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Filosofia
Google’s announcement that a new browser called Chrome is under development in its labs can’t but constitute good news for web developers, designers and (obviously) users.
Considering Google’s involvement in building some of the most used web-based applications (Gmail being only the most popular one), it makes sense that it would want its users to experience these applications the best possible way.
Not that there aren’t browsers capable enough to handle the task, but according to the comic used to explain the company’s decision the users’ experience can always be improved. Speed, security, stability are some of Google’s top priorities, as well as putting the focus on the content and on the users’ needs instead of on the browser interface itself.
Another priority is open-source development: Chrome will use Apple’s WebKit rendering engine, and all new improvements will, once again, be made freely available to the developers’ community. The hope is that this will further help decrease the market share of browsers that are not standard-compliant – namely Internet Explorer, including version 7.
The still high presence of older versions of Internet Explorer, version 6 in particular, is a testimony not simply of a certain “laziness” on the users’ part. It’s, mostly, the proof that a large slice of the market is still trapped – for different orders of reasons – in the 1990s, still believing that the only way is Microsoft’s way. The hope is that Google’s latest move will help take a few more steps into the 21st century even for those users.
I’m not saying that users’ laziness is the only obstacle to renovation. Developers’ and designers’ laziness must be taken into account as well. There is a number of web designers (I’ve met and talked to them personally) who taught themselves a job 10 years ago when Internet Explorer was the law, and designing for any other browser constituted an avoidable hassle. Phasing out such fossils as version 6 and 5 (which is, incredibly enough, still used by a few) will force such old-schoolers to evolve or retire.
Standards are not a whim dictated by snottiness. Standards are not the “extra touch” to make a project more expensive (most clients don’t even know what standards are in the first place). Standards must be considered as the basic grammar upon which the web is built.
If Chrome is what it takes for this generational change to finally happen, then welcome Chrome.