Changing standards for browser engines

In a perfect world, every web browser engine would adhere strictly to wellwritten
and specific standards about how to render web pages and do the
other jobs of a web browser, and it would be possible to view any web page
in any web browser and see the exact same thing.
This has never been the case, however. Starting with the so-called “browser
wars” I mention earlier, web browser vendors added proprietary functionality
on top of some pretty unspecific specifications (such as HTML and CSS).
In other cases, browsers were purposefully designed to render web pages differently
from other browsers as a way to get a competitive edge. The thinking
seems to have been something like the following:
If we, [name your browser warrior from the 1990s], have a large enough
share of the web browser market, people will need to design their web
pages to work in our browser. Therefore, it’s not in our interest to adhere
strictly to standards because then anyone could use any browser.
So the situation that arose over the years forced web designers to test their
work in multiple browsers, and write workarounds for the bugs and differing
capabilities of various browser engines. It was common practice to put Best

viewed on text on web pages similar to the notice


The good news is that in recent years, desktop computer browser makers
have switched their focus from trying to make their browser unique to trying
to be the most standards-compliant browser.
All the latest versions of the major web browsers have great support for Web
standards. We’re rapidly approaching a time when you’ll be able to create
web pages that work the same on the vast majority of the thousands of different
types of desktop computer web browsers in use today simply by following
the standards.
Now, I’m known for being a very optimistic guy. I realize that that last sentence
may have caused some grumbling among some of the seasoned veterans
out there, and I admit that my prediction may turn out to be wrong. But if
we all work together (and encourage users of Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade),
I strongly believe that we can make this dream a reality. Why does it matter?
Well, read on. . . .