Browsers battle, you win

As you may know by now, Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 7 a week ago. Likewise, Mozilla released the final version of Firefox 2 yesterday. Naturally a lot of people are saying that the so-called Browser Wars have begun again. I would have to agree, but not in the way that most people are thinking. These new Browser Wars do not pit Microsoft against Mozilla (or Opera or Safari either for that matter). Rather this latest round pits Web standards (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) against proprietary technologies, garbage markup, browser sniffing, and mountains of needless hacks. In this round the browser makers (at least for now) are on the same team.

Of course, Mozilla has been carrying the standards banner for years now and Microsoft could easily be seen as a Johnny-come-lately bowing to market pressure and a desire to stay relevant in this era of increasingly powerful web-based applications. Personally I don’t care about Microsoft’s motivation at this point and I’m willing to give them a pass (for now). I’m just happy at the sheer amount of progress they’ve made to close the gap with Firefox when it comes to Web standards. Here’s some reading material from IEBlog for those interested…

So Microsoft deserves at least a golf clap for the advances they’ve made. Now check out what Mozilla has been up to with Firefox 2 and what one site has said about it already…

This is all well and good for both IE and Firefox, but we must keep in mind that the real test is not between IE7 and Firefox 2. The real test is where both browsers go from here. While Microsoft is vague at best about future versions of IE, Mozilla is already several months into planning and development for Firefox 3. They’ve even started scoping out Firefox 4. Once again, some reading for you…

Clearly Mozilla is dead serious about building the world’s best Web browser and they intend to continue that quest indefinitely. Only time will tell what Microsoft’s real intentions are or how far they are willing to go. Should be an interesting ride…

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October 26, 2006 | Filed Under Mozilla, Web development 

Comments

One Response to “Browsers battle, you win”

  1. shadoz on March 21st, 2008 5:36 pm

    I think IE 7 has proved its performance since long time and I am satisfied with it aswell.

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