My, we've come a long way in browser choices since 2005, haven't we? It's been a very heady time for programmers who dabble in the lingua franca of the World Wide Web: HTML, JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets, the Document Object Model, and XML/XSLT. Together, this collection of scripting tools, boosted by a technique with the letter-soup name "XMLHttpRequest," became known as "Ajax." Ajax spawned an avalanche of cool, useful, and powerful new web applications that are today beginning to successfully challenge traditional computer-desktop software like Microsoft Word and Excel. As good as vanguard products like Goodle's Maps, Gmail, Documents, and Calendar apps are, one only has to peek at what Apple has accomplished with its new MobileMe web apps to see how much like desktop applications web software can be in 2008.

That this overwhelming trend toward advanced, desktop-like applications has happened at all is the result of the efforts of determined developers from the Mozilla project, which rose from the ashes of Netscape's demise to create the small, light, powerful and popular Firefox browser. The activity of the Mozilla group spurred innovation from other browser makers and eventually forced a trend towards open standards that made the emergence of Ajax possible.

This article starts with a brief history of web browsers and then jumps into a look at the feature set of the four primary "modern" web browsers in 2008. The comparison of browser features begins by listing the core features that all these browsers have in common. The bulk of the article lists in detail "special features" of each browser and each browser's good and bad points, as they relate to the core browser characteristics. Following that, I present some recent data on the comparative performance of these browsers. The article concludes with recommendations I would make to organizations interested in making the switch from IE6 in 2008.

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Since my original report on the browser and platform compatibility of some 50 Ajax JavaScript libraries in March, the market has continued to produce new toolkits at a rapid pace. I recently finished grading all (but one) of the 8 libraries added since March, and I’ve revisited the scores of another 8. With that, the time seemed right for a report on how Ajax library developers are doing at achieving cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility in the tools they’re giving us–tools which programmers around the world are using to hammer out their unique vision of Web 2.0.

I’m very pleased to report that the trend is moving strongly toward full compatibility. Of the eight new libraries, a full five of them achieve top grades of “A”. That’s a much higher percentage of the total than in March, and of the three non-A libraries, only one was a D (D+ actually). One was graded C+ and the other B. Of the revisited libraries, I was able to raise grades for three–Backbase, ICEfaces, and MochiKit. Only one library had a lower grade (Rico, down from A- to B), and the rest were unchanged.

Only two of the 8 new libraries have commercial licenses you’d have to pay for, and in one case you are really only paying for the IDE. Three of the new libraries require a java server architecture in order to be happy, one would prefer Cold Fusion, and the others are pure client libraries that are agnostic with respect to the application server. One library was added just a couple of days ago (Jitsu), and I haven’t had time to review it yet–but you’ll find it summarized here with the rest. Only one of these 16 libraries is DHTML with no Ajax controls–Uize. Even without Ajax, however, I think you’ll find Uize to be one of the most interesting here–especially in terms of visual richness.

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Lately, I’ve been on a bit of a rampage on the subject of cross-browser compatibility, becoming especially incensed by prominent websites and web 2.0 applications that don’t work in Apple’s Safari browser. I know some of you are sympathetic, but think I should just be pleased that these sites work in Mozilla Firefox, which runs on all platforms known to man (or woman (or Martian)).

Yes, it’s definitely worth celebrating that Firefox has broken through the stranglehold with which Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had gripped the industry for so long, providing not just a viable alternative, but a demonstrably superior web browsing experience. Firefox is the descendent of Netscape Navigator that’s finally returned to beat off the IE interloper, and it has a huge following among developers as well as users.

But there are a number of other excellent web browsers that get shortchanged when a company is testing its site or application in only IE and Firefox. For as good as Firefox is, it’s not the best in all aspects of web browsing, either on Windows or the Mac. This article highlights a few facts about the browser market and points to some really useful features found in non-IE, non-Mozilla browsers that explain why users remain devoted to them and, like me, continue to raise a stink when they are ignored. The other two browsers I use pretty much every day, in addition to Firefox, are Opera and Safari.

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Back in early March when I first released the Ajax/DHTML Scorecard, rating all of the existing Ajax/DHTML toolkits against an ideal cross-browser scale, I rated Atlas an “E.” So, the good news for Microsoft fans is that Atlas is actually better than that. But not by much.

