Internet Explorer 3.0 is 25 years old. One of its devs recalls how it ended marriages – and launched amazing careers
- Reference: 1629100684
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/08/16/internet_explorer_3_25th_birthday/
- Source link:
The launch of Internet Explorer 3.0 was an important event in the so-called "browser wars" between Microsoft and Netscape.
For those who weren't there, or who have forgotten, in 1993 developers at the at National Center for Supercomputing Applications thought the World Wide Web could be quite big if it were easier to use – say, with a browser that sported a GUI rather than a text interface.
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That effort produced a browser called "Mosaic" and one of its developers – a chap named Marc Andreessen – quickly productized it as Mosaic Netscape and started a company to market it.
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Netscape took off, as did the web.
Microsoft, meanwhile, was scarcely aware the web existed, and a browser was not on the to-do list for its massive push to create Windows 95 and give the world a cut of Windows that improved on the illogical nonsense that was Windows 3.1. Microsoft felt that Windows 95 was the product that would see it reach Bill Gates's goal of "A microcomputer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software".
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But as Netscape grew in popularity and the potential for a GUI-driven web became ever-more apparent, Microsoft knew it could only achieve that goal if Windows 95 included a web browser. So it created Internet Explorer.
Versions 1 and 2 were included in add-on packs for Windows 95. But they were modest performers and lacked features available in Netscape.
So Microsoft created an internal start-up to build a browser capable of competing with Netscape.
[5]Microsoft wonders if disabling just-in-time compilation of JavaScript improves browser security
[6]In a complete non-surprise, Mozilla hammers final nail in FTP's coffin by removing it from Firefox
[7]Microsoft releases Windows 11 Insider Preview, attempts to defend labyrinth of hardware requirements
Which is where Partovi comes in, with a [8]long Twitter thread recalling the genesis of Internet Explorer 3.0.
Partovi explains that Bill Gates wrote a company-wide memo that declared IE was critical, and telling all other development teams to get behind it.
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"Our inboxes exploded, but it made us feel important, and we worked even harder."
To motivate us more, I plastered the hallways with quotes from Netscape’s founder, Marc Andreessen: “Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.” It reminded us that this new start-up threatened to destroy all of Microsoft. — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [10]August 14, 2021
And work they did: Partovi's thread describes the development effort as a long sprint and mentions 2am foosball games designed to help developers find some extra energy.
That kind of effort had unpleasant consequences.
Sadly, there were divorces and broken families and bad things that came out of that. But I also learned that even at a 20,000-person company, you can get a team of 100 people to work like their lives depend on it. — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [11]August 14, 2021
Partovi added to the thread to point out that his mention of the divorces has been misconstrued – there were only two. He added that the experience was very rewarding.
Every member of this team considered it a highlight of their career. And there was great mutual respect with the team at Netscape who are still my friends. — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [12]August 15, 2021
And he feels that working on IE 3.0 was a great experience.
Most Microsoft engineers made $1M+ then, regardless of team. But thousands wanted to join the IE3 team just to do their best work and give their all. And thousands considered it crazy and chose other teams. Anybody who left our team was quickly hired on other teams. — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [13]August 15, 2021
He also admits that Microsoft's browser efforts would have struggled without the company's near-monopoly on desktop operating systems.
Tech history explains this to be about Microsoft’s Windows monopoly, which surely played a role. But it wouldn’t have been possible if Microsoft didn’t also learn how to work on “Internet time.” — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [14]August 14, 2021
And that monopoly appears to have created hubris.
I didn’t have the heart to watch the slow death of my baby. I left Microsoft in 1999 and joined my former competitors from Netscape to start a startup together, Tellme Networks. I finally had a chance to apply all the lessons I had learned at Microsoft. — Hadi Partovi (@hadip) [15]August 14, 2021
Partovi has left out that IE 3.0 indirectly led to Microsoft's first big set of antitrust troubles, as Microsoft made it devilishly difficult to uninstall IE and replace it with Netscape, or to put Java to work instead of Microsoft's ActiveX alternative.
IE 3.0 therefore led to the near breakup of Microsoft. The browser also offered a rather porous security model, and by the time the woeful version 6.0 came long it gave Microsoft years of trouble and a reputation of foisting shabby software on its customers.
