Posts Tagged ‘internet explorer’

1997 – US Senator Orrin Hatch holds a hearing on the Antitrust activities of Microsoft. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems and Jim Barksdale of Netscape Communications were present to question if Microsoft is intentionally pushing out the Netscape web browser for Internet Explorer. Of course, this would become a long drawn out investigation which almost splits Microsoft into separate companies.

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Other Historical Events in Technology

• Delphi is first released by Borland
• Yahoo! is incorporated
• Napster begins blocking access to one million MP3

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Reuters is reporting that a security flaw in Twitter exposes users’ login credentials. It’s related to a known vulnerability in the Adobe Flash programming language. From the article:

Adobe has told programmers how to address the vulnerability, which was first discovered in 2006, he added, but noted the operators of many websites have failed to respond to the warnings from Adobe.

Some of the comments I’ve seen are wondering why Twitter hasn’t fixed this. I was starting to wonder why the flaw still exists in the Flash programming language, then I realized Adobe can’t be responsible for programmers’ not keeping up.

I’m not an Adobe fan (I don’t use the Acrobat reader on any of my machines and I use Flash only because there’s not much point to surfing the web without it), but I have to say that Adobe has gotten a lot of undeserved bad press lately. The attack on attack on Gmail attributed to China was first attributed to a flaw in the Acrobat Reader, but later found to depend on a flaw in Internet Explorer.

Although the Reuters story didn’t mention this, if I used Twitter, I’d change my password.

2004 – Mozilla launches the web browser that would finally give Internet Explorer a run for it’s money. The Firefox 1.0 web browser was created by Mozilla, who broke free from the Netscape Navigator browser to develop in Open Source. The Gecko layout engine browser would be available for Windows, Mac and Linux – with it being the standard browser in current flavors of Ubuntu. Last year on it’s 3.5 release, it set a new worlds record download. Firefox currently takes 1/5 of the market browser share.

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Other Historical Events in Technology

• Blizzard settles a lawsuit with Micro Star
• Netscape acquires Collabra
• Albert Einstein is awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in Physics

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1999 – Dataquest, a company that monitors PC sales, has shown a trend that Dell had maintained a 5% lead over Apple for 2 consecutive quarters. Therefore, Dell had become #1 in computer sales for 1999. Of course, a recent report mentioned that Apple could now buy Dell if it so inclined.

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More History of Technology

• Windows Azure launches
• Internet Explorer 4.0 releases
• The ARPANET stops functioning

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:21 — 3.8MB)

1997 – Microsoft violated a July 1994 consent decree, so 3 years later, the US Justice department decides to hold Microsoft in contempt. This was the ongoing issues with Internet Explorer bundled in Windows 95. The Justice department wants Microsoft to pay $1 Million a day until Microsoft stops bundling. Microsoft says they have the right to bundle software with the operating system. This was an ongoing battle for Antitrust issues.

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Other items in the Daily Tech History segment.

• David Packard of HP opens the Monterey Bay Aquarium
• Atari 400/800 patent
• The first Ubuntu Linux distribution is launched

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Google’s Chrome browser will be included on some Sony computers, according to Bloomberg. The story states that

Internet Explorer had 67 percent of the market in February, and Chrome had 1.2 percent, according to Net Applications, a Web-tracking firm based in Aliso Viejo, California. Firefox claimed 22 percent, and Apple Inc.’s Safari had 8 percent.

There has been much ado about Microsoft vs. Google lately, not just in the market but also in politics, such as this report on Microsoft’s lobbying efforts. I’ve certainly done my share of fulminating about Bing, not as a search engine, but as a Microsoft business strategy.

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Two words: Internet Explorer.

I have been working on a website for a friend. It’s not quite ready for primetime, but It’s come a long way in 20 billable hours.

So, after a nap because my brain was tired, I decided to test it in Internet Explorer.

It didn’t render properly, either in regular mode of “compatibility mode” (It is to laugh). It worked in every other browser I had (Opera, for both Windows and Linux, Firefox, Konqueror, just to name a few) but not in IE.

It took me about 25 minutes and lots of creative language to find the tag that was causing IE to malform the page.

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Mozilla broke free and created Firefox back in 2004. Since then, they have been growing in browser popularity. Being the major browser in Linux, but also downloadable for Windows and Mac helps a lot. The ability to install Add-ons also makes this browser very flexable.

On June 17th, 2008, Mozilla released version 3.0 of the browser (with version 1.9 of the Gecko engine). They wanted to put a big dent into the Internet Explorer market, so they created a “Download party”. The idea was to get a record number of downloads for the launch – a Guiness World record, that is. They created Download Day to promote the record.

However, the day of the launch was not good to Mozilla. They got ready to push out the browser, but a website glitch caused the download to be delayed. Within a couple hours the site was back up and running, but Twitters abroad told of other locations you could go to download the software.

Could this hamper the World record efforts? Well, since there was no world record before, the answer is No.

But what Mozilla DID do is 8 million downloads in the 24 hour period. That was more traffic than Mozilla ever has seen. The Linux community did their part in getting the new browser, but it was really the “average user” that helped bring this number so high.

The Mozilla – IE battle still goes on. Also with Safari, Opera and Chrome in the picture. But did you know that AT&T also put out a Browser? Well, you will find out all these great facts and more in the Week in Tech History.

Also, we mention the 3rd step in the Summer of Geekazine contest. #Geekazine Rocks.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:12 — 27.6MB)

It’s almost impossible to look at any news site without seeing another puff piece for Microsoft’s newest attempt to become a player in internet search, Bing, which, according to the link, is coming soon.

I unhesitatingly predict that it will be the Cuil of 2009.

Remember Cuil?

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MarketWatch reports that Microsoft is in trouble in Europe for Internet Explorer. Again. Or is that still? Read the full story here.

Here’s an excerpt:

It was a complaint from Opera that spurred the European Commission to issue an objection in January to Microsoft’s practice of tying its Internet Explorer browser to its dominant Windows operating system.

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Bloomberg quotes Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft’s efforts to become a player in internet searches. Read the full story here:

“Google does have to be all things to all people,” Ballmer said yesterday in an interview in New York. “Our search does not need to be all things to all people.”

Google may be tentative about changing the look of its search pages, causing the company to take fewer risks, said Ballmer, 52. The challenge is similar to what Microsoft faces with its Windows operating system, which needs to appeal to a broad range of customers, he said.

I find Mr. Ballmer’s position interesting for a number of reasons.

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