Internet Explorer is evil.

Interesting post on Reddit from a former web developer that explains in detail some of the reasons why Microsoft was truly evil with Internet Explorer historically.

Microsoft intentionally made the engine (Trident) incompatible with the W3C standards, created an incompatible JavaScript implementation and even attempted a incompatible Java implementation (for which they were sued). The point of this is their wel-known EEE (embrace, extend and extinguish) policy. First they implement your stuff, then they introduce incompatibilities, and then, through the power of monopoly, they pushed the original inventor out of the game. They tried to kill Sun. Literally. And to get rid of the W3C. For total web dominance.

I encourage you to read the rest, too. Most of what they did is pathetic and has stalled the internet for longer than you probably realize. It goes deeper too, the writer of the post believes Microsoft is trying to break the web again with Windows Phone:

When [Microsoft] recently got rid of their probation officer, for the last crime they were convicted for. The very next day, they [supposedly] placed Steven Elop into Nokia, basically killing it, with 9000 engineers and workers leaving the company in protest on the spot. And they put their shitty WP7/8 on Nokia phones. And what did they do? They again, made IE non-replaceable and “hard-wired” into the OS. And promptly got sued for it.

Even with Internet Explorer about to hit version 10, I still can’t stand to use it, and I sure hope that Microsoft will open Windows Phone up to alternatives soon.