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0 pointsmattmanser6y ago0 comments

And IE6 was similarly tons better the Netscape Navigator. It had XmlHttp, inventing Ajax, which revolutionised the web.

Easy to forget that now.

Also, did you know IE6 pioneered the browser web dev tools? IE6 was the first browser you could debug your JavaScript, css and html, which was copied by firebug about 12 months later. I can't even remember what it was called now, IE Dev toolbox? Something strange, you had to download it separately.

And Firebug and Chrome Dev tools copied it almost verbatim. I've never seen any sort of acknowledgement of just how much the community owes to that early tool. The announcement blogs about it were still accessible a few years ago.

0 comments

amiga-workbench6y ago

It was the Developer Toolbar, I've got a pet project that I'm making compatible with IE5 and its challenging to work without it.

yellowapple6y ago

What kind of project in this day and age would require IE5 compatibility?

amiga-workbench6y ago

Its not a commercial project, just an alternate (lightweight) front end for a forum and I wanted to prove to myself that old versions of IE weren't as bad to develop for as I remember.

The truth ended up being somewhere in the middle, I was reminded of rendering errors that I had long forgotten, but all in all it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It helps that I'm just building a website in the classic sense, not a blob of JavaScript that happens to puke out HTML, and when I run into something that's awkward to implement I can just adjust the design to work with what I have.

I realise that's not something a lot of people in a commercial job would have had the luxury of doing.

1 more reply

forgotmypw36y ago

IE6 also had the first reasonably performant CSS/DOM implementation that was not just bolted on... Unless Opera 3.x came before?

mattmanserOP6y ago

I made a pivot table implementation in IE6 that used XSLT transforms.

It was actually blazing quick, far, far faster than the JS implementation I tried (like instant vs 20 seconds). While XSLT was hard to develop in and perhaps deserves to die its death, it really was a quite amazing bit of tech.

TheKarateKid6y ago

I'm pretty sure Netscape Navigator had a Javascript debugger built-in back in v3.0, which was way before IE6.

mattmanserOP6y ago

You're right, looks like it did have an installable debugger way back when:

http://www.rdwarf.com/users/wwonko/jscript/jsd.pdf

Although the Developer Toolbar had dom explorer and all that jazz, way more than a console, it really was amazing when I first used it.

Here's the release blogs:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2005/09/16/developer-too...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2007/05/10/internet-expl...

umvi6y ago

Easy to forget because I was in elementary school when Netscape Navigator was a thing

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsmattmanser6y ago0 comments

And IE6 was similarly tons better the Netscape Navigator. It had XmlHttp, inventing Ajax, which revolutionised the web.

Easy to forget that now.

0 comments

amiga-workbench6y ago

It was the Developer Toolbar, I've got a pet project that I'm making compatible with IE5 and its challenging to work without it.

yellowapple6y ago

What kind of project in this day and age would require IE5 compatibility?

amiga-workbench6y ago

Its not a commercial project, just an alternate (lightweight) front end for a forum and I wanted to prove to myself that old versions of IE weren't as bad to develop for as I remember.

I realise that's not something a lot of people in a commercial job would have had the luxury of doing.

1 more reply

forgotmypw36y ago

IE6 also had the first reasonably performant CSS/DOM implementation that was not just bolted on... Unless Opera 3.x came before?

mattmanserOP6y ago

I made a pivot table implementation in IE6 that used XSLT transforms.

TheKarateKid6y ago

I'm pretty sure Netscape Navigator had a Javascript debugger built-in back in v3.0, which was way before IE6.

mattmanserOP6y ago

You're right, looks like it did have an installable debugger way back when:

http://www.rdwarf.com/users/wwonko/jscript/jsd.pdf

Although the Developer Toolbar had dom explorer and all that jazz, way more than a console, it really was amazing when I first used it.

Here's the release blogs:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2005/09/16/developer-too...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2007/05/10/internet-expl...

umvi6y ago

Easy to forget because I was in elementary school when Netscape Navigator was a thing

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse