>>AFAIR, it was _always_ worse than any other browser.
>
>Hmmmm,
>
>in IE4 and IE5 (and soon after IE6 came out) times I thought then-current IE was much better than Netscape or other browsers.
>Cannot point to the exact point in time IE became wart of browser world...

Maybe from end-user point of view; if you had to code for it, it was a headache, always was. Just read the comments in the .js code you downloaded, or in the JS Bibles - IE was always the one with special needs.