As you may, or may not, be aware both Mozilla and Microsoft have launched new versions of the popular web browser Firefox and Internet Explorer late in October. As a web developer, this has quite an important impact on how I develop web applications.

I personally use Mozilla’s Firefox for my browsing and primary development needs. It better conforms to web standards than its rival Internet Explorer. But the majority of web users stay with Internet Explorer, for the most part because it is conveniently installed on a PC running a Microsoft Windows operating system by default. Internet Explorer however is known to have lower levels of conformance to web standards than Firefox and does have a reputation of particularly fussy. Internet Explorer 7, the latest version of the browser, does go some way to better conforming to web standards however it does still trails its competition.

As a web developer, having various levels of conformance to standards in browsers and particular requirements for each browser causes a plethora of problems and complicates the development process massively. To combat this, I feel that standards should be taken to the next level. I believe that all web browsers should use, here comes the technical bit, a common rendering engine. The rendering engine takes the code and converts it into a human friendly interface known as a web page. Having a common rendering engine will greatly reduce the complexity of supporting different browsers for us web developers. It will encourage better standards conformance which in the end will help the web site/application user. It should also, in theory, reduce development costs of web browsers.

By all means have different web browsers providing different features and functionality, but have a common rendering engine at the core of each. This idea is not meant to discourage competition, merely make the web a better place for us all.