There was a time when the web browser market was dominated by a single browser - Microsoft IE but the dominance phase seem to have gone by and now we see an era where multiple browsers are competing over Ajax features and performance and standards compliance. The dominance had resulted in no new feature turn up in IE but during the period when IE was sleeping over its monopoly a good thing happened out of the blue and it was Ajax. It was being regarded as a revolution which enabled web developers to add rich Ajax elements to HTML pages.

The HTML5 initiative has changed the face of web standards and opened the door for new browser features to be added. IE seems to have woken up from the deep slumber and is adding up new features to beat the competition and has come up with certain features in IE8 which are being termed as beneficial from the viewpoint of Ajax community.

Given below are some of the Ajax features which have been either implemented or are under the development phase for various browsers:

• IE - CSS 2.1, W3C Selectors, cross-frame messaging, offline storage, and cross-domain AJAX requests
• Firefox/Mozilla - CSS 2.1, W3C Selectors, cross-frame messaging, offline storage, cross-domain AJAX requests, Canvas, SVG
• Safari/WebKit - CSS 2.1, W3C Selectors, CSS animations, CSS web fonts, cross-frame messaging, offline storage, Canvas, SVG, audio and video
• Opera - CSS 2.1, W3C Selectors, CSS web fonts, cross-frame messaging, offline storage, cross-domain AJAX requests, online/offline events, persistent connections, server-sent events, Canvas, SVG, contentEditable, and video

Its not just IE but even Opera and Firefox which has been adding features from the viewpoint of Ajax. So now we are witnessing a situation where the browsers have started thinking from the viewpoint of Ajax rather than the opposite.

Thnx Jon