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0 pointspjmlp1y ago0 comments

As someone doing Web development during 1999 - 2002, on a dotcom startup, there were enough people using Mozzilla browsers.

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tialaramex1y ago

At the turn of the century, Mozilla are trying to ship a web browser (also to be called Mozilla) based on the work they've got from Netscape. They shipped a series of "M" numbered (ie milestone) releases, which preview what we today think about as normal dynamic HTML but at the time it commonly just crashes the entire browser.

Like, a colleague was working on code that would reach into the DOM and just tweak the CSS for a bunch of items, delete other items, move things around, and maybe 40% of the time it would work as intended, and 60% of the time, boom, dead browser, segmentation fault.

React, where it's just normal for Javascript to rewrite the entire page in response to a keystroke, would have been completely unthinkable, there's no chance you could fill out an entire form before the browser crashed if you do that.

pjmlpOP1y ago

React only became possible due to JavaScript JITs being made available, almost a decade later.

We are talking about V8 being released in 2008, Chackra in 2011, and SpiderMonkey in 2009.

With GCs that can handle the amount of stuff that React throws away on each update.

Lammy1y ago

> They shipped a series of "M" numbered (ie milestone) releases

Relevant: “A Visual Browser History, from Netscape 4 to Mozilla Firefox” https://www.andrewturnbull.net/mozilla/history.html

mrinfinitiesx1y ago

Yeah. We were all sick of loading a website with Internet Explorer and getting 1930201 hot toolbars, blinking 'desktop buddies' and 32 new system tray icons with programs running.

Phoenix saved us.

cgh1y ago

Konqueror says hello. I’m only half kidding, it was actually somewhat capable and I used it a lot. For those who don’t know, its legacy was khtml, famously forked into WebKit and Blink.

pino821y ago

I cannot remember a moment when Konqueror felt good enough for me as a daily driver, but it was impressive anyways.

From a community perspective, it would have been a great thing to push it forward further, spend resources on it, and have at least one web browser that isn't somewhat wicked.

Admittedly, back then, we all hoped that Firefox would be that 'friendly' browser, and it probably truly was at that time.

Time has changed. Now I'm forced to like a browser that is always just slightly less evil than a one that would even IE look friendly. And with every version we are now waiting when they also will drop the manifest v2 support for dubious reasons. And even if that will never happen, they will continue to find other ways to disappoint me.

Yes, khtml was at least a nice time to remember. :)

PS: My personal feeling is that "impressive but not good enough as a daily driver" was and is true for some more KDE apps. This is why I use Plasma Desktop, but barely any more of their apps than Dolphin and maybe kate to some degree. I know all you're going to say now about free software and how it works and so on, and you're right, but technically, it would be sooo much better if just half of the email client projects (or office suites, IDEs, photo editing, ...; you name it) would exist, but with more developer powers behind it. But I'm digressing......

isr1y ago

Hey, me too, back in the day. Konqueror's ui was much nicer than the alternatives. Especially the ability to open multiple panes in the same window - made browsing slashdot easier.

Shame it hasn't kept up.

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