Perhaps the issue here is age? At the start IE was cutting edge, then MS didn't do anything useful with it for 10 years. Filters were certainly part of its own

Perhaps the issue here is age? At the start IE was cutting edge, then MS didn't do anything useful with it for 10 years. Filters were certainly part of its own vision, AIR. MS seemed to innovate most in breaking hacks that helped to work around their "quirks".