BBC News reports "Mark your diaries for 4 March because in Denver the funeral arrangements are well underway for the planned passing that day of Internet Explorer 6". There's a phobia of being buried alive but I think in this case, it's the living that are all too quick to be shoveling the dirt over as IE6 doesn't officially die until 2014 when Microsoft pull the life-support.
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Member since:2005-12-04
What about "works with any browser"?
Like the original poster, I can't help but be bemused - an enthusiast site promoting operating systems diversity has become intolerant of browser diversity (at a time when to many, the browser is becoming the operating system.)
In any diverse ecosystem there will be "better" and "worse" participants (whatever that means.) The real issue here is not IE or IE6, but whether people believe that the web should be a platform that is open to anyone, or whether the web should be reserved for people doing the "right thing" (whatever that means.)
On a more technical note, HTML was designed to intelligently degrade when a feature is not present on the renderer. CSS2 really broke that, because if a style is partially supported the result may no longer be legible or correct. This, IMO, is what makes IE6 hard to support. The problem is not (entirely) with IE; the problem is that current web standards demand 100% conformance to have a useful implementation. This is not very open-web-like, and results in very rapid obsoleteness. It certainly discourages the web from being used in expensive hardware (car, fridge, whatever) because doing so demands unsustainably frequent replacement.
Member since:2005-11-10
Member since:2006-02-05
Two problems.
First, there are loads of things that make the day to day life of a web developer easier. IE doesn't support a lot of them, while every other browser does a fine job with it. Supporting IE means you can't use those things, not supporting IE (but supporting every other browser) and you don't have that problem, unless you are talking about really bleeding edge stuff.
Second problem is that it is very buggy. Every browser has js and css bugs, but IE6 sort of took it to the next level.
As soon as IE6 goes away, it substantially raises the lowest common denominator (which will be IE7), and dramatically reduces the amount of hackery needed to get everything looking right.
Member since:2006-01-02
Er, what about the random javascript error dialogs for CSS settings? Or that even when used with javascript properly, you could often get many dialogs in a row on a page load, or with an event on a dynamic page.
What about the crashing? That's never good, and it seemed to get more common with each hundredth added on to 4's release version number.
Personally, I preferred the Netscape UI. Even so, IE won that round somewhat fairly.
"In the first episode of Microsoft's new film series 'On the Whiteboard', Editor Pamela Woon chats with two-time Oscar winner Randy Thom about the (often underestimated) importance of sound in human-technology interactions. Thom, the lead sound designer at Skywalker Ranch who worked on films such as The Incredibles, Castaway and Forrest Gump, says that people rarely consider the significance of those signature sounds that come from their trusty devices, whether it be a cell phone, a computer or a tablet."
"Microsoft has sensationally abandoned its controversial plans to restrict the sharing of XBox One games, and has also removed daily online authentication requirements for its forthcoming console", reports The Guardian. They had no choice. Still a good move."A snippet of code in the Steam digital distribution platform has revealed that Valve may be planning to let users easily share their games with friends in the future. The Verge has verified the code's authenticity, which was originally spotted by a member of the NeoGAF gaming forum; the code references a 'shared game library' and a notification that would alert a user when their games are currently in use by a borrower." This would change the, uh, game.
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane."MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Member since:
2005-11-10
IE6’s UI is what made it win over Netscape. IE6 was a breath of fresh air compared to Netscape. It wasn’t until Firefox was released that anything came along that was closely simple enough for IE6 users to want to adopt.
IE6’s toolbar is a good thing. What is wrong with IE6 is everything else. It’s slow, insecure and is a nightmare to code for. If IE6 had a decent rendering engine, then I would not find complaint with its UI. That is why ChromeFrame is a good thing.
Engine-wise; there’s still IE7/8, and IE8 is not too shabby and I really do hold out hope that IE9 will be a much needed return to a competitive IE.