Last year, Google announced a multi-vendor collaboration called Compat 2021 (short for “Compatibility 2021”). The goal of this effort was to improve cross-browser compatibility in five key areas of CSS, including addressing bugs in existing implementations and broadening support for new features. Igalia was and is proud to be a part of the Compat 2021 effort, and to have played a key role in helping WebKit rapidly catch up and even take the lead in the five areas identified, including an implementation of aspect-ratio.

While very successful with its goals, the name Compat 2021 itself was felt to be inaccurate in some contexts. This year, we’re happy to be part of the more accurately named Interop 2022 (short for “Interoperability 2022”). This year’s effort brings deeper participation from an earlier stage for all parties, with involvement from Apple, Bocoup, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Igalia, all focused on improving fifteen areas of interoperability.

Interop 2022 will cover the following topics:

• Cascade Layers
• Color Spaces and Functions
• Containment
• Dialog Element
• Forms
• Scrolling
• Subgrid
• Typography and Encodings
• Viewport Units
• Web Compatibility

…as well as continuing work started in Compat 2021:

• Aspect Ratio
• Flexbox
• Grid
• Sticky Positioning
• Transforms

Progress in the advancement of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari across all fifteen areas of focus will be tracked throughout the year on the Interop 2022 Dashboard. The participants will also be investigating what would be needed to add three areas of testing in the future: Viewport Measurement; Pointer and Mouse Events; and Editing, contenteditable, and execCommand.

We said last year:

…by working together, with shared tasks and focused goals to improve the commons, we can expect significant improvements to the web platform before the year is out.

That expectation was well met in 2021, and with the multi-partner commitment to this much more ambitious project, we firmly believe that 2022 will be even better.