Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla join forces to solve browsers compatibility issues

The major tech companies that develop the top web browsers (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Bocoup, and Igalia) along with other supporters have announced that they have – for the first time ever – banded together in order to improve interoperability and thus make things much easier on Web Developers. This is all part of a new benchmark called Interop 2022, which aims to “improve the experience of developing for the web in 15 key areas“.

This project began back in 2019 when these companies started this effort in order to understand the developers’ frustrations with compatibility issues between browsers and establish how improvements and new technologies could be implemented the same way. The result was this new benchmark which establishes a common dashboard that will keep track of the progress made in the key areas that were agreed upon with the developers’ input. These key areas include cascade layers, CSS color functions, viewport units, and browser scrolling, among others. They will also be focusing on the four major browsers involved, which are Chrome, Edge, Safari, and Firefox.

The idea is that for each of these areas, each browser is scored throughout the year against a set of tests, and given a score on how it has implemented it. This will give them a chance to collaborate on how to best implement them in a way that is beneficial to all.

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.

web.dev Interop 2022 announcement

Through the Compat 2021 effort last year, it became obvious that there is still room for improvement, thus it is very encouraging that these major players can come together and work on a solution. Hopefully, this effort will reduce frustrations with the web-dev community and result in a better experience for us the users as well.