Microsoft leveraged their dominance of desktop computing to gain dominance of browser installed base with IE. Having won the battle, they stopped improving the browser as an application platform.
During the first period, Microsoft developed and deployed a variety of browser technologies such as Dynamic HTML (aka the DOM) and XMLHTTPRequest that moved the browser toward being a viable application platform. During the second period, IE stagnated and it was left to Firefox and, later, Chrome to pick up the baton. But they had to fight for market share for several years before having enough influence to make significant progress. IE has recently caught up, but that still leaves several years before enterprise customers will deploy the improvements.
Thus in 2014 there are still major gaps in the browser platform that really should have been solved some years back, and a large portion of installed base still using the transitional IE 8 and 9.
Microsoft tied browser development to OS development. After Windows XP (Oct 2001) they didn't release an OS until Vista (Jan 2007). Things far, far more important to Microsoft's overall strategy than HTML parsing stalled during that gap.
Additionally, many enterprise web applications developed in the early 2000s solely targeted IE and often used ActiveX controls, which made many companies standardize on IE6, and in turn made IE6 support (and dealing with its limitations and bugs) a requirement for most web applications. The result was that even as other browsers started to innovate, it wasn't practical to leverage those advancements in many web applications.
Dynamic HTML is not "aka the DOM", nor is XHMLHttpRequest an application platform.
Microsoft developed function calls and API calls which were only available internally, and for preferred enterprise customers, that would fail on Netscape.
In addition, "IE has recently caught up" is hardly the truth and you can visit HTML5test.com or CSS3test.com to test your browser; or visit caniuse.com to browser around to find large gaps and inconsistencies between IE and any other browser (and not just HTML but the web APIs that work everywhere but IE).
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The very short, oversimplified version:
Microsoft leveraged their dominance of desktop computing to gain dominance of browser installed base with IE. Having won the battle, they stopped improving the browser as an application platform.
During the first period, Microsoft developed and deployed a variety of browser technologies such as Dynamic HTML (aka the DOM) and XMLHTTPRequest that moved the browser toward being a viable application platform. During the second period, IE stagnated and it was left to Firefox and, later, Chrome to pick up the baton. But they had to fight for market share for several years before having enough influence to make significant progress. IE has recently caught up, but that still leaves several years before enterprise customers will deploy the improvements.
Thus in 2014 there are still major gaps in the browser platform that really should have been solved some years back, and a large portion of installed base still using the transitional IE 8 and 9.
Microsoft tied browser development to OS development. After Windows XP (Oct 2001) they didn't release an OS until Vista (Jan 2007). Things far, far more important to Microsoft's overall strategy than HTML parsing stalled during that gap.
Additionally, many enterprise web applications developed in the early 2000s solely targeted IE and often used ActiveX controls, which made many companies standardize on IE6, and in turn made IE6 support (and dealing with its limitations and bugs) a requirement for most web applications. The result was that even as other browsers started to innovate, it wasn't practical to leverage those advancements in many web applications.
"a large portion of installed base still using the transitional IE 8 and 9."
Looks to be about 3.4%, per http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_explorer.asp , vs 5.8% for IE10/11
Dynamic HTML is not "aka the DOM", nor is XHMLHttpRequest an application platform.
Microsoft developed function calls and API calls which were only available internally, and for preferred enterprise customers, that would fail on Netscape.
In addition, "IE has recently caught up" is hardly the truth and you can visit HTML5test.com or CSS3test.com to test your browser; or visit caniuse.com to browser around to find large gaps and inconsistencies between IE and any other browser (and not just HTML but the web APIs that work everywhere but IE).