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A comment on Apple is not defending browser engine choice. Parent comment

Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by tclancy on Friday June 24, 2022 @11:18AM (#31863605)
I find it hard to imagine anyone preferred Netscape 4.x to IE 5 and 5.5. I think even IE6 may have existed before Netscape 6, though I definitely made the switch to Phoenix as soon as I discovered it.
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Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by RobertRoberts on Friday June 24, 2022 @02:52PM (#31867615)
I certainly did. I used a lot of features in Netscape that IE never had, and at university it was _the_ browser used on campus in the late 90s.

IE 5 was a buggy browser lacking a lot of features, but was used often by people not building things online. And forced on people by bizarre site requirements. Though this came worse with IE6.

Microsoft was embroiled in legal issues of their browser at this time, and anyone with a sense of logic (most programmers) could see being locked into one piece of software instantly degrades the value of that software.

Sept 2002 was when Phoenix was released.[0]

IE 6 came out only a year before Phoenix.[1] And you if you were involved with Slashdot back in the day you were tracking browser usage as a daily trend. Phoenix was doing well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6

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Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by icedchai on Friday June 24, 2022 @05:19PM (#31869466)
IE had over 70% marketshare through 2005. In 2002, right after IE 6 was released, it was 85%. Everything else was in the weeds. https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/neil.the.analyst/viz/...
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Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by RobertRoberts on Sunday June 26, 2022 @12:28AM (#31881070)
The difference from now is that back then there was an army of dedicated tech oriented people that _knew_ MS and IE were a problem that needed to be resisted.
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Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by icedchai on Monday June 27, 2022 @09:17AM (#31894186)
I knew tech oriented people, myself included, that used a Windows desktops for a few years because the other browser alternatives were unacceptably bad.
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Re:Apple is not defending browser engine choice by tclancy on Saturday June 25, 2022 @11:57PM (#31880919)
Sure. As someone who had to build sites for both, IE was far superior. Vague css support and it didn’t crash if you nested tables more than seven layers deep.
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