In a recent post to UWebD, the university web developers list, a diehard Microsoft user stated the following:
From around ‘97 through ‘01, Netscape was perennially behind IE, but it was rarely faulted until it finally bit the dust. Now IE is behind Netscape in certain respects–mostly on minor issues if you ask me–and all hell breaks lose. What has changed?
IE is not behind Netscape; it is behind the opensource products of Mozilla. There is a big difference. Netscape is a dying browser. AOL couldn’t decide what to do with it. Netscape hasn’t had an update in nearly two years. Should they decide to release another version of Netscape at this point, it would be a nearly futile effort. All of the opensource Mozilla-based browsers are far superior to Netscape for one major reason…extensibility. While you can technically extend Netscape, what’s the point—it still drops a “try AOL” icon on your desktop.
When you argue that the IE and Netscape are at it again, you miss the point. Netscape is dead. The future of the Web lies in the hands of whomever comes up with the best method for delivering the tools end users want or need. IE may continue to soak up the consumer market by being the default on the machines that a majority of people buy, but it will just as quickly loose the tech-savvy, power user market unless it becomes extensible and flexible—something that Microsoft is loath to do under its current business model.
It is easier for a GUI developer to extend Mozilla, or its quicker sibling Firefox, so developers will continue to build better tools for these browsers. It is easier for a Web developer to build a standards-compliant site that is also cross-browser compatible in a Mozilla derivative than to fool around with CSS hacks in IE only to scrap that CSS when developing for alternative browsers.
My current practices involve building for Firefox, then testing the code against IE. Most of the time, after giving a little ground on a few cool tricks that don’t add anything to the usability, everything works. This is not necessarily the case if you go the other way and start with IE. This applies regardless of your operating system.
I’m really tired of hearing references to “war” and “battle” when referecing the current market share of any given browser. The only thing going on is a group of users trying to design a piece of software that fulfills a need. Mozilla and other opensource movements—heck even Safari for that matter—will continue to gain marketshare so long as they fulfill a need. It isn’t a battle so much as an organic environment where subtle changes cause all the involved organisms to adapt or slowly disappear. It’s called evolution—there is little violence involved in this case…aside from the occassional flames. 
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