facepalm

Posted May 15, 2014 16:33 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: *facepalm* by khim
Parent article: Firefox gets closed-source DRM

I think that's right. The situation in the IE6 era was really bad in many ways, but Microsoft's IE hiatus (which was only 3 years actually) gave us leeway to make some decisions that we couldn't have afforded to make otherwise.

facepalm

Posted May 15, 2014 19:07 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

I think you memory is failing you. MS IE 6 release data: August 27, 2001. MS IE 7 release date: October 18, 2006. It's true that Mozilla spent first two years trying to fix their own mess, but that “lost” time was important, too: in these two years where browser capabilities (MS IE 5/5.5/6 for most users) were severely limited and known they were able to catch up and create more-or-less compatible thing.

facepalm

Posted May 15, 2014 22:04 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

IE7 didn't appear out of nowhere. As I remember it (inferring from what employees were doing) Microsoft shut down IE development for 3 years. I guess it might have been 4, but definitely less than 5.

facepalm

Posted May 15, 2014 22:06 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Er, a 1-year lead time for IE7 development would make it 4 years. So, 3-4 years.