Was this recent? Because Firefox were the browser that worked better than all the rest, for quite many years, maybe 2005-2010, and Firefox had no competition basically until Chrome arrived on the scene.
Just the fact that Firefox got browser tabs before anyone else, and Firebug, just took it to another level compared to all the other browsers available at the time.
IE5 and then IE6 were head-and-shoulders better than Mozilla around the 1999-2002 era. They were significantly faster and lighter, and not just because of the deep OS integration but because Mozilla's browser was actually a full Web suite, with a built-in page editor and a mail client.
Then Microsoft stopped developing IE, and it became essentially frozen.
Mozilla moved ahead with refactoring the browser parts into a lightweight Phoenix (Firebird, Firefox - anyone remembers the FireSomething extension?). But it took _years_ for it to get into a usable state.
macic · · focus · HN ↗
flossly · · focus · HN ↗
It... took... long...
But there it was. And it still works.
embedding-shape · · focus · HN ↗
Just the fact that Firefox got browser tabs before anyone else, and Firebug, just took it to another level compared to all the other browsers available at the time.
cyberax · · focus · HN ↗
Then Microsoft stopped developing IE, and it became essentially frozen.
Mozilla moved ahead with refactoring the browser parts into a lightweight Phoenix (Firebird, Firefox - anyone remembers the FireSomething extension?). But it took _years_ for it to get into a usable state.