Should Microsoft Switch To WebKit?

DeviceGuru writes "Although IE remains the one of the top browsers on desktops, it's being trounced on tablets and smartphones by browsers based on WebKit, including Safari, the Android Browser, and Google Chrome. Faced with this uphill battle on handheld mobile devices, Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss has suggested that it might be time for Microsoft to throw in the towel on Trident and switch to WebKit (though Reiss later decided he was wrong). But although there are lots of points in favor of doing so, there are also some good reasons not to, including security and a need for healthy competition to avoid having mobile developers begin to target WebKit rather than standards."

Comments

Polishing a turd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if Microsoft would switch to something other than Windows 8 and RT, maybe companies like Samsung wouldn't be abandoning them in droves. And yet they get a multimillion dollar contract from the miilitary for the same crap and no one even thinks about investigating it...

Re:Polishing a turd.

[Plumpaquatsch]

Now if Microsoft would switch to something other than Windows 8 and RT, maybe companies like Samsung wouldn't be abandoning them in droves.

http://www.samsung.com/global/ativ/ativ_s.html

Re:Polishing a turd.

[AHuxley]

Skype is now in US hands :)

It's a silly proposition

[Stormwatch]

IE's problem is not the engine, it's the shitty interface.

(Ditto about Windows 8, many would say.)

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Xiph1980]

It's your opinion that you don't like the interface of Internet Explorer. I agree with you on that, it doesn't hold my preference either, but that doesn't make it a shitty interface. There's a reason why many people still use Internet Explorer.
You may call it what you will, (inertia, stubbornness, laziness, unwillingness to change,) but truth is that many people just prefer it and Internet Explorer is still popular amongst a big group of users, and in the same way you and I could be called the same for not wanting to change our opinion of browsers. Be it Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or whatever way you browse the web.

Just because you don't like a certain interface, doesn't make it shitty.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[cbhacking]

Personally, I actually find IE's interface one of the better ones. I don't like the approach that most browsers have been taking recently of minimalizing the browser UI; IE is no better off there than Firefox or Chrome (though its badness is slightly different) but things like the colored and automatically-combined tab groups, the ability to cycle through tabs in last-used order, the Favorites sidebar and feed reader, and the "Accelerators" feature for things like translating a text snippet instantly are all features which I appreciate, and feel are implemented pretty well.

Now, if it would just handle massive numbers of tabs more gracefully... there's a reason I use the "Ctrl+Tab cycles in last-used order" feature so much!

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Runaway1956]

AC says you're dumb - I disagree with him. Your opinion is pretty well thought out.

I do, however, disagree with your assessment somewhat. Trident needs to die, and die hard. Microsoft needs to pull that abomination out of Windows completely, along with all the ActiveX controls, all it's privileges, all of it's quirks, both good and bad.

I don't believe that I'll ever think that Windows is a "good" operating system, but the removal of Trident would make it one hell of a lot better. Sure, I know that many of IE's worst vulnerabilities have been "fixed", but I shall never forget how many vulnerabilities there have been, or how bad they have been.

As for Webkit - I've liked it since it's debut under Google's name. Sure, I realize it's not Google's invention, but webkit is cool.

If/when Microsoft shifts to Webkit, they really, really, REALLY need to install it as an unprivileged application, and make certain that it just BROWSES. It doesn't need hooks into dozens of programs, it doesn't need privileges, it doesn't need much of anything. A few plugins, addons such as Mozilla and Google offer for their own browsers. Leave it at that.

A browser on Windows should be just as much, and no more than a browser on any Unix-like. The browser shouldn't even be used for updates, as Microsoft has done for all these years. A separate and distinct updating program is a requirement, with no overlap in privileges.

Yes, Trident needs to die, quickly, and hard. It would be a wonderful thing if five years from now, Trident were just history, with zero support anywhere. I'd like to see websites assist people with updating from Trident simply. Just stop coding for Trident.

"This site is best viewed with ANY browser that is not Internet Explorer!"

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Tei]

No true.

The weak support for CSS and strange rendering, layout and JS interpretation are engine things.

The slowness of JS is another engine thing.

The bad security is again a engine thing (but may continue in other engine with the same people writting the defaults).

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Eirenarch]

The speed of JS in IE10 is pretty decent.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[duguk]

...and Webkit has a terrible rendering engine. Sounds like an appropriate combination.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[poetmatt]

no.

