The major difference between two versions of the same browser is their support for newer portions of the HTML language. A new browser is generally better at displaying Web pages than an old one.
However, Internet users tend to upgrade their browser based on the addition of new features, like email integration and instant messaging. If a user doesn't care about these features, they're happy to keep surfing the Web with their old browser.
That presents a problem for Web designers, because for some length of time after the new browser appears, a significant minority of people will still use the previous version. So rushing to build pages with the HTML features supported by the new browser will have to wait.
A good rule of thumb is to design your pages to work for the last two versions of the major browsers.
While a handful of people use browsers older than that, their numbers aren't large enough to justify the sacrifice required to support them. A few people still use Version 3 browsers, but these browsers don't support Cascading Style Sheets, which are the most important addition to HTML in the last 6 years.
Also note that new browser versions sometimes represent major changes in a browser, and in these cases all bets on the browser's behavior are off.
For example, Navigator Version 6.1 is a complete rewrite of Netscape's browser, so a page that worked well under Navigator Version 4 may not work under Version 6. That's especially true if you use Dynamic HTML on your pages.
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