I’m certain they have the best of intentions and will not attempt to break the format, patent it, or split it into multiple incompatible varieties to confuse and muddy the marketplace while promoting their own new and improved version. And I’m certain that their implementation will be perfect and won’t do something completely stupid like mangling transparent PNGs or anything.
First, the interesting news from the Browser Wars II front: Chrome overtakes Safari as the #3 browser after Internet Explorer and Firefox. Pretty impressive given that it only hit public beta in September 2008. Of course, they are both WebKit browsers, so it’s a net win for standards compliance and open standards, regardless of whether they are third or fourth ranked.
But speaking of standards compliance, there’s also this depressing news: IE6 is still the number one browser version. Yes, IE8 will probably pass it next month, and Firefox 3.5 has passed IE7 in December, but seriously, IE6 will still be the #2 browser version? It was released in August 2001 and never had anything but partial standards compliance. It’s been the bane of web designers for years and there are campaigns to boycott IE6. In my own case, I made certain that my site didn’t look absolutely retched in IE6 but neither did I put a lot of effort into workarounds for IE6 or IE7. They’re not worth the trouble.
