When did software go off the rails?
>  Hardware capability increases exponentially, but software somehow just bloats up, using the power and space, without providing much more functionality or value.<p>I disagree. Our baseline for software has increased dramatically. If you don't care much about the added functionality or value of the new software, use Mosaic or Netscape 4.0 to browse the web.<p>There are obvious improvements in browsers which you are so used to that you forgot them: tabs, ability to zoom, process-level isolation for websites, support for newer protocols, CSS, Unicode support, font rendering things I'm probably not aware of, a built-in debugger and inspector in the browser, and so on.<p>Again, if you think that software hasn't advanced much, simply use the software from 10 or 20 years ago, and see if you can stand the experience.