Web Standards: Browsers

To view anything on the Internet you must have and use a browser. Internet browsers decode all of the information put into web pages. In the beginning there were two. Internet Explorer and Netscape. Now there are tons of browsers.

Web standards for browsers is more than just what people use on their desktop or laptop computers. The newest and fastest growing market using browsers is palmtop, or mobile. There are so many models of phones and PDAs out there now that have full web access, and thanks to those wonderful people that make web browsing possible on a computer it can now be done on your phone. These mini-browsers are very similar to browsers used on computers which makes it easier for people when transitioning from a desktop to a palmtop.

There are so many mini-browsers out there right now. Most phones come with their own browsers. Some of the browsers are IE, Opera, Opera mini, Opera mobile, Blazer, Minimo, NetFront , Openwave and soon Safari. As far as all of these browsers being 100 percent up to web standards there are only a few. The people over at Opera put in a great deal of time to make sure their product is up to web standards and is fun and easy to use. Mozilla also does the same thing and with their release of Minimo they are helping the transition from computer to PDA easier. Opera and Mozilla are leading the web browsing community with the most compliant, fun, easy to use browsers. They may not be used the most because of a browser that comes on PCs, Internet Explorer.

The number one reason that Mozilla is so compliant with web standards is because all of their browsers are open source. Open source is when anyone that uses a browser can find and fix usability problems. Opera is not open source but their company is so big and committed that they are almost even with Mozilla. If IE was open source they could truly take over the web browser market and end the browser wars.