The Silver Lining in IE6's Cobwebs
Not fixing IE6’s CSS rendering was a bad thing. Duh. However, while writing my much longer article about IE8 first impressions, I realized one good thing about letting it gather cobwebs: It allowed a renaissance of standards-based innovation to bloom.
I know I’m indulging hypothetical thinking here – and mildly paranoid hypothetical thinking at that. However, if Microsoft hadn’t been a slumbering giant all those years, do you think the web would still be what it is today?
Imagine a Web Without AJAX
I think they would have put in their best effort to either crush, or co-opt things like AJAX or RSS. They would have tried to introduce competing technology, which they would then implement in all of their sites. It would do basically the same thing, but the key is, you’d have to install a Microsoft product to use it.
Of course, that’s exactly what Microsoft is trying to do now, with things like Silverlight and Web Slices.
But imagine what would have happened if Microsoft tried to do all this before AJAX and RSS became so pervasive? Do you think those technologies would have survived this long? Or would everything have played out exactly the same?