It's problem is stubbornly using their shitty trident engine for years and enormous amounts of compatibility issues contained therein.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

But, the interface of which version? It's changed over the years and recent versions are not 100% consistent.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[JackieBrown]

Thanks. I didn't know about the control tab option. Does that work in excel? (I am not at work to test.)

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

If we go by majority, many would say it shitty...:)

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Ctrl+Tab/LastTab/... is a mandatory addon for Firefox. I wish they would just change the default.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

So, basically, everything that was in Opera for years?.. Well, except for colored tabs, granted.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Features Opera has had for years

Re:It's a silly proposition

[hairyfeet]

Correct on IE, it is just using some weird design choices but I don't see how anybody can argue that Win 8 isn't wrong when this is the average user response I saw at the shop. When the user needs a fricking training course to use your damned OS like its 1986 all over again? Something has gone HORRIBLY wrong. IE's biggest problem isn't the UI, its the giant fucking bullseye painted on it by hackers because they know the clueless rubes that are still running that 30 day Norton trialware from 6 years ago and think that works is using IE. Add to that the fucking braindead choice to not port back to their supported OSes so that the ONLY way you can use the same browser across XP/Vista/7 is to NOT use IE and you have a browser made of fail.

As for TFA lets call a spade a spade, shall we? google needs their asses spanked for the redirect bullshit they have been pulling of late. If MSFT made all THEIR websites dump you into shitty mode if you didn't use the latest IE we'd be hearing screams of antitrust, but Google can pull the same shit and not a peep? bullshit, utter bullshit. I was against the "works best in IE" horseshit and I'm against the "works best in Webkit" horseshit, Google is making billions off the ads and data-mining they do in Chrome and this should be treated as what it is noncompetitive behavior. If the browser supports the features then they should work PERIOD and having to hack strings like its 1999 all over again is bullshit.

I use a webkit based browser (Comodo Dragon) but even I don't want a world where the only engine we have is webkit, that is how we get nasty zero days that can infect the whole damned planet. Did we not learn anything from IE 6?

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Billly Gates]

Trident in IE 10 scores a decent in HTML 5/5.1 and CSS 3.

It is not the piece of crap it once was in IE 6. Just because you have not used it in 12 years doesn't mean it is the same as in 2001.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[cbhacking]

Yeah. For the record, I'm aware that I can get all of these features, and then some, using enough Firefox extensions (although the implementation isn't always as polished). However, I appreciate the fact that they're built in, and that I don't have to worry if they're going to conflict, or leak RAM, or be broken by some update (less of an issue now). Still, I definitely keep Firefox installed. In fact, I keep all of the major browsers except Safari installed (I view Safari as offering basically nothing in exchange for its crap UI and since I don't have a Mac, I can't get the latest version anyhow). Chrome is "Safari (or more specifically, WebKit), but with a few more features and a slightly less-awful interface." Firefox is "Firebug and Gecko and don't open too many tabs or you'll have to restart it." Opera is "ALL THE FEATURES and Yet Another Rendering Engine but WHY are the keyboard shortcuts different from every other browser?"

Obviously, the above is over-simplified... Firefox loses points (and value) by being single-process, but despite being multi-process IE also starts to struggle if you open too many tabs at once (and it's not system resources, it's just the browser acting up). I actually use Opera as my secondary browser - I really do like the less-minimal interface; I think the thing that honestly pisses me off most about IE is the removal of the title bar - but no matter how often or how much I use it, its commands always feel just a little alien to me (I may use the keyboard more than most people do when browsing).

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Nerdfest]

The problem is that if they start getting a significant share of the browser market again, they're almost guaranteed to start their old extend/extinguish trick. Microsoft needs to stay an 'also ran' in the browser market until they learn to play with others.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Nimey]

Never happen. There are too many line-of-business programs that use Trident, and are written in such a way to require bug-for-bug compatibility.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Billly Gates]

Right now I fear webkit will be the next MS, more than MS resurrecting from the dead.

