Web interoperability

Web Interoperability means producing web pages viewable in standard compatible web browsers, various operation systems such as Windows, Macintosh and Linux and devices such as PC, PDA and mobile phone based on the latest web standards.

History

This term was originated by the Web Interoperability Pledge that is a promise to adhere to current HTML Recommendations as promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The WIP was not a W3C initiative. but it was started by and has been run by ZDNet AnchorDesk quite independently.

This issue was known by cross browsing in browser war between Internet Explorer and Netscape. The Microsoft Internet Explorer was exclusive in browser market after that, but modern web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari have supported web standards. Because of Backward Compatibility of Internet Explorer, many web pages has supported non-standard HTML tags and DOM handling script yet as well platform-defendant techniques such as ActiveX. These are very harmful for Web Accessibility and Device Independence.

Elements of Web Interoperability

Structural and semantic markup with XHTML
CSS based layout with layout elements such as position and float
Separating among structure, presentation and behavior in web pages
DOM scripting based on W3C DOM Standard and ECMAScript

Activities

It has been various activities, for example Web Standard Project, Mozilla's Technology Evangelism.

Similar Terms

Web Accessibility
Cross-Browser
Forward Compatibility
Backward Compatibility