Re:The Web is the Next Platform (1995)
by uk_programmer on Wednesday April 01, 2020 @06:01PM
(#22753972)
As others have said here. This history has been retconned quite a bit. TBH people talk about the lawsuit back in 2001, my memory is hazy but outside of the internet it was barely spoken of.
IE was a much better browser than Netscape and until Firefox, Mozilla wasn't really used outside of Linux distros.
> For a long time, all projects were IE-first, then you would worry about niche upstarts like Firefox.
This isn't quite true. Many of the early adopters of Firefox was web devs and enthusiasts and typically I developed on there first (mainly because of firebug) and as I went along I checked that IE worked. However I started my career just after IE7 was released.
> It wasn't until the launch of Chrome and Safari and the resurgence of Apple and OSX that there was any plausible alternative.
No not really (at least not in the UK). I noticed things shifting after the prevalence of smart phones. Chrome came out much later than Firefox and things were already starting to shift in Firefox's favour (non-IE browsers were getting upto 30% of traffic).
> IE wasn't "extra work", it was the primary objective.
That really wasn't my experience at all. But as I said I started my career near the end of IE's dominance.
IE was a much better browser than Netscape and until Firefox, Mozilla wasn't really used outside of Linux distros.
> For a long time, all projects were IE-first, then you would worry about niche upstarts like Firefox.
This isn't quite true. Many of the early adopters of Firefox was web devs and enthusiasts and typically I developed on there first (mainly because of firebug) and as I went along I checked that IE worked. However I started my career just after IE7 was released.
> It wasn't until the launch of Chrome and Safari and the resurgence of Apple and OSX that there was any plausible alternative.
No not really (at least not in the UK). I noticed things shifting after the prevalence of smart phones. Chrome came out much later than Firefox and things were already starting to shift in Firefox's favour (non-IE browsers were getting upto 30% of traffic).
> IE wasn't "extra work", it was the primary objective.
That really wasn't my experience at all. But as I said I started my career near the end of IE's dominance.