I've cursed IE every bit as the next guy, but your hatred is astonishingly misguided. ActiveX aside, during '96 through '00, Microsoft innovated web properties more than any browser since. It wasn't until standards zealots and the DOJ were breathing down Microsofts back that MS fell into a rut.

And how are those standards working for us today? Still stuck in '99 with 4.01. HTML innovation stalled time and again. ECMAScript innovation stalled time and again. CSS innovation stalled time and again. Staggered feature support everywhere -- not just IE.

Let's face it, every "standard" at the front of web browsing has, for the better part, failed. I'm no proponent for Flash -- in particular, how some people use it, but Macromedia/Adobe got it right -- moving extraordinarily fast compared to the glacial pace at which the Microsoft, Mozilla, or the W3C have moved.

How have those standards worked out for us today?

Now I can develop for Firefox, and know it is going to work in Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc... I know it is going to work on most mobile devices, TVs, and iPads.

We can do amazing things like Google Mail, which is still faster and better than Outlook. All these without having to worry about ActiveX crashing the browser.

I am not sure what you are looking at, maybe you are only interested in Flash games and vector animation.

> Now I can develop for Firefox, and know it is going to work in Safari, Opera, Chrome, etc...

Not in my experience; there are all sorts of nooks and crannies that catch you out between those browsers (not that IE isn't worse of course :))

Let's talk about "standards" clear (working drafts) throat...

I seriously doubt one can innovate on the web, without using cross-browser hacks to only support the non-IE crowd. Even "standards" as simple as the DOM would have you jumping through hoops, but don't believe me... http://ejohn.org/blog/the-dom-is-a-mess/.

Or something as simple as .nodeName from the HTML 5 spec? http://ejohn.org/blog/nodename-case-sensitivity/

How about something as "simple" as border-radius? That's right, I can easily make a mess of every browser.

Google Mail, as a browser front-end, is only amazing by virtue of innovations made by Microsoft and very little to do with anything since. Little to do with "standards" of today. Faster than Outlook? No; how? Better? Sure, but only because it is more accessible to me. Nothing to do with ActiveX, or shall I pontificate how GMail sucks because Firefox is a hungry beast and crashes under its own weight? No, that would make zero sense.

I am looking to create good and fun websites and not sitting around to complain about how my job isn't made easy, because every browser has different levels of support. And believe me, I've been waiting a long time -- longer than you seem to grok -- for the W3C to "standardize" vector animation. Still waiting. Can't wait for the web to be free of these working groups and zealots.

OK, so your point is that it is not perfect? Well what API is?

Things are a lot better than they have been, things are getting better every year.

Correct, and all I am presenting is that it is very shortsighted to suggest IE hasn't, doesn't, or won't innovate. And frankly, and again, the IE4 through IE6 era saw more innovation (and speed of innovation) than we have seen since. It's hardly Microsoft's fault they were asked to stop innovating, after IE6, and it is much less their fault no one has been "innovating" until just recently.

Flash filled -- fills -- a lot of gaps.

ECMA tried to make a splash with CLI.

Me? I stopped support of IE6, outside of what is easily hidden in libraries / wrappers, which means I can support almost everything still. As well, I use, support, and contribute to Chromium.

The issue with pointing out MS innovations from over a decade ago is that the only thing that matters with web technology is what's happening NOW. IE refuses to keep up with the way things are headed, and has essentially made its previous accomplishments irrelevant.

How is this even true? The IE8 and IE9 teams have been making great strides to get back into the game. Again, it is only "standards" groups and the DOJ that forced Microsoft's hand out of innovating the browser space. Just look at IE's filter or behavior system(s), if you are unfamiliar with or have forgotten how IE innovated long before we had all been told to wait for a standard to be established -- every bit as "standard" as the now -moz, -o, -webkit key-prefixes.

Besides, the question was whether IE has held innovation. They have not. They were asked to stop for deliberations; they did; we are still waiting. It's hardly Microsoft's fault IE6 was so innovative that "NOW" browsers have yet to move against IE like IE moved against its competitors during the years of IE4 and IE6 (IE5 Mac).

The point being, waiting for "standards" to be signed, sealed, and delivered is all that has been holding back innovation. Once out of that rut, we can start pushing cool technology. ECMA CLI in browsers? Now that is innovation, snuffed.

The DOJ settlement hardly forced Microsoft to stop innovating or investing in the browser.

Microsoft did that on their own, and are now finding it hard to just pull even with everyone else.

Nice revisionist history though, the DOJ is a nice scapegoat to cover for the fact that they did nothing with IE until recently.

Why did the DOJ decision not affect recent innovation, then?

Right. Specious argument. Gotcha.

In fact, the MS v. DOJ case paved the way for heavy, government regulation in an industry that was relatively free of government. (Re: http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v21n2/friedman.html)

We don't want IE "innovating". If the W3C and anti-trust investigations achieved that then great. You seem to think that GMail on my phone or linux machine is somehow thanks to Microsoft trying to tie the web to ActiveX, and therefore Windows. What it is really thanks to is guerilla standardisation by the other browsers, reverse engineering the dominant browser to deliver value to users while Redmond slept.

Please don't mindlessly repeat Microsoft's line about having to wait for standards to be signed, sealed, and delivered. It's just spin. They have a broken development model (and a financial interest in holding back the web) and that is no-one's fault but their own.

On contrary, "we" want nothing of the sort. Maybe those too young to remember the advances made from IE4 through IE6, those may not understand how Microsoft set up how you and I use the web today. You seem to be missing the point. It's not Microsoft's job to make GMail work on your phone or linux; _however_, Microsoft's pushing the buck (even if proprietary) did push the browser market forward leaps and bounds. GMail hinges heavily on a little technology we know as XMLHTTP. Take a guess who championed the tech; take a guess how long before standards zealots published a specification draft. (MS '99; W3C '06)

Redmond has been sleeping, no doubt. But that is neither here nor there. It's refreshing to see other browser teams giving the IE team a run for their money and whipping them into shape -- they've been needing that for almost 10 years, finally getting them off their laurels. Competition is the best part of the space, and that should include innovative APIs (not yet standard) that us engineers can exploit to make our applications better, faster, or stronger. I'm certainly not going to wait for some standards committee to deliberate for 8 years over some monolithic spec that every browser will get wrong anyhow, as history has shown.

Yes, I know about XmlHttpRequest, that's the guerrilla standardisation of Windows-only ActiveX features I was talking about. Relevant historical timeline is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest#History_and_supp...

You'll note the browsers implemented it before standardisation, as is traditional and sensible despite Microsoft's fervent myth-making to the contrary.

(I note that you now seem to be claiming that IE was simply resting on its laurels in a turtle vs hare fashion, rather than being forced into retirement by over-regulation)

Fuck IE, it just needs to be called what it truly is: a failure, a blight on the web, a cynical door stop to lock in the desktop cash cow monopoly.

I hope Microsoft falls for the thousands of hours they've forced me to waste over the course of years of web development. I ain't getting that time back! As much as Apple now holds the champion belt for hating software developers, Microsoft was the original baddy.