[lucideer]

> we can say that Gecko ended up technically better than incremental changes to Internet Explorer

> ...

> That's hardly conclusive but it's some evidence.

Given Internet Explorer's monopoly position, and consequent disincentive to compete, it's not really the best comparison.

Compare to something like Opera Presto, a codebase that - while younger than Netscape - predates Internet Explorer, which underwent incremental changes while remaining in a minority market position. It was killed by market forces, but I doubt anyone would contest it was a badly put together piece of software in the end.

Konqueror is another example. It's not quite as compelling, as KHTML itself has fared less well than its forks, Safari WebKit has never exactly been a leader in engine advancement, and Chrome's innovations, while incremental, were largely built on a scratch-rewrite-and-launch-all-at-once of one component (V8). However KHTML/Webkit/Blink is still pretty much an incremental rewrite success story.

[iopq]

I actually used Opera because it allowed me to stop websites from hijacking my browser. No capturing my right click or any of this silly bullshit. The exact UI/features I want. Opera 6-12 were good times.