thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos
internet explorer was a fixture on nearly all Windows pcs from the
mid-1990s to the mid-2000s in fact it
was estimated that internet explorer's usage share was as high as around 95
in 2003 but once viable alternatives like
firefox and chrome hit the market internet explorer lost its stranglehold
on our digital lives faster than mc hammer lost his fortune
so what led to its demise and why was it such a widely reviled browser well
funnily enough a lot of internet explorer's problems had their roots in
microsoft's desire not to frustrate its users but rather to
innovate you see microsoft tried to set
its early versions of ie apart from its competitors by focusing on adding new
features rather than simply trying to make the browser as fast as possible
and they had a measure of success by this metric in fact ie was the first
browser to support a number of technologies that are ubiquitous on
today's web such as css which is a
modern standard for web page design that allows pages to look pretty and be more
functional compared to the clunky messes of the early 90s ie also started using
its trident rendering engine with version 4.0 which is the piece of code
that controls how a web page's underlying code will be turned into what
you see on your screen and trident was groundbreaking because it allowed
certain elements on a web page to change on the fly back in 1997 this was like a
huge deal later ie introduced the underlying support for ajax not to be
confused with the greek hero the household cleaner or the dutch soccer
club which supports using server data to display up-to-date information on a web
page without requiring a refresh a concept that is critical for modern
sites like gmail and google maps that are highly interactive these features
and others made it so that developers flocked to internet explorer because it
supported technologies that could make their websites more interactive and
visually appealing by contrast ie's competitors at the time such as netscape
often couldn't handle these features without slowing down or even crashing
so that was how it got popular also some
arguably pretty anti-competitive stuff but changing gears here the problems that
eventually made the browser infamous started to rear their ugly heads in the
early 2000s with such a stranglehold on the market microsoft neglected to put in
enough resources to continue to improve ie and as the internet as well as online
security threats continued to evolve the browser gained a reputation for being
both slow and insecure making matters worse microsoft made it
difficult to switch to an alternative web browser by deeply integrating ie
into Windows and making it very hard to uninstall throwing away needlessly much
of its previously earned goodwill with its users by the mid 2000s rival
browsers such as firefox took advantage of this time of weakness by embracing
open web standards for speed reliability and security rather than relying on a
host of proprietary technologies like internet explorer did these open
standards had finally reached the point where developers no longer had to rely
on microsoft's proprietary solutions to support interactivity so
that was a pretty big shift so with that ie's market share dropped
precipitously and yet microsoft still
didn't seem to be seriously trying to address the problem and all the while
more and more pages appeared broken or improperly rendered in ie it wouldn't be
until 2009 that microsoft would get around to releasing internet explorer 8
which featured significant improvements in standards compliance and security
but by that point ie had already lost between a quarter and a third of its
2003 market share so the damage had
already been done and google chrome's appearance in 2009 all but assured ie's
demise although it hung on for a few more years
microsoft finally replaced internet explorer with the edge browser whose
rendering engine was purged of all of ie's old code in 2015 after internet
explorer's usage share dropped below 20 so today ie only still exists so that
folks can use legacy websites written with its proprietary features in mind
you may have encountered this if you've had to log into a workplace network for
example and also as a lesson that you
can't just sit on your hands while the world passes you by
speaking of sitting on my hands i'm sitting on them right now also i'm
going to tell you about freshbooks froshbooks is the super simple to use invoicing tool that actually does a lot
more than help you create and send slick looking invoices with freshbooks you can
actually create and send slick looking invoices and it takes just a couple of
seconds but it also helps you track your time with their timesheet function
manage your expenses and keep track of who owes you what it also has a feature
that tells you when your client looks at an invoice for the first time and their
fully featured mobile apps for both iOS and Android have all the functionality
of their desktop versions so you can take fresh books with you wherever you
go if you have any questions you can reach out to their support staff where
you will speak to a real human yes hello real human how are you
no phone tree no escalations no return calls just answers so visit
freshbooks.com we're gonna have that linked in the video description and
enter techwiki in the how did you hear about us section you get a 30-day free
trial so thanks for watching our videos like dislike check out our other videos leave
a comment with video suggestions and don't forget to subscribe
if you do i assure you horrible things will happen and it will happen right
away all right go ahead test it wait five seconds don't subscribe in the next
five seconds here wow look at that
i scared you oh here's a funny closing joke we didn't
end up including so what's your web browser of choice have you followed the
crowd and gone with chrome are you still holding on to firefox or do you like
edge just because it reminds you of a certain browser from your youth
just edgier