I don't know which timeline you are from, but even at v3.0 IE was noticeably ahead of Netscape Navigator, both in terms of speed and stability. Trust me, I browsed the internet back then on a 486 with 16mb. Every little speedup was noticeable.
At 4.0 the gap widen. While IE's rendering speed got even faster, its integration with Active Desktop etc. slowed down the start up in Windows 98. Netscape got even slower across the board. It's funny that even without the fancy features Netscape 4 was slower than IE4.
By 5 the dust was largely settled. Netscape was on rapid decline and IE5 optimized/got rid of all the IE4 crap in Windows 98SE. My desktop (Pentium III 800Mhz) was faster with 98SE' IE5 than IE4, which was much better than Netscape 4.0.
I’m from the timeline that is slightly older than you by the looks of it. The first couple of releases of IE were garbage, and I would argue it was IE4 where the writing was clearly on the wall for Netscape. Mind you, if Netscape had continued apace, then it should have been fine. 1995 Netscape Navigator 2 was full of promise and life. A little bundle of hopes and dreams. IE2 around the same time was the Cuckoo in the nest. Ugly, dishonestly planted, and soon taking all the nutrients from the Netscape hatchling until it withered away.
Ahh Microsoft; ever were you the great teacher on the reality of power.
IE4 is the first what I would call "recognizably modern" browser, because it's the first browser that has a concept of "reflow" accessible through Javascript. I recall writing some Javascript attached to a button that would add another row to a table, and that new row would have a button in it with attached Javascript that would add a new row. Yeah, it's not how you'd do it today, and I crashed the browser more than once trying to do this sort of thing, but it worked like you expect a browser to work today; a row was added to the table and the page reflowed around it.
Prior to that, nothing worked that way. What limited page modification there was after formatting couldn't ever cause a reflow, and you couldn't even do all the things that couldn't cause a reflow, either. Reflows were simply not a thing through Javascript. (Deferred image loading could cause reflows, and a few other special cases the browser would handle, but you didn't have generalized access to it.)
Netscape tried to compete but they clearly couldn't. They tried to build a "layer" concept, which was ultimate just several chunks of page that could be completely rewritten, but couldn't be reflowed as we'd use the term today. It was a weak concept that was very difficult to use for anything.
IIRC, Netscape qua Netscape never solved this. It was only after Firefox that it could compete. There was a long time where IE was really the only recognizably-modern browser.
It, too, fell behind, its internal architecture becoming simply too limiting. But there was a period of time where it was legitimately the best browser, no matter how anyone may have felt about it.
If memory serves, Opera was always more performant, they just got hosed by dominant web sites like hotmail, msn, etc. intentionally breaking the css/markup being served and other websites that used explicit browser sniffing and would refuse to load real content for anything but IE.
rent by incompetent business leaders and crumbling from unassailable technical debt.
I think you've mistaken this for a brand-off between IE and Netscape. Netscape got very, very bad, then died. That allowed IE to stop working at all on the browser, and even to use their bugs as a moat.
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I don't know which timeline you are from, but even at v3.0 IE was noticeably ahead of Netscape Navigator, both in terms of speed and stability. Trust me, I browsed the internet back then on a 486 with 16mb. Every little speedup was noticeable.
At 4.0 the gap widen. While IE's rendering speed got even faster, its integration with Active Desktop etc. slowed down the start up in Windows 98. Netscape got even slower across the board. It's funny that even without the fancy features Netscape 4 was slower than IE4.
By 5 the dust was largely settled. Netscape was on rapid decline and IE5 optimized/got rid of all the IE4 crap in Windows 98SE. My desktop (Pentium III 800Mhz) was faster with 98SE' IE5 than IE4, which was much better than Netscape 4.0.
I’m from the timeline that is slightly older than you by the looks of it. The first couple of releases of IE were garbage, and I would argue it was IE4 where the writing was clearly on the wall for Netscape. Mind you, if Netscape had continued apace, then it should have been fine. 1995 Netscape Navigator 2 was full of promise and life. A little bundle of hopes and dreams. IE2 around the same time was the Cuckoo in the nest. Ugly, dishonestly planted, and soon taking all the nutrients from the Netscape hatchling until it withered away.
Ahh Microsoft; ever were you the great teacher on the reality of power.
IE4 is the first what I would call "recognizably modern" browser, because it's the first browser that has a concept of "reflow" accessible through Javascript. I recall writing some Javascript attached to a button that would add another row to a table, and that new row would have a button in it with attached Javascript that would add a new row. Yeah, it's not how you'd do it today, and I crashed the browser more than once trying to do this sort of thing, but it worked like you expect a browser to work today; a row was added to the table and the page reflowed around it.
Prior to that, nothing worked that way. What limited page modification there was after formatting couldn't ever cause a reflow, and you couldn't even do all the things that couldn't cause a reflow, either. Reflows were simply not a thing through Javascript. (Deferred image loading could cause reflows, and a few other special cases the browser would handle, but you didn't have generalized access to it.)
Netscape tried to compete but they clearly couldn't. They tried to build a "layer" concept, which was ultimate just several chunks of page that could be completely rewritten, but couldn't be reflowed as we'd use the term today. It was a weak concept that was very difficult to use for anything.
IIRC, Netscape qua Netscape never solved this. It was only after Firefox that it could compete. There was a long time where IE was really the only recognizably-modern browser.
It, too, fell behind, its internal architecture becoming simply too limiting. But there was a period of time where it was legitimately the best browser, no matter how anyone may have felt about it.
If memory serves, Opera was always more performant, they just got hosed by dominant web sites like hotmail, msn, etc. intentionally breaking the css/markup being served and other websites that used explicit browser sniffing and would refuse to load real content for anything but IE.
I think you've mistaken this for a brand-off between IE and Netscape. Netscape got very, very bad, then died. That allowed IE to stop working at all on the browser, and even to use their bugs as a moat.