The results of the browser war between originator Netscape and Microsoft, appears unresolved in the minds of consumers and developers! While Microsoft added some novel little bells and whistles to their IE3 browsers, they were deliberately buggy and incompatible with the original version of Javascript (Livescript) pioneered by Netscape in their 2.0 browsers.

Javascript is now a bulwark of the internet that allows pages to open windows write custom "child" documents, swap images as well as incorporate many more advanced interactive features into web pages, and IE3 was simply not up to many of these tasks. Unfortunately AOL, (now owners of Netscape) still employ various damaged versions of this browser rebranded as their own. Installing AOL on a Windows computer with IE on it will damage the IE browser as well.

Nonetheless, versions of IE, while still being clumsy and inefficient for most tasks and dangerous to the computers health, now are fairly compatable with Javascript (called "Scripting" in their shameless crack of it). Most annoying is IE's tendency to crash and in so doing, scramble the entire operating systems stability. To be entirely fair, IE4 does offer some minor HTML rendering improvements in terms of the raw speed of the new "parts of Windows" (dll's) they reverse engineered especially for it, and some handy enhancements like hover and the Object CLASSID method of running other programs through VBscripted webpages. These can be handy, though incredibly slow and dangerous, for things like online database management.

Installing the "Active Desktop Upgrade" of IE on a Windows95 computer will slow down it's local "Explorer" features dramatically, since this upgrade keeps IE running all the time, to manage files on your own machine! Windows 98, 98SE, ME etc. (not 95 OSR2) are permanently handicapped in this manner. To make matters much worse, Windows 98 Second Edition OS flavors and newer, based entirely around the bug ridden IE 5.x browsers, no longer support a huge chunk of Windows software, and currently, all Scripting and ActiveX is very dangerous to these unstable 98SE/ME OSs! 98SE/ME only barely succeeded in putting another MS "software partner" (Wingate internet connection sharing) out of business, they still do not fully accomodate and manage large hard drives.

The fundamental problem with Windows is that it has always been a "toy" OS. Unlike sophisticated operating systems it lacks even the most basic user-level program, folder and file ownership and permission structures that allow a computer to be administrated securely. They have been attempting to bandage this problem since Windows for Workgroups (early NT), but have been largely unsuccessful until W2K due to it's endless underlying weaknesses. Any user who can connect in any manner to a Windows box can do pretty much what they like. (Code Red Virus).

Read about WindowsXP and Denial Of Service attacks, and Microsoft's smug negligence at Gibson Research Corp..

With Windows 2000/XP Microsoft have finally delivered something like what they originally promised their customers way back in 1995. It is a true 32 bit operating system that is finally stable, yet IE6 is severely handicapped and unimproved and still as badly flawed and unstable as ever. To add insult to injury, they have engineered some major, serious new security dangers into these supposedly new OS's, including the danger that a virus infected or hacked W2Kp/XP machine can be used as a potent and unstoppable Denial Of Service "slave", attacking website servers by remote control without the owners knowledge! They have also engineered a malicious new vulnerability into IE6 which allows both Microsoft and 3rd party Plugin-Vendors to deface all displayed HTML content (and even email) with paid "highlighted keyword" spam-links to their customers websites, behind the user and website owners backs! These so-called "Smart Tags" were withdrawn from the formal releases but are installed with their new "Office XP" non-update.

Who won the war?

For savvy web users, IE has lost the battle on several fronts, it's byzantine "security" settings, which while useful and necessary to protect users from unending system security bugs that have plagued it from day one, still do not allow simple things like turning off style sheets. Critics cite it's wasteful use of individual files to store cookies and bookmarks, requiring an entire file for each little website entry, lack of toolbar and context menu features, and silly desktop shortcut-to-advertisers bar. Add to this IE's inability to be used as a proofing tool due to a deliberate disobeyance of the rules of HTML tables, designed to make Netscape appear to be buggy by falsely rendering totally defective and incomplete HTML code. Another major problem is it's broken versions of the Java language, and strange desktop.ini files that disable normal filing functions of your computer. Of far greater import is it's poor bookmark organizing system, which does not have the direct, Personal Toolbar organizing system of Netscape 4, offering only buried, cascading menus. IE's introduction of ActiveX and the dangerous VBscript language, have been total Internet flops. The new IE6 no longer even supports Java, a major, important and widespread Internet must-have technology, because they are too cheap to licence it responsibly from Sun Microsystems, just as they "cracked" JavaScript (Jscript hack) to pirate that Netscape technology!

IE lacks many of the valuable tools like the JavaScript: debugging tool, the ability to view the source of framesets and frames, the option to view an image, the display of image names in context dialogs, the display of image sizes when an image is viewed, the detailed Page Info, the highlighting of obvious errors when a page source is viewed, and numerous other gross technical shortcomings, that make it unusable as a html writing or testing tool. IE's main flaw is that it will still draw and display content published in hopelessly broken documents, as if they are well, leaving one to believe that a document is viewable when it's HTML is in fact empty, incorrect and uncompleted!

Another IE flaw is it's broken ability to preload and reuse images, like swap buttons, into local memory if they are defined as an object within a virtual "scripted array" instead of being pre-declared as individual objects. When IE is set to check for newer documents "every visit to the page" it literally does so, for these sorts of swapped images! Users with fast connections always prefer the latest version of a page, and IE, when set in this mode, will reload each and every button image again and again, clogging the server for a single page view! This can result in thousands of extra webserver hits effectively causing a "Denial of Service" to other visitors! Many WYSYWIG page writing programs use this "array" method of preloading image objects.

Netscape's 6 version is the result of collaboration by users and developers and promises to be the most advanced, streamlined and sophisticated web browser available, once it is finally polished. Opera 5 is a tour de force, nearly eclipsing Netscape 6! Netscape 4.X's efficiency and simple to use customization features, coupled with robust performance and easy to understand settings and features have made it the preferred browser among serious professionals and avid web surfers worldwide in spite of endless attempts stamp it out. It is still far more practical, robust, trustworthy, secure and useful than IE 4+, Opera 5 or Netscape 6 at this point!. A special tribute must be paid to both Opera 5 and Netscape 6 who have been forced to make their browsers useless for page 'proofing' by adopting the flawed, broken-table rendering mischief of IE, at the expense of becoming useless page testing tools.

In total, serious web-wide problems remain with major incompatabilities like stylesheet nonsense, DHTML, XHTML and HTML features that have been corrupted by the childish lack of co-operation in standards compliance for which Microsoft is mostly to blame. Many people installed IE4 only for "parts of Windows" you couldn't get separately (Y2K fixes) or have been made to endure IE because it was tied to their computer or operating system purchase. Don't place your bets just yet, while apparently more popular, it is still a grossly inferior product that is getting worse, not better!

While IE has taken the lead among newbies, since it's forced upon them due to Microsoft's embedding this software program into it's monopoly PC operating systems on all new computers, experienced users revile it. It's analogous to going out of your locked house naked, except in this case, your house can also be freely looted and taken over behind your back, without your knowledge!

Due to the risk that your computer can be altered and examined and controlled in ways that go far beyond what a third-party browser is capable of, IE is and will continue to remain a very dangerous choice, for your computing health. The adoption of Windows-type CLSID embedded instructions in web documents for the ActiveX system exposes you to thousands of potential risks, as webpages can access and run internal system processes from your computers registry, - and just how many computers even have Windows Registries?