Frankly I do miss the IE6 days, when everything just mostly worked. NetCaptor, an IE-based browser using Trident to render pages, had its own ad blocker, tabbed

Frankly I do miss the IE6 days, when everything just mostly worked. NetCaptor, an IE-based browser using Trident to render pages, had its own ad blocker, tabbed browsing, quicksearch, etc. -- most of the best features of Chrome -- without all the compatibility issues of the browser wars. Disabling ActiveX and Java (not Javascript) and having Just One Browser made for a remarkably clean and simple experience, the likes of which we haven't seen since. For all the modern innovations, I don't think the fundamental premise of the web has changed all that much -- hyperlinks, text, and media -- but the user and developer experience has gotten a lot, lot worse over time as more and more money competed for eyeballs. Edit: As for "work as hard and dedicate as much budget"... I hope they don't! A circa-2000s feature freeze on web browsers would be wonderful. Stop "innovating", i.e., creating trash features that only help huge enterprises selling trash advertising. The web doesn't need to be this complex; we're feature-rich and content-poor as it is. What started as a network for academics and info sharing ended up being a marketer's wet dream and a nightmare for everyone else.