[thegeomaster]

> I was writing web pages with very little technical ability Yes, a little. Similarly, I sad a degree of technical expertise. Not a lot, just a little, but enough to differentiate the creator from the consumer.

Today, even if browsers don't have "View Source", you can search Google for "how to make web sites", and a zillion results would pop up. It's not a roadblock.

[asadotzler]

Not everyone learns by reading a book or article. Lots of people learn by tinkering.

[thegeomaster]

It's hard, if not impossible, to learn stuff exclusively by tinkering. I developed my interest in HTML because I clicked an "Edit in FrontPage" button in IE6 (or was it IE5/4?), but I don't think I could learn HTML in thorough detail just by poking around FrontPage. The Internet then came to my rescue.

My point is, even if IE didn't include that toolbar button, I would've started up FrontPage on my computer sooner or later. It was just a matter of timing and a string of coincidences. Some other string of coincidences could've led me there, too. I say that the argument "some people would tinker and by moving the IDE into an add-on wouldn't let them tinker enough" is pretty weak. If you're curious about something, you tend not to get stopped by things such as that: that curiosity drives you to poke around incrementally until you either find what you're looking for or fuck up the computer (well, at the time, this was something I was prone to doing often because I loved messing with Windows' system files :)