WEBVTT - The Story of Internet Explorer, Part 1 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:08.119 Get in touch with technology with tex stuff dot com. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:16.120 Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.360 and today I have a special guest host, a friend 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.000 of mine from way back. He is currently the senior 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.919 editor over at Bloomberg, not not the a senior editor. 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:29.000 His title actually, or his role is very specific. I'm 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:31.040 going to introduce him and let him say what his 0:00:31.160 --> 0:00:34.159 role is, because otherwise I will muck it up. Nate Lankson, 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.040 Welcome to tex Stuff. Thank you very much. Yes, the 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.879 joyous difference between job title and job role senior editor Bloomberg. 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.760 But I'm actually running to just ledatorial for Europe, Middle East, 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:48.440 in Africa. It's a long devotion, Yeah, Nate, Nate's he's 0:00:48.440 --> 0:00:50.640 got a lot of responsibility on his shoulders doing a 0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.880 bang up job too. And uh and Nate and I 0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:57.040 know each other from several years. Actually we we both 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:01.440 started as as fans of c net and buzz out 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.480 Loud and then um Nate went on to work for 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:06.839 Senet and then b Wired and now works at Bloomberg. 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.000 And through it all he has he has patiently endured 0:01:11.080 --> 0:01:16.240 my friendship, so I appreciate that and and your many podcasts, 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.199 you know, a podcast a podcast listener as well as contributor. 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:23.200 And it's amazing that this is the first time I've 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.479 ever had you as a guest on this show. Because 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:28.080 we've known each other for so long and uh and 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.720 and our interests are so aligned. We've talked a lot 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:33.959 about collaborating. A part of the issue is that Nate 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:39.280 has this irritating habit of being English, so he there's 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.920 a there's a five or sometimes six hour time difference 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:47.920 between us. Yes, bloody marvelous, isn't it be wonderful? If 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.080 bright Well, my fans will love it because now there's 0:01:52.120 --> 0:01:54.560 someone who has a true English accent as opposed to 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.880 the the one I sometimes attempt and and and mangle 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:02.480 along the way. And Nate is joining me to talk 0:02:02.680 --> 0:02:07.000 about Internet Explorer, and the reason why we're talking about 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.760 it is that it's a web browser has a very 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:13.799 long history, and that history now seems to have an 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:17.560 end cap to it because Microsoft appears to be leaving 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:22.520 Internet Explorer behind and embracing a new product that currently 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.840 is codenamed Projects Spartan, but we'll probably have some different 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.400 name once it actually goes live. So we're going to 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:37.639 cover the dramatic history that's filled with uh tons of 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:42.080 interesting stories, as it turns out. And to really get started, 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.800 we have to turn the clock back before there was 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:48.679 ever any web browsers at all, at the birth of 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:51.400 the first web browser, which we can trace back to 0:02:51.600 --> 0:03:00.960 Christmas Day, December nineteen wo M C M X see 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:06.640 as the Romans right, I'm glad you took that. Whenever 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.040 I start thinking about Roman numerals, I have to start 0:03:09.080 --> 0:03:12.760 dialing I X I I uh, which only makes sense 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:17.959 for the listeners here in America. Um So, Tim berners 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:22.040 Lee was working at at CERN, same people who are 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:28.360 responsible for the Large Hadron Collider, and had developed a 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.120 program that would allow for the retrieval and display of 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:36.080 information UH in a way that would make sense, make 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.200 it easy to navigate. This would become the first web browser, 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.040 which is kind of funny because without the web browser, 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.400 you really don't have a worldwide Web. You definitely had 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.559 an Internet because the Internet is a network of networks 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.800 and a lot of people I realize maybe this isn't 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:53.120 as bad as it used to be, but a lot 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:57.680 of people often will say web and mean Internet or 0:03:57.760 --> 0:04:02.240 vice versa. They'll use the terms changeably I've described it 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:03.920 in the past. Touch of the two people who get 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.200 this wrong as the Web is the car on the 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:11.160 highway that is the internet, right. They they are the 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.160 websites on top of the net, right, And there are 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:18.080 other vehicles on that same highway. Right. Because the email 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.479 does not have to be web based uh FTP, you know, 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:25.039 file transfer protocol, other protocols. Um. In fact, the way 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.279 I originally really made use of the Internet back in 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:31.279 the day was through the tel net chat client. I 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:33.800 used that a lot when I was in college as 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.520 a way of distracting myself and making friends with people 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.240 who were more into the same things I was into. 