Microsoft is partnering with some of its big browser rivals to form a new partnership that seeks to improve web browsing. Alongside Microsoft (Edge) are Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), Apple (Safari), and Google (Chrome). Together, the companies are forming Interop 2022.
The primary goal of the coalition is to create browsing standards that promote a consistent and reliable web browser experience. Importantly, the aim is for this experience to be universal across the four main browsers.
A joint post on web.dav highlights what Microsoft, Mozilla, Google, and Apple has planned. It is worth noting other contributors are also involved, such as Bocoup and Igalia. In the blog, the group describe their plans for Interop 2022 and the tenents of the initiative.
All agree on 15 benchmark areas to improve browsing:
- Cascade layers
- Color spaces and CSS color functions
- New Viewport Units
- Scrolling
- Subgrid
- CSS Containment (the contain property)
- The <dialog> element
- Form controls
- Typography and Encodings
- Web Compat
Alongside these 10 new focuses, the group will also continue to focus on areas that were part of the Compact 2021 collaboration:
- Aspect Ratio
- Flexbox
- Grid
- Sticky Positioning
- Transforms
Long-Term Vision
While it is called Interop 2022, the group of web giants explain this is a multi-year project:
“The goal of these multi-year interoperability efforts, in the form of Compat 2021, Interop 2022 and much more, is to fully acknowledge and address the pain points developers have experienced through for many years. And it’s not a one-browser effort but rather a strong collaboration between all major browser vendors and friends for improving the web platform across the board.
In essence, the goal is to make the web platform more usable and reliable for developers, so that they can spend more time building great web experiences instead of working around browser inconsistencies.”
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