Open Source Web Browsers

Would we have a better user (and developer) experience if the effort expended in developing multiple browsers?

and web standards were instead directed into developing one browser, one standard markup language, one standard styling language (or even a merger of the two)? (Everything I'm talking about is client-side) Think of how it affects things like accessibility, validation, incomplete browser support of CSS, DOCTYPE switching, etal, and hours spent on maintaining Web 2.0 applications Companies, organizations, individuals, etc could still compete on what happens on the server, w/o making the way we GET to the content / apps / etc a big mangled mess. Note: This is analogous to the criticism of the Lisp community for its fragmented development of a language, libraries, etal, as opposed to more unified communities around other contemporary languages. Even in Python, you continually see new "frameworks" instead of those framework creators working to refine an existing open source framework Moreover, by dealing with less fragmentation on the client side of GETTING TO the stuff where competition makes more sense, and assuming Javascript will be a standard client side scripting language, more efforts could be diverted into more quickly resolving security vulnerabilities that client side scripting (and things that depend on it, like Ajax) automatically brings to the table. I'm surprised a class action lawsuit from blind people stopped with a website owner (like Target) and didn't include browser makers and the W3C, et al. I'm not saying such would be appropriate, but it's not inconceivable an attorney would think this way. The whole community IS fragmented and this is what it leads to in web development.

Public Comments

1. In theory I think your proposal has merit. Rather than spend time and money on many different browsers, languages, etc and each works so-so, it seems logical to have just one of each and they work at or near 100% perfection. But in reality, the world of computing is not static and new innovations rely on competition. Even in-house competition to satisfy the needs of different consumers (Microsoft Office vs. Word vs. Groove vs. Visio vs. Project vs. InfoPath, etc. etc.) Your theory could be applied to just about anything and the same can be said for why we have so many makes and models of computers, operating systems, cars, washing machines, sneakers, TVs, etc. wwbgd