Comments on: Some Internet Explorer Innovations You Probably Forgot About While Waiting for IE6 To Die

By: Tom Drummond

Tom Drummond — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:18:56 +0000

Godwin's Law in only two comments? Impressive!

I knew about XMLHttpRequest but I didn't realise the others had originated in IE. Hopefully now that there's some competition will see more innovation from them as all those features came out when battling against Netscape

By: S2B

S2B — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:34:58 +0000

Another interesting fact is that IE5/Mac was one of the first browsers who supported tabbed browsing…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac#Internet_Explorer_5_for_Mac_Distinguishing_features

By: Konstantin

Konstantin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:37:18 +0000

Yep. There was a time when IE6 was top-notch and developers kept struggling with Netscape 4.7 and even Mozilla 0.9.x.

By: rob

rob — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:48:05 +0000

By: rob

rob — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:43:39 +0000

i'm not trying to accomplish much of anything and I definitely wasn't trying to connect any of these features to IE6, hence the versions clealry stated in each description. all I'm really trying to do is share some trivia. when talking about this stuff with folks i'm working with I find they're often interested/surprised at the origin of certain html/css/javascript language features.

By: John Bishop

John Bishop — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:09:46 +0000

I'm not sure what this post is trying to accomplish. I appreciate that you're trying to be the Voice of Clear Vision here, but, first off, none of the listed innovations are IE6-specific.

And, as someone who has just spent his last twelve development hours debugging IE6-specific *bugs*, and who still isn't finished doing so — because 27% of the slack-jawed morons who frequent the Web site I'm working on *still* use IE6, despite the easy and free availability of superior software — this whole thing is a little like trying to be positive in the face of one of the crappiest moments of Internet history.

It feels like saying, "Hey, you know, Hitler was a bad guy and all, and I'm against him, you bet, but let's not forget that he actually was a pretty talented artist and helped start Volkswagen!" Um, okay.

I put this information in the same category. Interesting from a perverse standpoint, but, I swear to God, if I knew which bunker IE6 was cowering in, I'd bomb it myself. If I were a Gypsy, I'd curse the thing, its makers, and its remaining users.

I consider this a restrained, low-key response in comparison to how I actually feel.

By: Paul Irish

Paul Irish — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:34:08 +0000

Excellent summary. This was quite needed.

Despite making (thus far) shitty browsers.. they certainly have innovated with their features. Many times in good ways.