> Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of
> room for innovative behavior.
Servo is a research project for a future version of Firefox. That's the definition of a major browser. No web developers want a new browser with incompatible features to test or build against, but Mozilla/Google/Microsoft experimenting for future versions is expected.
The original point is that independent browsers using established libraries and adding new UI concepts is great for users and doesn't make extra work for web developers. I'm looking forward to what they make of it!
Then why have I begun to see "This website only works in Google Chrome, upgrade today!" messages all over the web?
I suspect a "This site only works with chrome!" message only applies to older versions of Internet Explorer.
Crying wolf is so boring these days.
edit: Also i find it hilarious that you think Google would risk rejecting all users who aren't using Chrome. Talk about a great way to give your Search competition a legitimate case.
edit2: The downvoting is cute, and i hope it's because of my tone and not me calling out lies. "Anything but Chrome!" he says - absurd. By all means, downvote my tone, but i should hope outright lying gets similar treatment.
I see it often on Firefox, I have the latest Firefox on linux (35.0.1). It's a blue bar along the top of many Google properties that are decently cross browser. Go to Inbox without chrome and you'll see the "only works with chrome" crap.
The biggest difference is probably NaCl in Chrome right now.
It shows on old Opera (Presto), new Opera (Blink) and IE 11, so it's not just old versions of IE.
Doing HTML and JavaScript are commodities. Given the existence of standards, there's not a lot of room for innovative behavior. Any developments (faster, new HTML standards, etc) won't impact the market unless they're in one of the major browsers. Competition is good, but there's only room in the market for a handful of rendering engines. Maybe 3-5, tops.
Conversely, UI and human interaction with the browser is a place where there's room for an unbounded number of players. This is where the competition can actually be happening. And it's where I think the competition should be happening.
The idea of a browser as something that just renders HTML and executes JavaScript is kinda lame. I use Opera because I think it's also the browser's responsibility to include tab organization and search functionality and mouse gestures and flipping CSS in and out and synchronization. (And I like my mail integrated, but that's a personal thing.) And I want it to Just Work, instead of having to manage a half-dozen extensions.
I am guardedly optimistic about Vivaldi, because it's what I actually out of a browser. (Specifically, an updated version of Opera 12, which Opera 15+ is not.)