Web browsers today have a great many features. While there are plenty of ideas for new features that are worthy of our time and attention, several large scale surveys have recently pointed to real developer pains that still exist with regard to compatibility on existing features.

Compatibility has gotten much better than in earlier eras, thanks to more rigorous approaches to standardization, but truly excellent compatibility takes time. Based on feedback from developer surveys, we began efforts to identify where there was still work to do, and to give that work priority. One of these efforts was a collaborative project called Compat2021 that we helped establish in March.

Compat2021 identified 5 areas where we would focus and provided some rationale as to why those areas were chosen. At the beginning of 2021, all three of the major browser engines had compat scores of only about 65-70%. As it became clearer what we would like to focus on, some efforts were started to begin improving them even before the project was announced.

This week, Philip Jägenstedt and Mariko Kosaka from Google posted a mid-year update on the progress on Compat2021. As of their posting, experimental builds of browsers are already showing compat scores in the 82-92% range, and some of those improvements are already shipping in stable builds.

Igalia is proud to have helped contribute to Compat2021 by closing many of the compatibility gaps in WebKit, such as contributing work on aspect-ratio, Flexbox and Grid layout, and numerous other bug fixes. We’re looking forward to continuing our collaboration, increasing compatibility for everyone, and building a vibrant and healthy web ecosystem.