Tom Dale on Evergreen Browsers:
If you’re like me, when you’re developing a new web application, you put features into mental buckets. There’s the “works in IE7″ bucket, the “works in IE8″ bucket, “(I think) works in IE9,” and of course, “works in MobileSafari.”
The one bucket I don’t have is the “works in Chrome” bucket. That’s too much mental overhead. Instead, if I want to test whether something works in Chrome, I just pop open a new JS Bin and try it out. I don’t worry about which version they’re on—I assume that by the time my code makes it to production, my users will be on more-or-less the same version as me.
What would the web platform look like if every browser with significant market share updated itself at the same pace—and lack of user intervention—as Chrome?
I’m excited for this to happen. Browser diversity is a good thing and worth the pain because it pushes things forward, but the advantages are lost when users aren’t moving forward along with the innovations that diversity and competition bring. Having an up to date browser shouldn’t be a user concern. Here’s to a web that moves at the pace of the leaders, rather than being paced by the least common denominator.