I mean, Netscape did implode, and Microsoft was anti-competitive, but...
IE4 introduced DHTML, i.e., the paradigm that the entire HTML document is on the DOM and you can modify it with JavaScript (and style it with CSS, which is also on the DOM).
IE5 introduced XMLHttpRequest, i.e., the foundation of the modern SPA.
Both of these were major advances in web development, and websites started requiring (or preferring) IE because they wanted to use that stuff.
From there, yeah, IE6 was mostly bugfixes and webdev languished until Chrome came around (with Firefox being great, but not enough to topple IE.)
Sure, IE4 was the turning point where you couldn’t laugh at MS any more and Netscape was only referred to in terms of “what the hell is up with Netscape?”. Still, that “4” in the title means it had taken a bunch of “much worse than Netscape, but we know how to cheat real good” versions of anti-competitive behaviour before we got to this point. Might Netscape have survived had MS not been the amoral business demons that they were?
Of course, MS were still competing at that point and shear kinetic energy of the behemoth got you through the next couple of releases. Before how many years of nothing? And internet years are like dog years, it was basically infinity time before chrome burst onto the scene to actually move things forward again. Where might we be right now, if MS hadn’t have been able to leverage their OS install base and complete lack of integrity to kill Netscape dead before it had a chance to threaten their business model?
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I mean, Netscape did implode, and Microsoft was anti-competitive, but...
IE4 introduced DHTML, i.e., the paradigm that the entire HTML document is on the DOM and you can modify it with JavaScript (and style it with CSS, which is also on the DOM).
IE5 introduced XMLHttpRequest, i.e., the foundation of the modern SPA.
Both of these were major advances in web development, and websites started requiring (or preferring) IE because they wanted to use that stuff.
From there, yeah, IE6 was mostly bugfixes and webdev languished until Chrome came around (with Firefox being great, but not enough to topple IE.)
Sure, IE4 was the turning point where you couldn’t laugh at MS any more and Netscape was only referred to in terms of “what the hell is up with Netscape?”. Still, that “4” in the title means it had taken a bunch of “much worse than Netscape, but we know how to cheat real good” versions of anti-competitive behaviour before we got to this point. Might Netscape have survived had MS not been the amoral business demons that they were?
Of course, MS were still competing at that point and shear kinetic energy of the behemoth got you through the next couple of releases. Before how many years of nothing? And internet years are like dog years, it was basically infinity time before chrome burst onto the scene to actually move things forward again. Where might we be right now, if MS hadn’t have been able to leverage their OS install base and complete lack of integrity to kill Netscape dead before it had a chance to threaten their business model?
We probably wouldn't have Mozilla, for one.
So the open-source energy that went into Firefox would've gone into... KHTML? Maybe?