I think you are wrong, or at least, I don't share your impression at all... I was there when IE 6 was a thing, and no, nobody was complaining that IE was too s

I think you are wrong, or at least, I don't share your impression at all... I was there when IE 6 was a thing, and no, nobody was complaining that IE was too static. That wasn't the main reason at all. One of the main problems is that it was too dynamic, but in a proprietary and unsafe way (ActiveX). Read, for example, this article from 2002, when "Phoenix" (aka Firefox) was launched: https://www.geek.com/news/mozilla-launches-new-faster-browser-phoenix-550830/ https://www.geek.com/news/mozilla-launches-new-faster-browse... IE was pushed down the throat of everybody, and the main consumer complaints was "it's bloated". For developers instead, the craze of the day was to pass the Acid test: we are talking about CSS implementation. We are talking about open standards. Open standards where the main concerns for developers: http://davidnaylor.org/blog/2005/04/web-standards-acid2-test/ http://davidnaylor.org/blog/2005/04/web-standards-acid2-test... Acid 2 and Acid 3 where a the main thing during the browsers wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars). And they were ALL about standards.