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:42.440 I went to for the first two years of my 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.640 schooling a small community college in rural Georgia, and a 0:04:46.640 --> 0:04:49.280 lot of the people I was around didn't share the 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.720 same interests I did, so telling it was one of 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:55.000 those things that allowed me to go beyond that. But 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:59.760 that was before I had ever heard of the World 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:04.719 Wide Web and web browsers UM. So we have to 0:05:04.760 --> 0:05:07.640 remember that this time before there were browsers there, there 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:11.560 were there were not really any user friendly ways of 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:15.279 accessing information. You kind of had to really dive into 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:20.520 the tech and understand commands in order to get anything 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.040 out of it. Even if those commands were fairly simple, 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.440 it was an high enough barrier of entry that there 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:28.320 were only a few of us playing in that in 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:31.160 that world at that time, right, I mean, there were 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:34.800 like people in colleges and research facilities and governments that 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:39.240 had access to it for various official purposes. There were 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:45.760 very few like fun applications outside of some wacky people saying, hey, 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:50.680 this computer that's crunching numbers for your your astronomy class, 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.919 we can also make it play tic tech toe. I 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.719 mean around about this time, there were also other similar 0:05:57.760 --> 0:05:59.920 sort of projects they think that we're going on at set, 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:04.240 like people built sort of not competing necessarily, but there 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.720 were other programs that were created to sort of browse 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.159 in a in a more visual way, right, And and 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:14.960 it turns out that this was a brilliant idea. And 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:17.880 another little thing to to fall back on is just 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:21.680 a quick explanation of what's going on with a web browser. 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.680 For those of you who are you know, more casual 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:28.760 fans of technology, this might be helpful for those of 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.039 you who you know, are really deep in the field. 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.400 This is going to sound incredibly simplistic, but we have 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:36.919 to talk about what a client is and what a 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:40.040 server is. So your client is essentially your machine, the 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:44.320 device you're using to end up retrieving information from some 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:49.279 other computer a server which actually holds the information that 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:51.760 you are interested in. So if you are using a 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:54.680 web browser to visit a web page, there is somewhere 0:06:54.720 --> 0:06:57.680 in the world a computer that has all that information 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:01.360 on it and it gets the rest from your browser 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.159 the client and says, all right, well, here's what you 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:07.160 ask for, and send it across the internet. Your browser 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.240 is in charge of displaying that information in some way 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:16.040 that hopefully is useful and informative. And that's the basic 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.880 relationship that the web browser is built around. It's not 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.720 the only client server relationship, but it's a great example 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:25.840 of one, I mean, and it's it's interesting because, as 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.760 I'm sure we will be coming too later, the relationship 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:31.600 between the idea of a client server model really has 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:34.680 not changed. And in fact, when you get into the 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:39.000 likes of the Chrome OS, the browser is just a 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.440 dumb client. It's a client terminal model for the entire 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.320 OS and essentially, but we're moving forward twenty five years 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:48.760 before we get at that point. The nice thing is 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.520 that this model works so well that it ended up 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.960 being the foundation for a lot of different applications, including 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.840 the Chrome operating system and uh and of course we're 0:07:57.840 --> 0:08:03.120 seeing more and more serve uses and applications migrating to 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:07.320 the Internet side of things where we see this this uh, 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.360 I mean, it's kind of a seesaw act. Right on 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:14.480 one side, we see hardware manufacturers that are still saying, no, no, no, 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.880 you really want the strongest, fastest machine possible. And meanwhile 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.640 all the service providers are saying, we're handling all the 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:24.120 heavy lifting. You just need a device that can connect 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:28.120 to us. That way we get to control all the stuff. Uh. 