The evolutionary history of web browsers
Perhaps you’ve heard of the browser wars, but unless you are a nerd by nature you probably haven’t. This term refers to the competition amongst browser developers for a larger share of the market. The beginning of the internet was pocked by pot-shots these companies took at each other.
The main avenue of competition was the feature set of each browser. This basically meant that each browser would try to establish features that the competitor lacked, some good and some not so much. Some famous additions to the web experience added in this time were images (lol), flash animations, text styling tags, and other cool things that would appeal to developers, and would eventually contribute to a richer online experience.
The problem was that each browser was slowly developing an independant model of how to interpret a web page. There were many tags that would only work in 1 browser or another. Needless to say this became a nightmare for web developers. Now instead of just building a page, they would have to build multiple versions. A colossal waste of time.
Enter the W3. This organization was established as a non-profit consortium to establish rules for the interpretation of web pages, and behavior of browsers. It’s because of this organization that we can code “standards compliant” web pages, that will work in nearly every browser. Yay for rules!