On April 4, I rescinded the original score after some readers correctly pointed out that I was treating Atlas differently from the other toolkits in the shootout. That’s because Atlas was simply vaporware in early March, and there was nothing to test. As I explained in an update to the article, the “E” was based on Microsoft’s past conduct in the cross-browser-support department. Here, they had been very bad big boys. Microsoft is the reason that we have to worry so much about cross-browser support today, so it stood to reason that their entry in the Ajax field would continue their past strategy of steering all users to Microsoft products and away from alternatives.

Though I was skeptical Microsoft had changed its stripes, one writer assured me that

In general Microsoft’s strategy with .NET is to require Windows on the server, but to be 100% browser compatible on the client. .NET components configure themselves automatically for the available browser features ( i.e. CSS levels, javascript dialects, or css/js disabling). While I’m still in the early phases of researching Atlas, it seems that this style of browser support has continued.

And so, I began testing with an open mind, especially after an Ajax blogger raved about Atlas in an article that was picked up by the No Fluff, Just Stuff RSS feed that I follow. (I’ll have to remember to ignore future articles by Brad Abrams, whose blog after all is hosted by msdn.com…)

Since Abrams was celebrating the release last week of the Atlas Control Toolkit, which includes 9 online demos of different Atlas controls, I decided to start my testing there. Unfortunately, Atlas failed on the very first control, the “Cascading Drop Down.” Though it worked in Firefox on Mac OS X, it failed in both Safari 2 and Opera 9. After going through three or four of these, Atlas was batting a very low score, and I decided to keep track of results more scientifically.

The end result? Of the 9 Atlas controls very publicly celebrated by Microsoft this week, here’s how Atlas rates:

• Firefox, 8 of 9 controls worked
• Safari, 4 1/2 of 9 controls worked
• Opera, 3 1/2 of 9 controls worked

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Rob Gonda: “Web 2.0 on the desktop! A new feature!” Um, no, Rob, Sorry…
It’s hard to imagine that this is actually a new thing in Windows…

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, the whole Ajax/Web 2.0 thing that’s happened this last year reminds me vividly of the mid-1990’s. Back then, the web was brand new, it was exciting, everyone was learning how to build web applications, developers were totally turned on and creative, everybody was pointing out cool new apps and sites, and the potential of this new computing platform seemed unlimited. Leading the charge was a young company that built software for every operating system under the sun, and they clearly had a solid vision of where they were headed. During 1994-96, Netscape introduced one astonishing new client-side technology after another to what a web browser could do–tables, animated graphics, client-side imagemaps, frames, cookies (yes, these really were a vital improvement to the web client), and something they called Javascript.

Each of these technologies offered dramatic new ways of presenting information in a web browser, and developers who loved new gadgets glommed on to every advance, racing each other to see who could do the coolest things with these first. A lot of mistakes were made–a lot of really ugly eggs were hatched–but excitement and optimism were the buzz feelings. With Netscape in charge, you felt like you do when working as a protege with a master hacker: Does this guy ever stop pulling amazing tricks out of his sleeve?

One of the promises of Netscape’s vision was that the web–and, in particular, the web browser–could make one’s choice of operating system irrelevant. The web could level the computing playing field, since applications built for the web were applications for all, regardless of what OS you happened to prefer. What worked for NeXT, OS/2, Irix, Solaris, and Windows would also work just fine on Linux, Mac OS, Be OS, HP-UX, and BSD. The web browser could be the OS, and the only limiting factor in what you could do would be your hardware and connection speed. Microsoft’s lock on the computer desktop could be broken, and new competitors in operating systems and computers could unleash the full potential of the personal computer to improve our lives–both at work and at leisure.

Only, it didn’t quite turn out that way.

This article inventories the Ajax/DHTML toolkits now available and grades each from A to E on the degree to which they adhere to a cross-browser ideal. The good news is that if you want to build astonishing Web 2.0 applications in 2006, you’ve got a lot of fine Javascript libraries to choose from! And nearly all of the Grade A libraries are open-source, so you can build without shelling out a license fee for the privilege. The bad news is that some of the most prominent players in the field fall far short of that mark.

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