Microsoft joins Apple, Google, Firefox and others in announcing Interop 2024, a continuation of their joint efforts to make modern browsers better and able to provide a consistent user experience across platforms. Their goal is "to enable every technology to run the same way in every browser." Regardless of whether you are using Edge, Firefox, or Safari, all websites should provide the same expected experience and functionality on all supported operating systems.
Originally announced in 2021, the project was called Compat2021 and focused on cross-browser web compatibility. In 2022, the two companies launched Interop 2022, a browser interoperability initiative, to address developer pain points and make web platforms "easier to use." Microsoft, Google, and other companies have worked together to make a lot of improvements to the web platform, and now they're ready to continue working together.
This year, the Interop project focuses on multiple areas such as layout, CSS architecture, HTML elements, etc. Microsoft says Compat and Interop significantly reduce browser inconsistencies when using flexboxes and grids, but there are still some differences. Therefore, the participants of Interop2024 decided to make layout one of the focus areas this year. Additionally, there will be improvements to CSS nesting, which ensures CSS nesting behaves the same way across browsers, and the Popover API in HTML, which lets developers display content on top of other elements.
In addition to the main areas of focus, Interop2024 will also include improvements to accessibility, custom properties, font sizes, pointer events, scrollbar styles, text directionality, and more. Each participant has published a detailed blog post detailing the future development of Interop2024. If you want to know more, please click on the following links: Apple, Bocoup, Google, Firefox, Igalia and Microsoft.
As in the previous two years, everyone is welcome to use the official InteropDashboard to view the scores of major browsers in the Interop2024 test.