Netscape Navigator was the one and only reasonable choice in opposition to the standards-threatening, anticompetitive deployment of Internet Explorer for a good chunk of time.
From the Wikipedia article you linked:
Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure that Navigator remained the technical leader among web browsers. New features included cookies, frames,[10] proxy auto-config,[11] and JavaScript (in version 2.0). Although those and other innovations eventually became open standards of the W3C and ECMA and were emulated by other browsers, they were often viewed as controversial. Netscape, according to critics, was more interested in bending the web to its own de facto “standards” (bypassing standards committees and thus marginalizing the commercial competition) than it was in fixing bugs in its products. Consumer rights advocates were particularly critical of cookies and of commercial web sites using them to invade individual privacy
It also talks about how while Internet Explorer was using a lot of proprietary HTML tags that made its sites incompatible with Netscape, Netscape was also doing the same thing.
I’ve always had confusion when it comes to hearing people talking about Netscape vs Microsoft because (and maybe this is just hindsight) iirc the biggest complaint Netscape had was that Microsoft was bundling IE with windows for free. However that’s such an obvious thing to do. You make an operating system. The internet is taking off. Your users are going to want some way of interacting with the internet that doesn’t require going to a computer store and buying a floppy disk or CD to access it. Obvious solution: bundle a browser with your OS.
ActiveX was a Microsoft technology that ran best in Internet Explorer on Windows. There were some plug-ins that added support to competing browsers, like Netscape Navigator (the ancestor of Mozilla Firefox), but it was really all about Internet Explorer.
Technically, ActiveX was cross-platform. Microsoft added ActiveX support to Internet Explorer for Mac. However, unlike with Java (which was cross-platform), ActiveX controls written for Windows would not work on a Mac. Developers would have to create ActiveX controls for the Mac.
For example, South Korea standardized on an ActiveX control that was required to access secure financial and government websites back in the '90s. It was only fully shut down in 2020, and dependency on ActiveX forced people to use that ancient, outdated technology for a long time. As the Washington Post once wrote, “South Korea [was] stuck with Internet Explorer for online shopping” in 2013. The article describes how Mac users had to rely on desktop computers in their offices, internet cafes, old computers, or Boot Camp to make purchases online.
Such situations played out in similar ways in other places: Companies that standardized on ActiveX for delivering internal applications were stuck depending on Internet Explorer on Windows until they left ActiveX behind.
It was all about locking you into Microsoft in any possible way. (sounds familiar)
Netscape did not have, and never was anywhere close to having, the sort of weight MS did to throw around.
The bigger problem was that IE was involved in a lot of things and uninstalling it could break a lot. IIRC some versions would not even allow actual removal.
From the Wikipedia article you linked:
It also talks about how while Internet Explorer was using a lot of proprietary HTML tags that made its sites incompatible with Netscape, Netscape was also doing the same thing.
I’ve always had confusion when it comes to hearing people talking about Netscape vs Microsoft because (and maybe this is just hindsight) iirc the biggest complaint Netscape had was that Microsoft was bundling IE with windows for free. However that’s such an obvious thing to do. You make an operating system. The internet is taking off. Your users are going to want some way of interacting with the internet that doesn’t require going to a computer store and buying a floppy disk or CD to access it. Obvious solution: bundle a browser with your OS.
It wasn’t just bundled, it was tightly integrated. You could not easily remove it for a period of time, especially if you were the average user.
And, dusting off some old complaints, I seem to recall it was part of a strategy to control not just the browsing experience but also the hosting and serving of web pages. https://www.howtogeek.com/717016/remembering-activex-controls-the-webs-biggest-mistake/
It was all about locking you into Microsoft in any possible way. (sounds familiar)
Netscape did not have, and never was anywhere close to having, the sort of weight MS did to throw around.
MS has always been about doing whatever they can do to lock you tightly to their ecosystem, ethics be damned. Before they applied EEE to Linux, they first tried applying it to the web and a bunch of other stuff.
The bigger problem was that IE was involved in a lot of things and uninstalling it could break a lot. IIRC some versions would not even allow actual removal.
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