Microsoft was eventually reduced to recommending customers uninstall IE 6.0. Your correspondent was once told, by a senior Microsoft person, that CIOs resisted that call because IE 6.0 rendered early versions of Facebook very badly – so badly that it improved staff productivity!
Partovi went on to found the Hour of Code movement and is now CEO of [16]code.org . ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/06/edge_super_duper_security_mode/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/firefox_ends_ftp_support/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/28/microsoft_windows_11_insider_preview_released/
[8] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426587407382507521
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/applications&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YRo3XnwwlKkJBIhczPYUzAAAAEg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426587406094934016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[11] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426587408267501568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[12] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426939987283496965?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[13] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426999664004403200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[14] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426587410515697664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[15] https://twitter.com/hadip/status/1426587413573378049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[16] https://code.org/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
There we no winnes only losers
Yeah it was such a fair fight, and nobody abused their market position. And because of that we have these behemoths like MS FB APL AWS and ABC.
I remember Netscape. I liked it at the time.
Then it went from okay, to bad, to worse.
The day I had to use IE to open my Netscape mail, I uninstalled Netscape.
I think that's when I switched to Firefox. Don't remember.
But I do remember having avoided using IE as much as humanly possible.
I think I still have my IE3 "Midnight Madness" t-shirt somewhere...
Tombstone for Internet Explorer on Reddit (posted by yours truly) :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sysadminhumor/comments/nihkvo/tombstone_for_internet_explorer/
The only time I tried IE was version 5.x on Solaris.
I actually quite liked it. Netscape and early Firefox were also pretty light and fast back then too so it was quite an exciting time. Browsers were improving and there was a lot of competition to do so.
Now it is just all shite. I have no idea what happened haha.
Version 4 was when IE became good. Netscape felt very dated as soon as you'd used IE4.
IE5 very little changed - just the forgotten 'channels' feature.
Then MS stopped innovating as they thought they'd won.
> This wasn’t a toxic pressure cooker of working against one’s will.
Sounds like the author was so happy with the success t hat followed, they forgot that management pressure that lead to such a toxic environment.
Just the frog not noticing the temperature rise does not mean it wasn't rising.
"Only two divorces"... and how many almost divorces?
When you accept this work place culture and accept it because of some success for someone else, makes you part of the problem.
I remember having finally got my 14,000 baud dial-up modem and my Demon Internet account details through the post (having filled in, cut out and sent off a form in the back of a book), connecting to THE INTERNET... then staring at a blank screen with a command line prompt. I phoned Demon's helpline to find out what was wrong, where was the information superhighway? to be told that was expected behaviour. I now needed to open up my browser. My what? My browser. Oh,.. what's that then?
So then a trip to Escom and £50 paid for Microsoft Plus! (sic) to get Internet Explorer 1 (that on the back of the £80 I'd recently spent on Windows 95). That was money I barely had back then - the irony was that within a year or so virtually everywhere you turned an ISP was trying push a free CD with their customised version of IE under your nose.
"the irony was that I should have taken the hint and learned to navigate at the command line."
FTFY
Point of Order.
"by the time the woeful version 6.0 came long it gave Microsoft years of trouble and a reputation of foisting shabby software on its customers."
Microsoft had a reputation of foisting shoddy software on its customers long before Gates & Co. discovered the Internet, much less attempted to create a web browser.
Re: Point of Order.
And it hasn't gotten better since.
"the mad rush to get it to market"
Ah yes, that would explain the version that was built for Windows 3.1 eating/leaking memory so badly that you had to shut Windows down after about half an hour of surfing otherwise everything crawled to a halt. I worked in IT support at the time and we'd bought licences for Netscape Navigator just before IE3 came along as a freebie.
IE also won because Netscape 4.x tried to do too much and did most of it badly. Netscape browser was decent, but they tried to throw email, usenet and $DEITY knows what functionality at it, clogging it up and slowing down the core function of web browsing. IE5 was about the time that it was actually a better experience than Netscape was and that killed it off. While ActiveX had its problems, so did Java. They both sucked, just in different ways.
As Partovi says, it then stagnated and didn't really improve until Firefox and Chrome began to be challenge them. With Edge now using the Chromium engine, they've basically admitted defeat.