Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together to improve web development standards

Ashwin
Mar 7, 2022
Internet
|
14

Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together in order to improve the web standards that are used across browsers and devices. It might sound like a cool crossover episode of superheroes, but this is not the first time the browser giants are pooling resources, they began working together in 2019.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together to improve web development standards

Last year, the 4 browser makers collaborated for the Compat 2021 conference. This time, the alliance is being called Interop 2022, derived from the word interoperability.

Why is this important?

When a website tries to prevent access to a particular browser by saying something like, this site is best viewed in Chrome. Or, "please use a modern browser", and provides links to browsers that you don't use, it's annoying. You can usually get around this problem by spoofing the user-agent, either by using an add-on or by modifying a preference in the program's settings. That's not very complicated, but think about this.

Have you ever run into a website that doesn't work properly in one browser? It may load slowly, may appear broken, or uses a lot of resources while rendering the page. But when you try accessing the portal from a different browser, it may load perfectly. In such scenarios, the issue is not on the user's side per se. People jokingly blame such bugs on the web developers and say that they didn't code/test the site properly, to check if it is compatible with all modern browsers. Many users claim that YouTube runs better on Chromium browsers than on Firefox. Similarly, you may have observed a difference in the performance on other sites.

What is Interop 2022?

The problem isn't that simple though, there is also the issue of device and operating system compatibility that one needs to consider. A website should perform adequately on all major platforms Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS. Coding a website to support all these standards requires a lot of effort and time.

This is one of the concerns that the browser alliance aims to address. The tech giants want to make it easier for developers by setting universal web standards, that will enable them to code their web apps and sites to work across browsers and platforms.

Interop 2022 provides a benchmark that rates how Chrome/Edge, Firefox, and Safari fared in tests spanning 15 different web performance areas including Cascade Layers, Color Spaces and Functions, Containment, Dialog Element, Forms, Scrolling, Subgrid, Typography and Encodings, Viewport Units and Web Compat.

Interop 2022 results

There is no winner or loser here because it is not a competition, the tests are meant to point which areas a browser needs to be improved in, compared to the others. If you are curious about the numbers, head over to the web platform tests dashboard on Interop 2022's website, and analyze the results.

ComputerWorld mentions that Apple does not allow iOS apps to use their own browser engine. As a result of this restriction, every single browser on the App Store including Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, all use Safari's Webkit-based engine. This is one of the concerns that has been raised by developers. Hopefully this will change in the future.

If you are interested in the technical data, read the blog articles that have been published on Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft's websites.

Summary
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together to improve web development standards
Article Name
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together to improve web development standards
Description
Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla are working together as part of Interop 2022, to make it easier for developers to code websites that work across devices and operating systems.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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