The free and open web, to the extent we have it, only exists today because Microsoft wasn’t allowed to force IE, Active X, Silverlight and the rest of their technologies down everyone’s throat. Oh, and JScript [1], their proprietary version of JavaScript would have been the industry standard.
We wouldn’t have the W3C or WHATWG creating open standards for the web had Microsoft been allowed to essentially turn the web into another Microsoft runtime environment.
> The free and open web, to the extent we have it, only exists today because Microsoft wasn’t allowed to force IE, Active X, Silverlight and the rest of their technologies down everyone’s throat. Oh, and JScript [1], their proprietary version of JavaScript would have been the industry standard
The justice department at no point stopped Microsoft from bundling IE with Windows.
Besides that, up until 2008-2010, the “free and open web” was littered with proprietary Flash apps. It wasn’t until Apple refused to support Flash on iPhones that anyone started worrying about standards.
> Microsoft been allowed to essentially turn the web into another Microsoft runtime environment.
Nothing that the FTC did prevented that. No part of the consent decree caused MS to behave any differently with respect to IE.
And if you don’t remember, the “modern web” as it exists today with Ajax was actually a Microsoft addition that everyone else added.
JScript was no more or less proprietary than Netscape’s “LiveScript” before Netscape jumped on the Java bandwagon and called it Javascript. It’s not like JS came from a standards body.
JScript was no more or less proprietary than Netscape’s “LiveScript” before Netscape jumped on the Java bandwagon and called it Javascript. It’s not like JS came from a standards body.
Popular programming/markup languages don’t originate from standards bodies; it’s usually one person or a small group to start. Ruby, Python, Lisp, Pascal, Perl, PHP were created by a single person or a small group and (sometimes) would be submitted to a standards body.
Javascript was created for the Netscape Navigator browser in September 1995 and was submitted to Ecma International November 1996 [1] to start the standardization process. That was probably in response to Microsoft reverse engineering Javascript to create JScript in… 1996. Funny that.
So… yes, turns out JScript was significantly more proprietary than JavaScript and was only created to further Microsoft’s dominance of the web--“Best viewed in Internet Explorer”. JScript, like most of Microsoft’s tech at that time, probably relied on features that only existed on Windows and no where else.
> Javascript was created for the Netscape Navigator browser in September 1995 and was submitted to Ecma International November 1996 [1] to start the standardization process. That was probably in response to Microsoft reverse engineering Javascript to create JScript in… 1996. Funny that.
So it wasn’t “proprietary” when Netscape created it. But it became “proprietary” when Microsoft copied it?
> So… yes, turns out JScript was significantly more proprietary than JavaScript and was only created to further Microsoft’s dominance of the web--“Best viewed in Internet Explorer”
Were you around then when before IE, there were plenty of sites that had “Best viewed in Netscape Navigator”?
And don’t pretend that Navigator was a great product. In its heyday in the mid 90s, it was a point of nerd pride how well your operating system handled a Netscape crash.
IE3 was much better than Navigator on the Mac and Windows. In fact, the Max version of IE was one of the most standards compliant at the time.
The justice department at no point stopped Microsoft from bundling IE with Windows.
Nobody suggested otherwise; but that actually wasn’t the point. Microsoft made a deal with the government to stop most of its anticompetitive behavior. It was less about the bundling of IE with Windows than giving OEMs the choice to ship other browsers in addition to IE.
Besides that, up until 2008-2010, the “free and open web” was littered with proprietary Flash apps.
But that was a choice made by the market to adopt Flash instead of having of having all of the Microsoft stuff forced on them. Nobody forced developers to adopt Flash and there were other choices for audio/video, even if they weren’t as popular as Flash.
And if you don’t remember, the “modern web” as it exists today with Ajax was actually a Microsoft addition that everyone else added.
Well, to be accurate, Microsoft shipped XMLHttpRequest in IE 5.0 in 1999, as a proprietary Active X component for their products; it was never intended to be a web standard. But it was a cool idea so the other browser makers implemented it.
The term AJAX was coined by a Google employee in 2005 and was standardized by the W3C in 2006 [1].
It’s no different than Apple developing the canvas [2] element, which became a web standard, except they were more intentional than Microsoft was about XMLHttpRequest which would be renamed as AJAX.
Things would have been very different if the FTC and European regulators (who did make Microsoft ship a version of Windows without IE [3] hadn’t gotten involved.
> But that was a choice made by the market to adopt Flash instead of having of having all of the Microsoft stuff forced on them. Nobody forced developers to adopt Flash and there were other choices for audio/video, even if they weren’t as popular as Flash.
The comment I replied to gave credit to the FTC. Which is not true.
> Microsoft made a deal with the government to stop most of its anticompetitive behavior. It was less about the bundling of IE with Windows than giving OEMs the choice to ship other browsers in addition to IE
Microsoft didn’t just promise “we will be good little boys”. The parent poster gave the credit to the FTC. Firefox didn’t become popular for awhile because it was bundled by OEMs. MS basically just stopped development on IE. Then Chrome took off because it was heavily advertised on the Google home page and bundled with third party downloads.
As far as IE not being bundled with windows 7 because of the EU. This is an example of government ineffectiveness. Windows 7 came out in 2009. Web browsing on the desktop was starting Gibbs yesterdays news by then. The iPhone had been out for two years and Chrome was already ascendant.
And that’s about as useless as the EU caring to protect users privacy and writing a 99 section 11 chapter law and the only thing users got were cookie pop ups.
