Browser Wars Considered Harmful

Every once in a while I make the mistake of hitting slashdot to see what happened three days ago. Today there was a post about the upcoming browser war. The submitter's quip that, "For the average computer user this is a very good thing as it should drastically improve browser performance in a short period of time." Also gracing the front page is a post about Mozilla possibly trying to extend JavaScript. The question pondered is, "will this speed up AJAX development." Because, you know, AJAX stuff that only works in Mozilla browsers will get wide adoption...

Sigh. Have we really learned nothing from Browser War I? As a web developer I am loath to go through another round of idiotic leap-frog "innovation." Browsers are just now getting to the point where it's possible to support a majority of users without having to dig too insanely deep into the bag-o-hacks. But no! Innovation is on the march! Nuts to innovation, I say.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and this round of browsers will just continue to improve support for standards and will leave out what ever the next <blink> tag is. Hahahahaha. Yeah, I didn't think so either.