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:31.200 So it's it's but it's because of this relationship that 0:08:31.200 --> 0:08:35.240 that kind of infrastructure is even possible. I mean that, 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:37.319 I mean, that's the interesting thing. Also, just as a 0:08:37.400 --> 0:08:41.520 slight related tangent, I suppose about More's law, which is 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:45.640 celebrating an anniversary at the moment, is that it's always 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:48.440 been assumed that we need the most biggest and fastest 0:08:48.440 --> 0:08:50.800 power in our computers because we want to do more 0:08:50.840 --> 0:08:53.520 and more things locally. Which, in a way, if that 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:55.440 was always going to be true, you would need less 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.520 and less on the on the service side outside of 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.600 the well the realms of um the web. But of 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.760 course now it's becoming much more about efficiency and and 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:09.080 low cost and and um thinness in our devices, and 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.640 so we don't need that sort of huge lifting power 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.800 within the machines we're currently using ourselves, which makes a 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:19.280 browser the perfect interface for a modern machine because it 0:09:19.400 --> 0:09:22.280 just needs to be the go between, the conduit between 0:09:22.280 --> 0:09:27.720 the very powerful server and the very small, powerful, less 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:31.400 powerful desktop machine or laptop or tablet or notebook or 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.520 what have you. And it means More's law has may 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:38.840 actually become irrelevant before it actually becomes wrong. You know, 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:41.760 we may not need that power, that sort of doubling 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.640 of power every eighteen months, because we have actually no 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.520 need for that power anymore. And in fact, More's law 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:53.000 originally was all about the financial side of you know, 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:56.280 the fact that there were these financial drivers that were 0:09:56.280 --> 0:10:00.600 incentives to create these increasingly more power a full and 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.760 smaller components on a square inch of silicon. Now we're 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:08.040 getting to a point where if if we don't need that, 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:11.520 then there's less incentive. So there may be a point 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:14.640 of pride among some you know, engineers and computer scientists 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:16.880 who want to keep pushing that envelope and try and 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:19.520 make it um, you know, try and beat their record 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:24.559 in a way. But if the the demand isn't there, 0:10:24.760 --> 0:10:28.800 then like you said, Moore's law could become obsolete before 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.800 we hit that fundamental limit from the laws of physics 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:37.559 that had gone through the same exponential growth that More's 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:41.760 law predicted for um silicon um, you would be able 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:45.760 to do a hundred miles on one tenth of a 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.600 millilita of fuel and that would cost you twenty five 0:10:49.640 --> 0:10:54.480 cents in a car that costs twenty five cents. And uh, 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.400 in order to get back to the world that where 0:10:57.440 --> 0:10:59.200 this is, this is being you know, this is a 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:03.160 relevant thing. UH, going back to the early nineties. This 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:05.520 is these are the days where early nineties I was 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.480 in high school about to go into college. UM and 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:14.640 early to mid nineties that's my high school college years. Uh. 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:16.840 In the those early nineties, you started seeing lots of 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:21.160 different programmers build their own web browsers. A lot of 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:23.840 them were within cerns, some of them were in colleges 0:11:23.880 --> 0:11:28.520 and universities, and we started to see more people get 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:30.679 access to it because it was very clear that this 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.359 was going to be a useful tool to navigate information. 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.559 We move on to February and that's when Mark and 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.880 Reason and Eric Bana of the National Center for Supercomputing 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:46.079 Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana champaign A 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.400 eight and C. S A, our mutual friend Tom Merritt 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:52.920 I believe, went to the University of Illinois UH in 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:56.319 C s A. They decided to introduce a browser themselves 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:00.480 that was the Mosaic Browser. It was on Unix, it 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:05.079 was also for the the X Windows platform UM and UH. 