This is oft-repeated but wrong. Sure, there was no innovation in IE, but innovation elsewhere on the web never slowed down. Even when IE dominated the browser market, browsers like Opera kept developing new features. Opera in the late 90s had features that I still don't see in most browsers today.
Now, those other browsers were less popular for a while, but let's not conflate "widespread use" with "innovation".
I worked on web apps in the early and mid 2000s. What we could do was defined by the capabilities of ie 5-6. Everything else, with it's whopping up to 10% market share, was irrelevant.
Plus, innovation on its own is worthless. If I can't use feature X in the browser that the vast majority of my customers use, it may as well not exist.
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This is oft-repeated but wrong. Sure, there was no innovation in IE, but innovation elsewhere on the web never slowed down. Even when IE dominated the browser market, browsers like Opera kept developing new features. Opera in the late 90s had features that I still don't see in most browsers today.
Now, those other browsers were less popular for a while, but let's not conflate "widespread use" with "innovation".
No.
I worked on web apps in the early and mid 2000s. What we could do was defined by the capabilities of ie 5-6. Everything else, with it's whopping up to 10% market share, was irrelevant.
Plus, innovation on its own is worthless. If I can't use feature X in the browser that the vast majority of my customers use, it may as well not exist.