Mozilla's Webcompat Project Seeks Volunteers to Call Out Bugs

If you've ever done any web development work, you are probably intimately familiar with the fact that what you build on the web may show up fine in one browser, yet be completely broken in another. It used to be that this problem simply meant testing sites and pages across popular desktop browsers, but in the age of mobile technology, you now have to test your creations across mobile devices, too.

With this in mind, Mozilla has launched a global Internet compatibility tracking project called Webcompat, designed to ensure that users don't experience issues when they access services and pages regardless of the hardware or software they use.

According to the Webcompat project page:

"Web Compatibility issues are related to Web sites implementing techniques that create issues for a certain class of browsers and/or devices. As a result, individuals will not be able to use a Web site according to their own choices. These issues are cross-platform, cross-product and related to the Web as a whole. There are circumstances when companies choose to use a standardized techniques which is not available for an older browser, but that should be mitigated by making the Web site usable under any circumstances. So if a person is using the last version of Firefox or a vocal browser such as Jaws, or a proxy browser such as Opera Mini or UCWeb, the Web site should be able to work. Mozilla has two areas for dealing with Web Compatibility issues. The goal of the Mozilla Web Compatibility teams is to make the Web usable for anyone—not just Firefox users, but we focus resources on solving issues for Firefox users first."

Webcompat is constructed such that Internet users can join to report bugs, or make contact with websites and services to inform them about bugs. The project is driven by volunteers, who have already produced a list of Desktop Web Compatibility issues and a list of Mobile Web Compatibility issues.