Comment by reconnecting 2 days ago
I'm jealous of your memory capabilities, and I certainly remember that at some point it was nearly impossible to make website looks in similar way in Netscape and IE.
At the end, there was something like acceptable variation in page view for different browsers.
You're not wrong. IE seemed very much designed around the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish concept. It made it incredibly difficult to write cross-browser CSS.
> I'm jealous of your memory capabilities,
Thanks. Learning web development back then left some deep scars and lasting lessons. I can no longer imagine all the other stuff I haven't retained because I remember stupid browser quirks from nearly three decades ago.
Getting many designs working consistently between IE and Netscape was impossible. The 640px wide left-aligned table layout was popular for years because it was the easiest common denominator that looked acceptable in both browsers.
When back to this time the web was mostly a pain, especially for developers, there was also some magic.
Take for example VRML, particularly VRML 2.0. I don't remember the software name, but there was a chat system within a virtual world, perhaps running in a browser (1).
1. https://csdl-images.ieeecomputer.org/mags/cg/1999/02/figures...
The rendering differences were at least as much IE’s fault as Netscapes. It took several versions before IE was (mostly) standards compliant.