互联网与文化blog.chriszacharias.com
一场杀死 IE6 的阴谋
A Conspiracy to Kill IE6
2019 — 2025，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇博客是 YouTube 前工程师 Chris Zacharias 的回忆：他和同事秘密给 IE6 用户投放“请升级浏览器”横幅，绕过公司审批，并推动 Google 其他产品跟进。这场行动在一个月内让 YouTube 的 IE6 用户减半，全球 IE6 流量明显下降。文章既讲一次技术恶作剧，也讲企业官僚、浏览器退场和 Web 标准化权力。
为什么经久不衰：它把“用一条横幅干掉一个时代”的黑客行动，和浏览器垄断、企业 IT 管制、渐进式淘汰旧技术等长期议题绑在一起，所以每次重读都能引出新争论。
HN 评论精选
老派黑客精神：秘密部署、同行跟进、冒险但奏效。
天哪，这太精彩了。我不确定工程师们是否意识到，即便保密，部署后媒体也会立刻注意到。但最妙的是 Google 工程师一看到就想“我们也该这么做”——因为想着 YouTube 肯定做过尽职调查，反而更容易获批。我不知道他们怎么没被全开除……但确实奏效了。这是能写进历史的黑客故事，像老一辈程序员为了把事做对而不顾职业风险的做法。
jrochkind1查看英文原文
Oh my, this is amazing. I'm not sure the engineers realized despite their secrecy, it would be noticed by the press immediately after deploy. But the best part is how Google engineers immediately on seeing it figured "oh yeah, we should do that too" (although they apparently got the necessary approvals however that was done at Google, it was easier to do because they figured "well, youtube must have done due dillegence before doing it.") Amazing! I don't know how they didn't all get fired. Like, ALL of em, including everyone who set up the special "OldTuber" priv long before. But... it worked! This is a hacker story for the history books, it sounds like the kind of thing programmers did 20+ years ago for nothing except the reward of doing it right (against their own career interests), that I feel like doesn't happen so much in a more professionalized industry.
升级横幅通常被无视；这次因形成全网运动才见效。
这是我听过的第一个“请升级浏览器”横幅真正起作用的例子。以前我在自己网站上试，横幅毫无效果；甚至对部分用户改成弹窗，他们也只是点掉。我怀疑这次能成，是因为它变成了一场运动：Google 各站点挂出 IE6 横幅后，等于给全网开了许可，一个月内 YouTube 的 IE6 用户减半，全球 IE6 流量下降超过 10%。
dfabulich查看英文原文
This is the first example I've ever heard of where a browser-upgrade banner worked. Every time I've tried it on sites I've worked on, the "please upgrade" banner does nothing. Years ago, we even tried turning it into an intrusive pop-up for a percentage of users. They just clicked through the pop-up, presumably without reading it. I wonder if it worked in this case because it started a movement? > Between YouTube, Google Docs, and several other Google properties posting IE6 banners, Google had given permission to every other site on the web to add their own. IE6 banners suddenly started appearing everywhere. Within one month, our YouTube IE6 user base was cut in half and over 10% of global IE6 traffic had dropped off while all other browsers increased in corresponding amounts. The results were better than our web development team had ever intended.
IE6 长期存活主要源于 AD 组策略下的企业锁定。
很多人问 IE6 为什么能撑这么久。原因很简单：组策略。通过 Active Directory，管理员可以强制主页、设代理、禁用媒体功能、让历史不可删，甚至关掉右键；当时其他浏览器没有对应策略，管理员就禁止安装它们以维持控制。后来企业 IT 从管设备转向支持业务，这个小横幅可能也助推了转变。
reilly3000查看英文原文
A lot of folks have wondered why IE 6 stuck around so long in the first place. It’s pretty simple: group policy. Through Active Directory, admins could do things like force a specific homepage, set proxies for all browsers in the company, disable media features for security, make history undeletable, or even turn off right clicking. Around that time there weren’t alternatives to set these policies in other browsers, so admins just disabled the ability to install them in order to maintain tight control. Now Chrome and possibly other browsers can do similar, but less draconian policies, and security concerns are mitigated with separate systems. After the time this article references, there started to be big changes around how corporate IT was managed. It went from being about gear and gate-keeping to strategically supporting business initiatives. I wonder if this little banner on the YouTube player helped nudge things forward.
批评：杀死 IE6 后形成了更糟的浏览器垄断，所谓进步值得怀疑。
如今我们面对的是一个更大、更敌视用户的浏览器垄断，Web“标准”实际由一家公司控制，而它恰好拥有 YouTube。这篇文章提醒我们：YouTube 曾经能在 IE6 这样“不标准”的浏览器里运行，而且用远不如今天的算力也不显得慢。你多恨 IE6，我就更恨现状；那些宣传“推动 Web 前进”的人，只是促成了另一个垄断并浪费了大量算力。
userbinator查看英文原文
Now we have a monopoly of a much bigger, more user-hostile browser(s) and the web "standards" effectively under the control of a single company, which also happens to own YouTube and does things like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606027 . This article is actually a nice reminder that YouTube used to work in browsers as "unstandard" as IE6, and with far less processing power than computers today, was not noticeably slow either. As much as you hate IE6, I hate the current situation far more. Those waging the browser-wars and evangelising the "push the web forward" propaganda have done nothing but contribute to the creation of a different monopoly and the waste of countless processor-hours of time and energy. My personal fuckings go out to everyone who thinks this is "progress" or in any way a good thing.
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