I didn’t start dev until after the chrome hegemony but I assume ie was only compliant because MS was the one writing the standards. Much like how chrome is essentially the defacto standard now.
Comment on I remember
Katana314@lemmy.world 4 days ago
As a web dev, I feel awkward reminiscing about the things period of web history when IE was a solidly built, standards-compliant browser.
It was like the IE team saw their history was causing them to lose all market share, and committed to fixing misdeeds since they held an underdog position. But for most, it was too little too late.
For several years, I tested in IE, not Chrome, because it was most strictly standards-compliant, and I could be sure that if it worked there, it would work in other browsers. (Now, if you use Edge, it’s just a repaint of Chrome)
tempest@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Katana314@lemmy.world 4 days ago
At this point in time, Chrome was jumping bounds ahead of the others with standards, and most websites were specifically written for webkit, even beginning to disregard Firefox. Worse, Chrome was often going back and forth on how a certain new standard should implement, leading to, for instance, CSS files declaring 7 or 8 different ways of doing a linear-gradient.
Your sentiment on Microsoft isn’t unique, which is part of why the web consortium wasn’t actually keen on listening to them most of the time. Them having monetary/OS influence didn’t actually lead to a lot on the W3C - they went ahead of them for most ActiveX work.
chrisashtear@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
It was really hard to use ie at the time. I worked at lockheed making a javascript repair sim, and it took 3 minutes to load in IE vs 10 secobds in chrome
ThunderComplex@lemmy.today 4 days ago
IE also never woulda pioneered shit like WebUSB
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
I miss presto and the old opera browser
hansolo@lemmy.today 4 days ago
I loved Opera for a good couple of years. Came back to it around 2007 and I was shocked at what it became.
Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
I rather enjoyed 2002-2003 opera. It had tabs and mouse gestures.