for everyone who did not have
to rely on IE, since the heavy abuse of JS was not common and sites were far
simpler and more content-focused as a result.

