The document discusses the "Browser Wars" between Internet Explorer and Netscape in the 1990s which was won by Internet Explorer. It then discusses how standards have struck back in the "Browser Wars 2" with a movement towards more open and standardized web development. The document advocates for developing sites according to open web standards to ensure compatibility across different browsers and devices rather than targeting a single browser through proprietary technologies. It provides examples of how some government and bank sites in countries like South Korea and India broke in non-Internet Explorer browsers due to their reliance on proprietary technologies of IE.

1. Browser War
Standard strikes back
Cheah Zi Bin

2. Bio
Web Evangelist at Opera Software
OpenTheWeb initiative

3. WWW

4. 1990s Browser Wars
Internet Explorer Wins!!!
V
Internet Explorer Web Netscape Web
Feature over bugs
Feature over standards

5. 1990s Browser Wars
Internet Explorer Wins!!!
V
Internet Explorer Web Netscape Web
Feature over bugs
Feature over standards

6. Browser Wars 2
Standards strike back
Internet
Explorer
Wins!!!
V
Closed Web Open Web

7. Browser Wars 2
Standards strike back
Internet
Explorer
Wins!!!
V
Closed Web Open Web

8. Battle Royale
s
rm
V
fo
t
la
p
ed
s
lo
C
The Web is Open OpenWeb

9. Photo courtesy of Khakbaz of Flickr
Open the Web

10. Value of Open
Standards

11. Cross everything
Browser
Platform
Device

12. Write once, deliver
everywhere

13. Build to standards,
adapt for legacy browsers

14. Reduce costs,
bandwidth,
time to market
& maintenance

15. All sites must work

16. “ Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser
X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad
old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of
reading a document written on another computer, another
word processor, or another network. ”
– Sir Tim Berners-Lee

17. oops…

18. Double oops…

19. The OpenWeb
platform

20. OpenWeb stack
? [OGG?/ VMS?/Dirac?]
Audio & Video
SMIL
Media
Sycronis
SVG PNG/JPG/GIF… <canvas>
ation
Vector Graphics Raster Graphics Drawing API
Behaviour
DOM JavaScript
Document API Scripting
Presentation
CSS
Style sheets
Structure
XML XHTML/HTML RDFa ARIA
Markup Semantics Accessibility

21. OpenWeb platform
Challenges
Strong branding Vs no branding
Cohesive Vs loose
Tailored tools Vs basic tools
Fast to spec Vs slow to spec
…but no vendor lock-in and pro-user/
developer choice

22. O
O
Open
Op
Oppe Web
O enW
p
en W eb
enn
e
We b
p en
Wb
eb
b
e n We
eb
Web
n Web
e n W Demo

23. Why do sites
break?

24. Case study:
S.Korea

25. (Almost) every bank
in South Korea
only works in
Internet Explorer

26. Why?
US government ban on encryption export
Created ActiveX based solution
Result: IE monopoly
Sites fall foul of IE bugs and don’t follow
standards
Officially supported CA only works with
ActiveX

27. Case study: India

28. Many government &
sites show garbled
text in non-IE
browser

29. Why?
Popular platforms were not Unicode
aware
Unable to show text in Indian scripts
Used EOT embedded fonts
EOT only works in IE and Windows
Unicode support now common, but sites
are not updated

30. Photo courtesy of Majiscup - Drink for Design of Flickr
Case study: The Rest

31. yahoo.com
microsoft.com
msn.com
apple.com
last.fm
wordpress.com
adobe.com
ikea.com
typepad.com

32. We work with Web
Developers and site owners
to ensure sites work in Opera
and other standards-aware
browsers.

33. How do we do it?
Contact sites when issue occurs
Help developers when they have an issue
Evangelism and outreach

34. Success

35. How you can help
Develop to standards, not IE
Report issues you find
Spread the word

36. Thanks
zibin@opera.com
twitter: zibin
www.opera.com/developer
zibin.tehais.com
Credits: David Storey & Bruce Lawson