And every Web developer has a horror story or two about a client who simply refused to believe that it wasn't possible to design a page that looked the same on every computer, and insisted on wasting huge chunks of time and money in futile attempts to do so. In fact, they're just beginning. The two main browser makers remain a source of confusion. With Netscape now open source, and Internet Explorer being woven ever more tightly into the empire of Microsoft products, you'd think we'd have the ultimate browser by now. These days, however, nobody seems to care much anymore, for a couple of reasons.
Traditional browsers are no longer the only software being used to access the Web.
In the stock-quote application discussed above, all the action takes place in a Java applet window. The Web page is just used to log in and start the applet. More and more content is being delivered by streaming media viewers, Java apps, and from within desktop applications - plain old browsers are becoming less important. Also, thanks to open-source Mozilla and the Gecko Layout Engine , you can basically build your own browser, or incorporate a way to browse Web content into a desktop application. Apps are becoming Web sites, and Web sites are becoming apps.