A browser specific web?
The web is not supposed to be browser centric or designed to be displayed on any specific groups of browsers. It is supposed to be protocol specific and browser / program neutral. Protocols and design specifications are produced by the Internet Engineering Task Force. These standards take the form of RFCs (Request for Comments) and document the protocols, mechanisms, and procedures we use on the net. This whole process is quite open, anyone can influence and participate in the development of these standards. Groups like the World Wide Web Consortium work in conjunction with the process to define a neutral standards-based web.
The implementation of these standards is up to the individual programmer. If one is to design a website, you are supposed to design one that meets whatever standard you choose. The standard is announced in the header information you include in your web document. For example, Youtube.com includes the following information that tells us what standard (or DOCTYPE) their content follows:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
We should be able to display their website as long as we know how to interpret and display HTML 4.02 Transitional. This is how the Web is supposed to work.
Unfortunately, many larger companies (like Google / Youtube) seem to have forgotten this. Instead of designing a website that focus on the standards, they opt to design websites that focus on specific web browsers. If you were to view Youtube.com with a standard's compliant web-browser (like Chromium) that isn't in the top five list of modern powerhouses (Chrome, Safari 4, IE 8, Opera 10 or Firefox 3.6) then you're greeted with a message telling you that your browser is unsupported. To me, this is just a reminder that Google is a company and at the end of the day it's the bottom line that matters most not some idealistic good-guy notion of standards-compliance or open source.
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