It isn't nearly as bad as it used to be
actually.
So, throughout the 1990s, there
were two competing browsers:
Netscape Navigator and Microsoft
Internet Explorer. By the late 1990s,
Internet Explorer was the clear
winner and it had over a 90%
market share by 2001. In 2001,
Microsoft released Internet Explorer
version 6. At the time, it was
incredibly powerful. But, over the
next 5 years, Microsoft worked on
completely overhauling all of their
software. There were no major
releases of any Microsoft software,
including Internet Explorer, in that
time frame. They were too busy
rebuilding the entire system around
a more secure foundation. In the
mean time, because Internet
Explorer 6 had a near-monopoly on
the browser market, it was the
target of all sorts of malicious
attacks.
During those five years, the Netscape
Navigator code was spun off into a
new browser. The new browser was
originally called Phoenix, because it
rose from the ashes of Netscape, but
the name was already taken so
instead they chose to call it Firefox.
They built the browser up around
new standards such as CSS 2. They
added support for new formats such
as the Scalable Vector Graphics. And
it wasn't tied to the operating
system so it was inherently more
secure. Then Apple forked a small
Linux browser called Konqueror and
released Safari. Now there were two
browsers, far better with the newer
standards than Internet Explorer,
which couldn't even render PNG files
correctly.
In 2006, Microsoft released Internet
Explorer 7, but it wasn't enough. For
one thing, they didn't want to break
all of those pages that relied on
Internet Explorer 6's quirks, so IE 7
was very quirky as well. For another,
businesses take a long time to
upgrade and they had spent millions
of dollars on software designed
specifically for IE 6. They were in no
hurry to get off the outdated
browser. Web Developers, faced with
the prospect of having to support IE
6 until 2020 (when Windows XP
finally stops being supported) were
furious at this because they have to
include crazy hacks to get their
website to look the same on Internet
Explorer as on every other browser.
Then Google released Chrome and it
got even worse. Chrome started a
revolution in browsers- all the
sudden, web applications could be
run 10 times faster than before. It
was getting to the point where you
could run real programs in a web
browser. Apple, Mozilla, and Opera
followed with their own speedy
browsers. Microsoft, which is
beholden to the needs of the
enterprises that make up almost all
of their business, had to take it
slower. So right now, Internet
Explorer is about 10 times slower on
every benchmark than any other
browser.
Internet Explorer 9 (now in beta) is
actually quite good. It's got a
minimal interface, inspired by
Chrome. It's Javascript speed now
matches all the other browsers. And
it's at least as far along at
implementing the fledgling HTML 5
and CSS 3 specs as Firefox or
Chrome. But people are still thinking
about IE 6, which they still have to
support on corporate networks.