The correct term would be they use standard JavaScript/ECMA Script, not the bastardized JScript from M$ (which only works with IE, AFAIK).
IE-only sites clearly S-U-C-K and the thing is that there is really NO EXCUSE for them in this day and age! Blame it on web developers who have not updated their knowledge since the ancient days of the dot-com bubble.
But first, to address the misconceptions in your post:
* JScript, like Netscape Javascript, is ECMAScript compliant. In fact, all new Javascript implementations strive to be. (Check out Rhino, the kewl but slow Java-based Javascript interpreter used, among other places, in the Batik SVG viewer.)
* Furthermore, since version 5.0, IE has supported the W3C DOM as an alternative to Microsoft's proprietary DOM (which is actually very good and far superior to Netscape 4's).
This was _before_ Mozilla was even remotely ready for primetime.
Today, Mozilla has somewhat more comprehensive support of W3C DOM than IE, but IE 5 and above supports enough of W3C DOM that it has been possible to write sophisticated, cross-browser Javascript webapps, without recourse to browser detection / browser specific code, ever since Mozilla 1.0 came on the scene.
W3C DOM (an application of the XML DOM) clearly shows its ugly design-by-committee heritage, but it is the furthest along we have to a cross-browser API standard (including political and mind share wise) so I don't see anything emerging to replace it anytime soon.
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As proof of how practical standards-based browser DOM is, I have a foldable, threaded discussion display web-app I started writing a couple of years ago with IE and Mozilla usage in mind. It uses W3C DOM for browser scripting and there is a version that uses PHP/MySQL(*) as the backend.
Similar to kuro5hin.org's 'dynamic nesting' view, it is however, more advanced. Unlike kuro5hin's implementation, it can load in multiple message bodies concurrently, allows you to arbitrarily fold up sub-threads, and works more cleanly.
There is virtually no browser specific/detection code - an ugly and obsolete practice still seen in the majority of pages out there - save for just 1 or 2 lines which I may have even removed eventually. It works on Opera and on Konqueror's KHTML engine (some cosmetic limitations on an older version of KHTML should probably be gone by now) AS IS and should do so for any other browser which claims to support W3C DOM.
[* Python is so kewl I was able to port the core backend code over to using Spyce/Python DB-API in around two hours... while I was talking to someone on the phone. No way I'd have been able to do that with JSP, I think. ]
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