
Internet Explorer Is Evil (2002) - kn0where
http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html
======
Timpy
> Microsoft forced people to install their browser, and other tasteless
> things.

> Windows 95 was also heavily about choice.

I recently received a tech support phone call from my mother because her
"computer was showing an error that she only has one drive working, and it's
really slow. I need all my drives!" Windows computers are throwing errors now
if you don't have OneDrive configured. Tasteless. I'm so sick of this.

I don't want OneDrive, I don't want Teams, I don't want a 3d Objects folder. I
don't want my computer to schedule its own restart, I don't want my
(supposedly) sleeping computer to randomly play an "error" sound. I don't want
my login screen to default to PIN instead of passwords. A young version of me
considered Microsoft superior because unlike Apple, I felt like I could make
choices about my environment. I just gave my mom a laptop with Linux Mint
installed, I changed all of the mint icons to windows icons, I renamed Libre
office programs to their Microsoft office counterparts. We'll see how this
experiment goes.

~~~
progval
> I don't want my computer to schedule its own restart

I understand it's annoying, but as someone who deals with spam, I prefer that
Microsoft forces people to apply security upgrades on their home computers.

~~~
Timpy
It's possible to keep security up to date without imposing the tasteless crap
I've non-exhaustively listed. I would save time and pain if the only problem
Microsoft gave me was that I had to manually run security updates.

------
scottward
I wrote a song about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTzwJsHpU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTzwJsHpU8)

~~~
tagawa
Me too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FggueO2CYls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FggueO2CYls)

(Maybe there’s a whole anti-IE album’s worth out there?)

~~~
scottward
Love it!

~~~
tagawa
The feeling’s mutual :-)

------
identity0
I like this remark from the first page under “history”:

> Somewhere around this point, people began spewing mindless drivel about how
> browsers would somehow magically replace operating systems eventually, and
> how in the future all applications would be "web based". This, of course,
> got Microsoft's attention.

~~~
toohotatopic
Interestingly, MS is embracing the web now with MS Teams whereas Apple, which
has started iOS with web based apps, is almost discontinuing their usage.

~~~
ppseafield
Indeed. Safari, once very forward thinking, now lags behind every major
browser in features and compatibility. Apple saw progressive web apps first as
a revolutionary feature that could drive iPhone sales, and then second as a
revolutionary feature that would eat into their app store revenue.

~~~
tpetry
That‘s a misconception. Apple added the progressive web apps feature to early
iphones because people asked to develop custom apps. But rolling out a
complete custom app platform is a heavy task so web apps was a very easy
target to implement. Maybe the early iOS didnt even have a sandbox to run
untrusted apps, who knows.

------
olivierestsage
There's something beautiful and odd about reading the page about how much
"Windoze 98" sucks, in 2020, from a computer running Xubuntu with the fabulous
Chicago 95 theme[1] that brings back the old aesthetic.

[1]
[https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95](https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95)

~~~
anthk
Windows 98 with ActiveX was as obnoxious and laggish as a desktop environment
made with Electron today.

You could disable it in a breeze and get a good boost.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
From article:

>Somewhere around this point, people began spewing mindless drivel about how
browsers would somehow magically replace operating systems eventually, and how
in the future all applications would be "web based".

From you:

>a desktop environment made with Electron today.

A browser DE would be great. ;w; A crossplatform shell with the same tray and
file manager and everything? Wherein I can _open_ a browser and play
crossplatform browser games[0]?

When pls

0: [https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/](https://wasm.continuation-
labs.com/d3demo/)

~~~
zrm
What would really be interesting is a library that uses the browser for only
the UI, and is otherwise basically language-independent. So like Qt or GTK
except let the browser do all the gnarly platform-specific parts.

Then the UI is compiled to javascript, which means it's portable and looks the
same on every platform, but you can actually write your program in a less
brain-damaged language like Rust or Python (or C or whatever you like).

~~~
cycloptic
The Broadway backend for GTK roughly does that. Qt5 apps can also be compiled
to wasm now.

[https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-
broadway.html](https://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/stable/gtk-broadway.html)

[https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_WebAssembly](https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_WebAssembly)

------
acheron
And now we’re back in the “this page works best with” days.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
If you told me 5 years ago that in 2020 I'd have to argue with my engineering
team to get them to test in more than one browser I'd have laughed in your
face, yet here we are.

------
zaro
Adjusted for inflation:

Chrome Is Evil (2020)

------
tech-historian
A deep dive into Internet Explorer's design history:

[https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/internet-
explorer](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/internet-explorer)

------
spiritplumber
Is Chrome evil?