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.400 There their colleague Alex Todec created a version that could 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:10.520 run on Macintosh computer. So this was a browser that 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.880 could run on cross platforms. Although uh the appearance of 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:18.240 web information vary depending upon what platform you were using, 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:22.240 So it wasn't a m a smooth experience across all platforms. 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.000 It wasn't something that was It wasn't like you were 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:26.160 going to get the exact same experience on one machine 0:12:26.400 --> 0:12:29.720 as on another, but you could get to the information. 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:32.560 UH and I had a lot of features that said, 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.520 apart from the earlier web browsers, like things that we 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:38.040 take for granted now, like bookmarks, you know that would 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.880 being able to to mark a specific web page is 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:44.440 something of interest so that you can easily navigate to 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.800 it in the future. It was really important also things 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.160 like icons and pictures as opposed to just text, which 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.920 made it more attractive to look at um and it 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.079 was free to use. And it's important to mention this 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.000 beforehand because it turns out a lot of the the 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:01.640 stuff they worked on would later find its way into 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:08.080 other future web browsers. By market, Drissa would partner with 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.200 Jeff clark and who was the founder of Silicon Graphics. 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:17.200 They created Mosaic Communications. It was later renamed to Netscape Communications, 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:19.880 and they started to develop a web browser for the 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.760 consumer market. So that's gonna sound really familiar to anyone 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:26.040 who was, you know, using computers around the time of 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.800 the first browser Wars. Netscape should definitely ring a bell. 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.480 This is around the time that that Windows is basically 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.840 about to go gold and and go on sales, so 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.360 we're still in Windows three point one era at the moment. 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:45.160 I think, and uh, and I mean the Netscape navigator, 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:48.080 I think was the very I might have used Mosaic 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:49.960 when I was in college, come to think of it, 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:55.439 But I'm pretty sure. I quickly transition to Netscape Navigator 0:13:56.160 --> 0:14:00.400 and that became my browser of choice in those days. Um, 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:02.320 you know I didn't ask you, Nate, what browser do 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:06.559 you typically use when I use Safari for almost everything, 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.640 So you are you are clearly a Mac owner. I 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.560 am a Mac owner. I I love Safari because I 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:15.960 use almost no add ons at all, because I just 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:18.480 want speed and fast and I need it to sink 0:14:18.600 --> 0:14:21.480 everything and so far as always work really well for me, 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:26.040 that makes sense. I detest Safari with a passion that 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.200 burns brighter than a thousand explaining funds. But it's mostly 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:31.520 because I don't use a Mac. If I did use 0:14:31.560 --> 0:14:34.160 a Mac, then, like, if you're in the Apple infrastructure, 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.760 it's amazing. If you're all in, it's phenomenal. If you're 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:41.560 only kind of sort of in, it gets really irritating 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:45.560 really quickly. But then I'm all in on the Google infrastructure, 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.800 so I use Chrome. Yes, that's the difference, you see, 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:51.720 because the browser is the thing you use the most, 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:55.120 I would imagine, and so if your phone is the 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:57.200 thing that you carry and use the most in the day, 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.000 then it stands to reason that you're going to want 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.840 to use a browser that it's best on a phone, right, 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.840 and that's kind of peeking ahead to some of the 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:09.440 issues with Internet Explorer. Uh So, so we get the 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.080 n c s A licensing the commercial rights to Mosaic 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.200 to a company that was called at the time spy Glass. 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.000 The company no longer exists, so that should tell you 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.840 how things turn out in the future. Spy Glass ended 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.720 up licensing that same technology to other companies, including Microsoft, 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:28.520 So the Mosaic code ends up making its way to Microsoft. 