[abathur]

I think you might get less push-back on whether a browser should aspire to being "innovative" if you draw finer distinctions about types of innovation.

There's a big difference between innovative idiomatic APIs, innovating the first support for new specs/standards, innovative performance improvements, innovative UI/X, innovative plugin/extension engines, and (unfortunately) innovative interpretations of specs/standards.

[digitalcreate]

Actually, keeping the response open-ended has been very valuable in understanding how people interpret "innovation" in this context. In the linked survey, there is an open-ended comment box where you can explain your definition.

[abathur]

Certainly; if understanding how people interpret "innovation" is the goal, a broad question is a good way to draw that interpretation out of some subset of 'people'.

I left the survey without answering because I realized it'd require me to make a broad binary generalization of some sort. Questions requiring generalizations like this make me uncomfortable, so I usually avoid answering them or dispute their usefulness. I came here to dispute its usefulness, but I saw a few others had already done so in their own ways, and thought my time might be better spent trying to give you context for this push-back, rather than echoing it.

Perhaps I can unpack how I mean "uncomfortable." If you ask me an innocent question like "what's your favorite movie/book/artist/album?", I have no good prepared answer to give you without vastly more thought than I care to put to the matter. I like a lot of things, but I don't maintain any sort of ranking, and I have no fast+meaningful way of comparing the relative merits of a good comedy with a good documentary, or a book of poems with a novel. I'm aware that most of the time this is just a throwaway question for socializing and I could probably grease the interaction with a little white lie--just pick something and move on. But I also know some people live and die by questions like this, and will mine my answer for what it says about me, whether we'll get along, etc. I could state this as my answer to the question, but the asker is either just making smalltalk and doesn't need a dissertation, or they actually think the question is meaningful and won't appreciate my disdain. The question makes me uncomfortable because it feels like a lose-lose. There's no honest way for me to "answer" it, and all of the other options are undesirable for social reasons.

In your case, I don't know what kind of parameters matter to you, and I lack a fast+meaningful heuristic for weighing whether a browser is innovative on the balance or deciding what definition/qualities of innovation I want to apply. I also realize you have some purpose for asking the question, and that using a cynical heuristic would undermine you.

HTH