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Comment by smoyer | Hacker News Reader

Well ... I do agree that both the standards and best-practices for creating web content have changed, but I'm pretty sure the most recent version of Excel will open a document I created in the '90s. You could argue they have complete control of both the software and the document format in that instance, but the IE browsers never bothered to be standards compliant anyway ("older IE browsers" - I've been pleasantly surprised by IE9 and IE10).

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> I'm pretty sure the most recent version of Excel will open a document I created in the '90s.

Backwards compatibility is not the same as forwards compatibility, you seem to be confusing them.

You expect an application like Excel to open something made before by an earlier version. MS knows how to handle that format. However, you do not expect Excel 95 to open a xlsx file, it was a format that did not exist when Excel 95 was created.

I think that you are confusing backwards/forwards compatibility with the point the OP seemed to be making: Microsoft never bothered to follow the web standards.

Agreed, but... the standards themselves have changed since 1999.

Yeah, it seems Microsoft always has had good excuses. I wonder if other browsers from that period would have as poor results as IE5 does. I seriously doubt it.

Well the main competitor was Netscape 4, which was even worse.

What exactly was worse in Netscape? Because I just loved using it.

It's extremely bad and buggy CSS support, which was even worse than even IE4, let along IE5.

But the point is that a '90s copy of Excel running would not remotely be able to consume and display a modern .XLSX data file. Going back to the original point, this is why it's impressive that Wikipedia are able to display their site to such an old browser, and ironic that MS doesn't.

Unfortunately Microsoft has disabled or removed quite some import filters. e.g. you can't open a PowerPoint 4 file anywhere anymore. They also disabled Works and Word Perfect filters. Probably a victim of the secure coding guidelines: Might have bugs ==> remove feature

It is because of security issues with old code that probably mostly dates back to Office 97 or older. How often do you receive Word 6.0 documents via email nowadays?

How one receieves such documents is irrelevant. Some years ago a relative passed away, leaving hundreds of such documents on her antique computer. Luckily there was free software available that would still allow us to take part of her legacy. But of course, we could just as well have burnt her computer to ashes, as something so ancient must obviously be a security issue.

These files came from a source that can be trusted and are much different from random email attachments. Look up "spear phishing" for example. Most of the converters that still exist can be reenabled in the registry in case you still need to open these files. Office 2010 even provides UI for these options.

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