Have you tried browsing the web with Firefox on Android? It feels like Netscape during 2003 all over again where IE 6 is the only browser that worked well or at all. As mobile takes over webkit will be the next IE 6.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Nerdfest]

I too have that fear. The real basis for it is because Apple is the new Microsoft. Better design sense, but more greedy and evil.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[loufoque]

Is it really? I've never seen anyone use IE7 or later.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Seeteufel]

I heard that before. However, Trident is still not open source.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[hairyfeet]

Insightful? Really people? hell why didn't he just add a fangirl squee while he was at it! he likes Webkit NOT for any features or design choices but "I've liked it since it's debut under Google's name" which means as long as its google he be a squeeing, and he hates Windows and "I don't believe that I'll ever think that "Windows is a "good" operating system" so billions of people are idiots but of course it would be better...if its done by google or uses a google browser.

Good God /. you are getting as bad as reddit or Digg with all the fangirl bullshit, we are supposed to be geeks and back shit up with legitimate arguments not "I realize it's not Google's invention, but webkit is cool." fangirl squeeing crap.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Firehed]

That was the argument in 2003 when we were first trying to get people to switch to Firefox. While I'm sure that's true in some places (China mostly, from what I last heard on the subject) the days of widespread SAAS are upon us and now even giant mega corps don't have a real problem upgrading.

Even if the updated web apps have ignored the last several years' best practice of feature detection instead of user-agent sniffing, they're unlikely to have serious problems with how close the modern rendering engines have become to each other.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Nimey]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

You really have no idea how many client-side programs integrate Trident, do you? I'm not talking about something that goes through the browser here.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[icebike]

IE's problem is not the engine, it's the shitty interface.

(Ditto about Windows 8, many would say.)

The interface is not a major problem. (Note that the interface is the first major complaint of new Chrome users especially the missing dedicated search box).

The big problem with IE is the horrible propensity and history of getting hacked or pwned when using that browser.

But more to the point, since this Slashdot post asks a yes/no question, we can, true to form, answer with NO.

Competition avoids a mono-culture, and provides a refuge when one or the other browser is compromised.

Oddly, competition with multiple browser engines enforces standards. When Microsoft had something like 80 or 90 percent of the installed base they used that to impose de facto standards that we still suffer from today. The same would be true if webkit suddenly ruled the browser market.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Stormwatch]

Chrome's interface is not any better... in fact, it puzzles me that people abhor IE but accept that turd.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[spire3661]

NO, not even close yet. Apple isnt anywhere near the evil MS pulled off. Microsoft held back computing by a decade or more, Apple has yet to pull such a stunt. They do shady shit, and are positioned to possibly be a big abusive monopoly, but they have a LONG way to go to catch up to MS.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not idiots by choice. Only by Microsoft's years of lock-in.

We're starting to see the same phenomenon in the Apple ecosphere now that Apple has officially peaked.

Though it will be much harder to escape Apple's jail; that's a good example of folks not learning their lesson from the MS experience. Fool me twice then I'm an idiot.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Buzer]

Opera is "ALL THE FEATURES and Yet Another Rendering Engine but WHY are the keyboard shortcuts different from every other browser?"

They have been moving towards making the shortcuts same as in other browsers, but many long time Opera users (myself included) hate it as we are used to different set as they are generally more accessible (like z & x for back/forward instead of alt+left/right). Fortunately Opera lets you customize hotkeys easily unlike many other browsers.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Nerdfest]

The only thing they're missing is the monopoly part. They specialize in platform lock-in and anti-competitive behaviour. Look at their patent abuse. Look at iMessage, Facetime, and iBooks - all open protocols with proprietary extensions to lock them to Apple. Microsoft is killing themselves with Windows 8 to even approach the level of greed Apple has. The Metro interface MS store lock-in is a misguided attempt to copy them. Seriously, Apple just hasn't had enough time and market share. If people keep throwing money and free advertising at them, you'll see how Microsoft's behaviour was amateur at best.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Locutus]

I agree 100% with your title that it's a silly proposition but not because IE is good, bad, or ugly. It's silly if you know anything about Microsoft's business practices over the last 2+ decades. They will continue to force IE on users because they must continue to own the majority of the developers. And any move to open standards is just temporary and for marketing purposes only. Microsoft is not getting into the phone and tablet market because they're looking for profits there it's about protecting the desktop and protecting the developer base. This is the exact reason why Microsoft does not do what Apple did or what Google did and that is build a mobile OS designed specifically and uniquely for the device model. They've tied Windows mobile to Windows desktop and Windows Server because fracturing the developer base makes them easier pickings. And being fractured means no dominance, no control.

Developers, developers, developers and going to Webkit and throwing out Microsoft IE on any of their platform does not follow that mantra their fearless leader, also known as Uncle Fester, has on the flag he runs up and down the hallways waving. Or not.

