At the time IE6 was released it was easily best browser and many many of the standards that we now take for granted (DOM events on every tag, AJAX, etc) were st

At the time IE6 was released it was easily best browser and many many of the standards that we now take for granted (DOM events on every tag, AJAX, etc) were started with IE. Now what followed that was years of stagnation just like we're starting to see with Safari. Safari is the exclusive platform browser for iOS; even Microsoft didn't prevent you from installing alternative browsers! So in that way, Mobile Safari is even worse. From there, everything else follows: developers simply cannot afford to ignore Safari, despite its flaws, just like they couldn't afford to ignore IE despite its flaws.