0:15:29.000 --> 0:15:31.440 Um and that was really important to Microsoft because, as 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:35.440 Nate was saying, they were preparing Windows for launch and 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.760 they really wanted to have a component in there that 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:41.160 would be a web browser, and they had decided that 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.360 it made more sense to license that technology from someone 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.840 else rather than trying to develop it in house. So 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.920 that's what led them to spy Glass and licensing the 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:55.800 Mosaic code. Uh October, Netscape would release a beta version 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.760 of their project, which was codenamed Mozilla that will become 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:03.040 important later to It was designated zero point nine six 0:16:03.080 --> 0:16:07.840 b H. I decided early on that when I we 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.720 started looking at the actual builds of Internet Explorer, we're 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:15.720 gonna look at whole numbers only, because otherwise the path 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.520 leads to madness. You mean you're not going to consider 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:22.640 Chrome version twenty six point nine point six two point 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:27.680 three six four a seminal release. I mean it was beautiful, really, 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.320 I mean that the fact that it it improves so 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:33.080 much upon the President accessor that came out earlier that 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:38.840 same day is phenomenal. But no, I'm going to skip it. Um. Yeah, 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.440 So we move on to to August. That is the 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:48.680 day Microsoft released the Windows operating system. Uh man, I 0:16:48.720 --> 0:16:53.640 still remember the commercials for Windows they had. They had 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:58.120 this little band, the Rolling Stones, that had a song 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.280 called start Me Up that played during the Windows ninety 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:03.160 five commercials. Because that was also the introduction of the 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:07.080 start button on Windows, the little button that wouldn't quit 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.760 or people wouldn't let the little button quit. And they 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:15.640 introduced a web browser which they named Internet Explorer. Made 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:17.720 a lot of sense, it was it was, in fact, 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.800 a way to navigate through the Internet, specifically the World 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:23.679 Wide Web. But this is this is the point I 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:25.879 just interjected, because this is the thing that I've always 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.840 hated about Internet Explorer is that it's a web browser, right. 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.359 Why is it not called Web Explorer. I think, uh, 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.119 I think they were afraid they might have, you know, 0:17:37.359 --> 0:17:41.080 some sort of confusion with spiders or something. I don't know, Nate, 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.760 It's it confuses me to but yeah, Internet Explorer one 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:48.800 point oh came out with Windows. They had an agreement 0:17:48.840 --> 0:17:52.800 with spy Glass, which was incredibly clever. Some might call 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:57.760 it sneaky and underhanded. Their agreement with spy Glass, So 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:02.160 Spyglass makes the the code the tech analogy that Internet 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:07.520 Explorer runs on Internet Explorer. The agreement with Spyglass was 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.760 that Microsoft would pay a quarterly fee to spy Glass. 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.679 All right, that's cool, and they also agreed to share 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:20.120 royalties for Internet Explorer. But Microsoft also decided to bundle 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:25.680 Internet Explorer with Windows, so Internet Explore itself wasn't on sale, 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.480 and so if you're not selling it, you can't make royalties, 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:31.800 which means they didn't have to share any money from 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:39.960 the Windows sales to Spyglass. Yeah. Pretty sneaky. Um that 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:42.960 would end up biting them a little bit later, but 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:44.760 at then, you're right, at the time they were just like, hey, 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.720 we really scored on this. Now when they started, only 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:53.399 six Microsoft employees. According to every source I saw only 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.040 six people in Microsoft were actually working on Internet Explorer, 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.800 which is kind of hard to believe today. Um and 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.959 at the time, the web was not what you and 0:19:03.000 --> 0:19:06.200 I are used to. It had about twenty basic tags 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:11.000 and HTML that allowed you to construct pages and change 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.199 the style things like tables and and the font size 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:17.280 that kind of stuff. So it's really really basic. And 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.560 if you ever look at screenshots of old browsers and 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:25.919 old web pages, I mean, it mostly looks like the 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:29.400 blandest Wikipedia page you have ever seen, with no pictures 0:19:29.480 --> 0:19:31.560 or anything like that. A lot of the early ones 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:34.560 don't have any pictures on them because if you did 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.919 put a picture on it, then you were shooting yourself 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:40.399 in the foot. Most of us did not have any 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:44.800 fast connection to any kind of networks, so accessing a 0:19:44.800 --> 0:19:48.720 website with pictures meant that you would start, you know, 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.359 you navigate to the page, walk away from your computer 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:53.399 for ten minutes, and then come back to see if 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.080 the pictures it all loaded. I remember it well. I 0:19:56.119 --> 0:19:58.159 particularly remember it when I was trying to view pictures 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.640 on the now defunct page. Cat scan why people would 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.640 use flatbed scanners to scan the undersides of their cats, 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.080 And yeah, you I could actually walk away and be 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:10.560 very British and make a cup of tea while waiting 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.000 for the photo of the cat to arrive on my computer. 