Lots of talk about the death of IE5 for Mac (well, more like 2nd death, the 1st death was when MS halted development), and the general tone seems celebratory. Now I'm anti-MS, anti-IE, yadda yadda yadda as the next, but I think people are losing context here.

*dreamy transition sequence*

It's a long time ago. Year 2000 or there abouts. MacOS X PR1 comes out to revolutionize the platform, to bring the Mac OS out of the stone ages. Guess what browser it comes with? Yup, MSIE 5. And guess what? It worked. Safari wasn't out yet, neither was Firefox. Lots of people were still using Netscape 4.7, and Netscape 6 was one slow buggy hunk of software. Frankly, for a while, MSIE 5 was the best browser on OS X.

*dreamy transition sequence*

Sure, by today's standard, IE5 is a crappy browser no matter how you look at it. But at it's moment of death, let's at least acknowledge it for what it was. At the very least, the developers who fought an uphill battle to get it out deserve it.