Should there be only one browser?

I definitely think there should be multiple browsers that have the same rendering engine. Like why can’t browser makers get together and say, let’s make this right(with rendering).

Then they can have their own features, for competition sake, and let the public decide what they want. Firefox and Safari render fairly the same but I like using Safari more because it’s more light weight and doesn’t hog memory. That’s the kind of competition I’d like to see.

Who really benefits from having all browsers render differently?

here would be my amendment to the conclusion:

“There should be more than one browser, but every browser’s rendering engine should follow the same standard; where the standard isn’t clear, all browser developers should work with the standards bodies to fill the gap in the standard.”

i don’t care if the rendering engine itself is the same or different, as long as the end result is the same. if one browser comes up with its unique way of rendering things internally (in terms of how it handles the code, how it takes advantage of OS or accelerated hardware, etc) to gain speed benefits etc, fine…as long as the final output is consistent.

There should be more than one browser, but every browser should use the same rendering engine.

I disagree, we did live in a one browser world for a while, and the rendering engine sucked. If everyone rendered pages the same as IE6, there would still be a problem, as in a one engine world standards would take even longer to be adopted than they do now.

Comments:

“Competition drives innovation” (not demand…). AMEN Andrew! No single organization has all of the best ideas, nor will one ever.

Security - Again, AMEN! If a single browser existed, it would constantly be hacked, broken, and fixed. It’s vicious, but inevitable circle. User experience would suffer.

“Multiple browsers is the way to go - everyone uses the web for different things and has different needs.” nicely put NatalieMac. It’s our job as designers and devlopers to deal with it.

“There should be more than one browser, but every browser’s rendering engine should follow the same standard; where the standard isn’t clear, all browser developers should work with the standards bodies to fill the gap in the standard.”

Amen to this. I used to design pages for a living and worrying about how pages were going to display in different browsers at different resolutions would get really tiring. I ended up having at least 3 or 4 browsers (firefox, IE, IE5, KHTML(webkit)) always on hand to test my pages to make sure they worked.

Competition does, in fact, drive innovation. Dan Bowling, competition will not exist without demand, but it does not mean that demand drives innovation. For example, monopolies supply goods that are highly demanded and you, generally, don’t see any innovation from such organizations.

Monopoly, in fact, leads to stagnation because there is no point in innovation, since you already own most of the market.

By association, single browser is a monopoly and therefore won’t be innovative; multiple browsers lead to competition and will lead to more innovative features, although a big pain for designers/developers.

Having only one rendering engine isn’t actually a good idea… imagine if we were all stuck with IE’s rendering engine… we would never see new CSS and (x)HTML specs become a reality. Having newer, more powerful rendering engines such as that for Mozilla, Webkit and Opera puts the competition on Microsoft to improve their own.

I’m not entirely sure that there is a world of variety between browsers as far as the average audience is concerned. From a web designer’s perspective there is a world of difference, and there is probably a small population of relatively web literate users who appreciate the difference between Firefox and IE. But a world with just one browser? Picture a world where we all drive the Toyota Corolla…

I’ve heard the same as many other commenters on the list concerning IE’s share of the browser market. I thought it was closer to 30% IE7, 30% IE6, 30% FF and some loose change? This still give IE the majority, but not close to 95%. Thoughts?

I think all browsers should render HTML the same, but using one rendering engine would be like all cars using the same engine. If a browser can change the engine to increase speed and so on go for it. Just follow the recommendation of the W3 and put my padding and margin where they should be. Really how hard can it be to draw a box the same in all browsers? I really don’t care if browsers treat a few things differently as long as the core elements work. It is a sad thing that we can not draw a box with a width or a height. Set a font size to the exact size we want with out a hack and so on. Just get the simple things right and we would all be happy.

Some people here think that the multiple browserworld leads to innovation, i say it’s the cause of the stagnation we are faced with today.
With a single rendering engine for all browsers we would have had HTML 5 and CSS 3 years ago.

You are missing something from your argument. When you state that security wins with multiple browsers, this is correct. However then going on to propose that the rendering engine should be common to all browsers doesn’t follow the security argument. It is quite possible for the rendering engine to have a security flaw, just as the ‘browser wrapper’ might.

Multiple browsers all the way. Although I have to admit if everyone used a decent engine like WebKit or Presto, my life would be so much easier.

Choice is the spice of life.

Damnit, Andrew (Faulkner) beat me to the punchline! :)

Most people already there’s only one browser…(Internet Explorer)…so, for much of the population - the choice is largely academic.
The successful adoption of Firefox (at least on the PC) has shown that
a rival broswer is healthy for competition though…’raising the bar’ - so
that would suggest that more than one browser is a good thing.

I think it would be great if there was just one broswer - so long as it
was a really good one, and…(like Matt Davies said)…so long as Microsoft
aren’t a part of it!

The effect of competition is very important I think, too bad Microsoft doesn’t fully understand that part.The hassle isn’t a big problem, if you code a valid website, it won’t take much changes to make it work in IE6.I don’t want my browser to be useless, omg, keep it multi-browser.I guess this makes it multi-browser for me.