The First Browser War

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Do you know what is browser war actual means? It is actually refers to the serious competition in the world of web browsers. The first such “war” was between the Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

A long time ago, when Netscape dominated the market, at around version 3 the browser was, for that time, Excellent. HTML was simple and relatively pure. Eyeing Netscape's success in a field that they had previously shown no interest in ( Bill gates himself once dismissed the internet as a passing fad), later Microsoft released their own web browser named 'Internet Explorer (IE)' with the sole intention of dislodging Netscape.

When Internet Explorer was launched, Netscape was completely dominant in the web browser world. Netscape had led in user share until Internet Explorer took the lead in 1999 due to its distribution advantage.

Internet Explorer became popular. Then come a period of flurried activity, with two browser manufacturers releasing their updates to their browser on ever-decreasing time scales. New HTML tags and DHTML extensions were created and then loosely documented. A designer could use these elements, but at the cost of having them fail in the competitor’s browser. A split started to form as pages designed for one of the ‘big two’ browser would not work in the other.

Netscape released Navigator version 4 in 1997. It was very poorly designed browser, laced with bugs and new abilities that broke backwards-compatibility. What caused most pain among developers was that it happily blundered into advanced CSS and JavaScript code that it should have the sense to ignore. Microsoft released the superior Internet Explorer 4, and the tide started to turn very quickly.

Eventually it become obvious that Netscape were fighting a losing battle between Microsoft. Because Internet Explorer came pre-installed on every Windows operated machine, most users just used that instead of seeking out alternatives (this is the same problem that plagues any competing browser to this day). By the time Internet Explorer 6 was released, its market share had grown to a high of about 95%.

In the years that followed, lazy or ill-equipped web designers began their sites to work only in IE, as making a site look the same in other browsers required a lot of knowledge and effort. This only encouraged user to stick with Internet Explorer, no matter how many advances were made in other browsers. Even when Netscape belatedly released the vastly improved Navigator 6 in year 2000, it barely made a dent in the market.

And so, the war ended. Lying in its wake was a web of incompatibilities and sites that only worked in a certain version of one browser. HTML had been blown off course as a structural markup language and was now bloated with presentational elements like the much-maligned font tag. It took years to even begin to undo the damage that had been done.

Happily, things have finally started moving back towards a level playing field. Internet’s Explorer dominancy is no longer absolute after new browsers had launched like Mozilla Firefox, Mac Safari, Google Chrome and much more. Besides that, web users now have lots of choice when deciding which browser they should use.

Picture Obtained from: http://blogs.parallels.com/.a/6a00e5503060a388330120a6a50fdc970c-500pi

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References:

• http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm
• http://blackcat.brynmawr.edu/~kimberly/CS380/papers/bwarspaper.html
• http://www.gargaro.com/browsers.html