Microsoft and Google announced today that they’re joining the Compat2021 initiative, a new cross-browser initiative aiming to improve browser compatibility for web developers. This new industry effort aims to fix the top 5 most important compatibility issues across browsers, which are all related to CSS.
“The Web DNA results for the last two years have consistently highlighted browser compatibility as one of the top challenges faced by developers, and follow up research in the MDN Browser Compatibility Report and other channels has helped hone that signal into five areas where browser compatibility is a particularly strong pain point: CSS Flexbox, CSS Grid, CSS position: sticky, the CSS aspect-ratio property, and CSS transforms, the Edge team explained.
This year, the team will be working on making Chromium pass 100% of CSS Grid tests, improving interoperability across browsers, and assisting with triage in web-platform-tests. The project’s progress can already be followed on the Compat 2021 Dashboard on web-platform-tests, and Edge users can help by reporting compatibility issues via the “Send Feedback” tool in the web browser.
Microsoft and Google may be competing in many areas, but the companies have been working together on improving Chromium’s browser compatibility after Microsoft chose the open-source project as the base for its new Edge browser. The legacy Edge browser, which launched alongside Windows 10 back in 2015 has now been deprecated and this month’s Patch Tuesday updates have removed it from all supported versions of the OS.