~~~
userbinator
A deeper evil... for all the hate IE got, at least it didn't try to track and
monetise its users nor treated them like idiots (compare the options dialog of
IE to Chrome for a stark contrast, and then with Edge for even more sadness.)

~~~
rosywoozlechan
Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors. It was great for
users, a free browser! And it was great for developers, it spearheaded DHTML
and browser based application development with powerful for the time ActiveX
controls. If you didn't mind that stuff being non-standard, and as a dev I
just liked doing cool stuff with tech.

It wasn't until 2005 when they stopped caring about making browsers better and
it started lagging behind Firefox in all the new design fads at the time -
transparent PNGs, rounded corners - and the dev tools couldn't keep up with
Firebug. That is when IE started to be annoying, in my opinion anyway.

~~~
echelon
> Initially, IE was only ever evil for Netscape investors.

Not true. IE was part of the embrace-extend-extinguish campaign when Microsoft
wanted to win computing and the nascent World Wide Web. Thankfully, the
antitrust case threw them for a loop and they never realized their dream.

I'm convinced that if they'd have won that case they'd have squashed Google,
Apple wouldn't have had its chance to thrive, and the web would look like a
Microsoft version of AOL.

We'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile.

Balmer lacked the tenacity and the vision of Gates (you can see it in the
historical stock price), and the government forced them from building an
unstoppable empire.

We need the DOJ to revisit antitrust and direct it at Google, Apple, Facebook,
and Amazon. They're using their power and platform to disenfranchise and
steal, just like Microsoft wanted and historically enjoyed:

\- App stores need to stop being an exclusive gate and required tax.

\- You can't lie to your customers about ad impressions or views, nor can you
disregard robot and fake account activity when it benefits your bottom line.

\- You can't control the world's most popular browser and be the default
search engine, most widespread ad platform, and most popular mobile operating
system.

It's all bad behavior that hurts small and independent business as well as the
web.

Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently, and Nadella is absolutely
killing it. There's no reason the other giants can't be more open. Google
doesn't need Chrome as a moat.

~~~
userbinator
_We 'd be using MSN messenger, Hotmail, and Windows Mobile._

With Messenger, the official client wasn't that bad, and MSNP was a
surprisingly nice and simple protocol --- plenty of third-party clients were
available, and I wrote one too.

Perhaps if Microsoft got Windows Mobile out first, it would be more like WinCE
and not the locked-down iOS/Android clone that it tried to chase after.

 _Microsoft has played surprisingly nice recently_

I wouldn't call their user-hostile spyware/adware OS "nice", nor let all the
stuff they're open-sourcing[1] distract from the fact that MS is tryng to head
towards being a Google too.

[1] The fact that people have been modding DOS/Windows and applications for
literally decades without source suggests the value of it is not as high as
the FSF and so forth would believe.

~~~
cycloptic
Modding DOS/Windows and other closed-source applications is really not
comparable to having the fully commented and documented code along with the
full VCS history. It's also almost always treading the line of copyright
infringement and it's practically guaranteed that you are going to be dealing
with a hostile upstream that will try to sabotage your modding attempts.

------
MaxBarraclough
In defence of IE: it's the only browser that's able to view YouTube videos in
1080P without stuttering, on my rather old laptop running Windows 10. Firefox,
Vivaldi, and Blink-powered Edge, all tend to stutter. At best they run with
higher CPU usage.

YouTube tells me they will soon be retiring support for IE, though.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
IE had 94% market share at around 2001. Chrome, even including all the
Chromuim-derived browsers, doesn't come close to that level of monopoly,
thanks primarily to Apple Safari and Firefox. But anyway they have majority
and it is bad. As an operating system though, Windows has never been as bad in
human rights department as Android or iOS. You could always (and still can)
install/uninstall any program, and modify the system all you want. Not so with
Android. A lot of crap spyware can't be uninstalled at all.

------
alexfromapex
Similar story for the office suite. Microsoft keeps a lion share of the
desktop market trapped using their office software by using anti-competitive
practices like switching to new formats like docx, xslx, etc. once other
office software successfully reverse-engineered the formats like .doc because
they know if they lose the office software market they’ll slowly lose the
desktop OS market.

~~~
saagarjha
DOCX/PPTX/XLSX are standardized:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML)

~~~
alexfromapex
HTML, CSS, and JS are also standardized but IE & Edge go in their own
direction whenever it suits them. Show me office software that has perfect
compatibility with Microsoft’s office software and I’ll retract everything
I’ve said.

~~~
saagarjha
Do you have the same complaints about PDF?

~~~
cookiengineer
Given the market share of how many (cross platform, cross architecture)
exploits can be delivered through pdf payload... I would say yes, Imho I
totally have the same complaints about pdf.

------
Gravityloss
It was such a powerful generational phenomenon that kids have heard of it even
if they have no direct experience:
[https://youtu.be/8ucCxtgN6sc?t=188](https://youtu.be/8ucCxtgN6sc?t=188)

------
ChrisArchitect
2002? c'mon. What, are we trying to show this old site is still
running/historical artifact maybe? meh

