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The Browser Wars
(August 2002)
The Third Browser War
The third browser war is likely to be a much more messy affair, not least because it will be a many-fronted battle.
Web Authors
Sadly, many web authors have yet to grasp the main concept of standards, and are still working in the belief that web browsers are incompatible and must be supported individually. They refuse to support anything beyond the version 4 browser techniques, because they think that supporting standards-compliant browsers means writing a third version of their code. So they keep churning out HTML which looks a complete mess in anything but Internet Explorer and Netscape 4, cursing all the while about having to continue supporting Netscape 4.
Thanks to the work of the W3C and the browser manufacturers, it is now possible to achieve most effects with a single piece of code which works in all modern browsers. There are still glitches to work around in the version 4.x browsers, but it's remarkably easy to write a page that looks acceptable in IE5.5+, Netscape 6+, Opera 6+, Konquerer and more, without any browser sniffing at all. No more complex code to figure out which browser the user has and do things differently. Using the standards is often LESS work - it's the proprietary methods required to support the older browsers that make life difficult. Yet many web authors still have the "code each browser separately" mindset which has its roots in the idea of "Pixel-Perfect" web design.
Web Users
Similarly, many web users continue to blame their browser when a page doesn't work, when the fault often lies with the page author, for using non-standard code which will only ever work in one or two browsers. Sometimes, however, it IS the fault of the browser, which leads me to the second major obstacle - the continued market share of the version 4.0 browsers, particularly Netscape 4.x. Despite the fact that this browser has had no significant updates in three years, and no major updates for five, and is therefore an absolute fossil in terms of the history of the web, many people still use it as their main browser. Which is unfortunate, as it is a complete disaster when it comes to modern web standards.