0:20:14.040 --> 0:20:16.399 I guess this is the point where I I I 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:20.639 mentioned that Nate has too particular great passions in life, 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:26.000 which include metal and cats. Yes, and the other ones, 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:27.560 but they are the ones I am known for. It 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:29.679 seems those are the those are the two I whenever 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.439 I hear anything from you on social media, there's a 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.280 there's a probably at chance it's going to fall into 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:39.040 one of those two categories. Yeah. So there's still quite 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:41.919 a few other things. But they don't they don't they 0:20:41.960 --> 0:20:45.200 don't hit as high as slice on the pie chart. Yes, 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:49.400 that's very true, very true. So one of the things 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:53.560 about the limitations of HTML that were that was a 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:58.199 particular thorn in the sides of early web browsers and 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:02.560 web users was that the limitations meant people had to 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:07.960 find creative ways around those limitations to create rich user experiences. 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:10.359 I don't think did they ever use that term in 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:15.159 the UK, the rich user experience that experience. Yes, I 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.439 mean we we probably heard it quite a bit. I 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:19.959 don't remember it particularly, but I imagine it was there 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.800 amongst all the other ones like zip drives and yeah right, 0:21:24.119 --> 0:21:27.679 all right, uh yeah, the rich user experience. That was 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.600 something where the idea was that you wanted to create 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:34.640 a an experience for the user that went beyond just 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.800 simple text lines and pictures. So one of the earliest 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:43.040 ones would be middies that would loop and there'll be 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:47.920 no way to stop them. H Do remember those? Yes, 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:52.200 I do remember those, Yes, middies, My goodness, middies. Yes, yes, 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.560 So just the days of my space where you would 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:58.359 go to someone's MySpace page. I mean this that goes 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.400 beyond what we're talking about here, but even then, oh 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.960 the not not I'm not sad to see those days go. However, 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:07.520 what it meant was that people had to create software 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:10.880 that would be a plug in, an enhancement to a 0:22:10.880 --> 0:22:15.800 web browser to allow users to access certain types of content, 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:19.480 largely streaming content, whether it was audio or video. So 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.239 if you had a web browser in those days, you 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:25.240 had to often enhance it with these plug ins, which 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:29.040 made the browsers clung here slower. They they required more memory, 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:33.040 and those days also memory was not as um plentiful 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:37.040 as it is today computer memory, so your whole computer 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.159 would start to run more slowly if you tried to 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:42.760 access anything that had any kind of you know, video 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:45.560 or flash animation. Flash is another example, some plug ins 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:47.600 that you had to have in order to get more 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:51.359 out of the web pages. We would not see advances 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:54.600 to HTML for a while that would address this. The 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.480 whole point of HTML five is to take away the 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.920 need for all these different uggins that often can become 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:05.440 security vulnerabilities. UM. The idea of being that this way 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:10.280 we can support those those different functions natively within HTML 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.159 and not have to have a Swiss Army knife style 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:20.000 web browser where you've added all these extra features. UM. Anyway, 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:23.800 the first version of Internet Explorer was a thousand bare 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:28.160 bones as you can get, and the second one came 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:32.720 out November twenty second, nineteen. So if you remember I 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:36.560 said the first one came out August, I E two 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:42.280 comes out November twenty that that's an incredibly narrow window 0:23:42.600 --> 0:23:49.760 for an entire version upgrade. You know, it's uh fast, 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.360 does not really go into it. This one was for 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:56.600 Windows ninety five and Windows NT three point five and 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.840