Web interoperability means producing web pages viewable in standard compatible web browser

Web browser

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...

s, various operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s such as Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and devices such as PC

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...

, PDA

Personal digital assistant

A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...

 and mobile phone

Mobile phone

A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...

 based on the latest web standards

Web standards

Web standards is a general term for the formal standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites,...

.

History

This term was originated by the Web Interoperability Pledge that is a promise to adhere to current HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 Recommendations as promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium

World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...

 (W3C). The WIP was not a W3C initiative. but it was started by and has been run by ZDNet

ZDNet

ZDNet is a business technology news website published by CBS Interactive, along with TechRepublic and SmartPlanet. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991 as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication owned by CNET...

 AnchorDesk quite independently.

This issue was known by cross browsing in browser war

Browser wars

Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during...

 between Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

 and Netscape

Netscape

Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...

. Windows Internet Explorer was the dominant browser after that, but modern web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

, Opera

Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software with over 200 million users worldwide. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent,...

 and Safari

Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...

 have supported web standards. Because of backward compatibility

Backward compatibility

In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...

 of Internet Explorer, many web pages has supported non-standard HTML tags and DOM handling script yet as well platform-dependent techniques such as ActiveX

ActiveX

ActiveX is a framework for defining reusable software components in a programming language-independent way. Software applications can then be composed from one or more of these components in order to provide their functionality....

. These are very harmful for Web accessibility

Web accessibility

Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality...

 and Device Independence

Device Independence

Device independence is the process of making a software application be able to function on a wide variety of devices regardless of the local hardware on which the software is used.- Desktop computing :...

.

Elements of Web interoperability

• Structural and semantic markup with XHTML
  XHTML
  XHTML is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely-used Hypertext Markup Language , the language in which web pages are written....
  
  .
• CSS based layout with layout elements such as position and float.
• Separating among structure, presentation and behavior in web pages.
• DOM scripting based on W3C DOM Standard and ECMAScript
  ECMAScript
  ECMAScript is the scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.- History :JavaScript...
  
  .

Activities

It has been various activities, for example Web Standards Project

Web Standards Project

The Web Standards Project is a group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, along with other groups and standards bodies....

, Mozilla's Technology Evangelism and Web Standards Group. Also there are educational activities such as Web Essential Conference.

See also

• Web accessibility
  Web accessibility
  Web accessibility refers to the inclusive practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality...
  
  
• Computer accessibility
  Computer accessibility
  In human-computer interaction, computer accessibility refers to the accessibility of a computer system to all people, regardless of disability or severity of impairment...
  
  
• Wikipedia:Accessibility
• Device Independence
  Device Independence
  Device independence is the process of making a software application be able to function on a wide variety of devices regardless of the local hardware on which the software is used.- Desktop computing :...
  
  
• Multimodal interaction
  Multimodal interaction
  Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interfacing with a system. A multimodal interface provides several distinct tools for input and output of data.- Multimodal input :...
  
  

• Cross browsing
• Forward compatibility
  Forward compatibility
  Forward compatibility or upward compatibility is a compatibility concept for systems design, as e.g. backward compatibility. Forward compatibility aims at the ability of a design to gracefully accept input intended for later versions of itself...
  
  
• Backward compatibility
  Backward compatibility
  In the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
  
  
• graceful degradation