Given that there is still a need to design layouts that acknowledge the physical screen size of mobile devices, it strikes me that this is an opportunity to define a new baseline. On ‘real’ computers we’re still stuck with being limited by what IE supports.

What’s positive is seeing competition to implement standards.

That is your opinion, and one I don’t share. Personally, I think Safari brings elegance and sophisticated design to an OS that is too often lacking it. Not everyone has to agree on this. But if your contention is that there is more of a “layout engine war” than an actual browser war, then you should not mention elements of the browser chrome to support your argument.

The comments on this page seem to be showing what the layout engine was will be all about. I can imagine hearing/reading similar things all year.

Now, I must say I haven’t been doing any web development during the browser wars. I was (and still am actually) an IT person. Because of that experience back then though, as well as the one now, I can tell you that a layout engine sometimes IS the reason an average joe may switch. Well, at least in the Firefox/Opera tie. I’ve seen sites that when encountering Opera warn the user that the browser is not considered “Compatible”. It’s fortunate that those same sites allow the user to keep going non the less, but still, to avoid this warning, users sometimes switch their browser, especially if they use the site often.

In the case of breaking out of IE… unfortunatly, the reason is usually because they’ve “heared it from a friend”, which if you digg a little more, you’ll see is either an IT person, and/or a web developer.

I very rarely get people ask questions like “Is Internet Explorer secure enough?”, “Are there other browsers?”, but when I do, I always get the follow up “Which one do YOU think is better? Firefox or Opera?”.

I’ll probably make the fans of both browsers happy now by saying that my answer is usually “I have no definate preference. Both have their pros and cons. Both have Bulgarian* translations, both are free, both are more secure than IE, or on the very least, get patched quicker when a vulnerability is found, and so forth.” and after that I make a short review of the unique features in each browser to help the user make a choise. I menion Opera’s Voice and Speed Dial, the search (which, no offence to FF, is better in Opera), the fast rendering speed (which usually tips the scale), and sometimes a few others that don’t come into mind now.

And for Firefox, usually I only mention the Add-on arhitecture, which again, is usually what tips the scale for others.

Where I live though, most people prefer Opera. The reason is that average joe likes to have everything out of the box. Only power users care about extensions. And by “power users” I mean something between an average joe and an IT man, certainly not a web developer or a programmer.

*I’m a Bulgarian, and as you can guess, localized apps attract people, so this is a definite plus for both Firefox and Opera. Kind of explains why they are more popular in Europe than in US. If there were language packs that made only IE in a certain language, that would probably tip the scale for MS’ market share here. People think of a browser, and thus about its add-ons (language packs included) as something different than the OS. Only MS thinks otherwise.