Browser Developments – Netscape, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8

Over the last year we have witnessed some interesting developments in the wonderful world of web browsers. There have been a couple of new arrivals (Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome), one significant departure (Netscape Navigator) and ongoing updates to the usual suspects (Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera and Firefox).

Netscape Navigator loses AOL support

In March 2008, AOL ceased supporting Netscape Navigator which it acquired in 1998. Originally launched in 1994 by the Mosaic Communications Corporation (later renamed Netscape Communications Corporation), Mosaic Netscape was the first multi-platform web browser to provide a consistent web-browsing experience, and remained the only serious competition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for several years.

Netscape went on to form the open source Mozilla project in 1998, releasing the Mozilla Application Suite which included the Gecko layout engine (the underlying rendering engine used by several current browsers, including Firefox). The final version of AOL’s Netscape, Netscape Navigator 9, was released in October 2007 and Netscape remains one of the most popular and well established browsers to date despite competition from the likes of Opera, Safari, Firefox, et al.

Internet Explorer 8 released

In August 2008, Microsoft released a second beta version of Internet Explorer 8. Unlike the initial beta release (in March), IE8 Beta 2 is a far more complete version that is shaping up to be the most standards-compliant browser Microsoft have produced to date.

Historically, the Internet Explorer rendering engine has been heavily criticised by the web-development community at large for not adhering properly to W3C web standards. Consequently, building websites for display in Internet Explorer has traditionally involved writing specific code to get around its numerous ‘features’ (AKA bugs).

In theory, IE8 will not require these browser-specific ‘hacks’ in order to make it consistent with other (more compliant) browsers such as Firefox or Safari.

IE8 will allow the developer to specify whether the website should be rendered in standards-compliant IE8 mode, or in the older IE7 mode, to render correctly

Unfortunately, despite (or rather because of) the improvements to the rendering engine, websites that currently employ IE6/IE7-specific ‘hacks’ to ensure consistency will render incorrectly in the new and improved version.

Microsoft’s answer to this is version targeting. By including an IE7 rendering mode in the IE8 browser it hopes to avoid ‘breaking’ the vast majority of websites by allowing the developer to specify whether the website should be rendered in standards-compliant IE8 mode, or in the older IE7 ‘almost standards mode’.

The release candidate for Internet Explorer 8 was released in January 2009, in preparation for the final release later in the year. Websites that employ IE-specific code and are likely to cause problems in IE8 will need to be prepared for release by the addition of meta-tags or an HTTP-header to invoke the IE7 compatibility mode.

Google Chrome browser released

Google have concentrated on speed, stability and security and delivered a simple, fast and streamlined browser

In September 2008, Google released a beta version of their new open-source web browser, Google Chrome. With the aim of producing a browser designed for the way we all use the web today, the developers at Google have concentrated on speed, stability and security and delivered a simple, fast and streamlined browser that is better equipped than most to cope with today’s heavy web-application use (social networking, shopping, uploading video, etc).

As Chrome uses the excellent WebKit rendering engine to display web pages (the same engine as Apple’s Safari browser), it is extremely easy to develop websites for and requires very little attention during the testing phase. The final stable version of Google Chrome was released for Windows XP and Vista in December 2008, and Linux and Mac OSX versions are currently in development.