LoB

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a shitty interface because it's buggy as heck, the dev tools aren't even close to realtime and it's as unresponsive as a vegetable.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Xiph1980]

Correct on IE, it is just using some weird design choices but I don't see how anybody can argue that Win 8 isn't wrong when this is the average user response I saw at the shop.

I didn't mention windows 8 and that's quite off-topic, but I agree, it's not great. I think blogphilofilms explains it perfectly in his review. Especially the part about the four C's:
Control: The user should be the person in control of the computer at all times;
Conveyance: The user should be able to figure out where to go and what to do;
Continuity: Users should be able to expect that similar actions will yield similar results;
Context: Users should be able to see information and options at a glance.

IE's biggest problem isn't the UI, its the giant fucking bullseye painted on it by hackers because they know the clueless rubes that are still running that 30 day Norton trialware from 6 years ago and think that works is using IE. Add to that the fucking braindead choice to not port back to their supported OSes so that the ONLY way you can use the same browser across XP/Vista/7 is to NOT use IE and you have a browser made of fail.

Microsoft has done a lot in recent years to make Internet Explorer a lot safer, and the latest version has actually become reasonably safe, especially considering where it was coming from. But yeah, the inability to install the latest version on older operating systems isn't helping at all, because despite the fact that people really shouldn't be using XP anymore, as it's EOL now, they still do. Especially large corporations have been and are reluctant to upgrade. Only being able to run a lower version IE on those systems is quite the security risk. IE 10 won't even run on Vista...

I was against the "works best in IE" horseshit and I'm against the "works best in Webkit" horseshit, <snip>

I use a webkit based browser (Comodo Dragon) but even I don't want a world where the only engine we have is webkit, that is how we get nasty zero days that can infect the whole damned planet. Did we not learn anything from IE 6?

Completely agree on the fact that a single option is the worst thing we could get.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Runaway1956]

Oh, stop with the squealing - I've liked Webkit since Google started working on it, BECAUSE I wasn't very much aware of Webkit before Google started working on it.

To state the matter in a different way, I've liked every browser that I've touched that was webkit based. Chromium was the first.

Squeal now, Hairy!

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason why many people still use Internet Explorer.

Yeah it's installed by default and made the default browser. User's are fucking clueless and don't know there's other stuff out there which they might like better. This adds a significant amount of users to their market share which has nothing to do with how good or how bad the browser is. Some stay because it was the first they were exposed to, others stay "noobs" forever and never try anything else, and others stay because they've genuinely tried the other stuff and just like IE better.

I'm not saying that IE sucks, but it makes you wonder where their market share would be if they didn't have the "by default" advantage when so many lack the ability to even evaluate the quality of software let alone install it.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[gnasher719]

As for Webkit - I've liked it since it's debut under Google's name. Sure, I realize it's not Google's invention, but webkit is cool.

Not sure if I understand you correctly: So when Apple developed and released it, you didn't like it. And when Nokia used it, you still didn't like it. But then it came out under Google's name, and suddenly you like it?

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Runaway1956]

See my reply to Hairyfeet above. I had played with Safari a little prior to Google getting involved with Webkit. But, I had ONLY played with it. When Google released their first version, I downloaded it, played with it, THEN realized that it was much like Safari.

For whatever reasons, Chromium's first versions ran better for me than whichever versions of Safari I had messed with. After browsing with Google's browser, I went back and grabbed Safari again, to make side-by-side comparisons. I found them to be very much the same.

I was careful to note in my post that Webkit preceded Chromium, that Webkit isn't a Google invention. It's just that Webkit didn't make an impact on me until Chromium came out. And, I'll bet there are millions of other people who would admit that the same were true for them.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[ducomputergeek]

The last time I checked Webkit was opensource. While Apple maintains functional control over the project if they tried to extend it you don't think Google or someone else couldn't fork it in a moment?

Re:It's a silly proposition

[LinuxIsGarbage]

CTRL+tab will change documents in Excel (and child windows / documents in most apps)

Ctrl+page up /page down changes worksheets within a workbook.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[bedouin]

Google could release AIDS and people would try it, then bitch when Google discontinues it even though there's other shitty web-based VDs out there.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anubis IV]

WebKit is being used by two competing companies and is open source, allowing anyone else to introduce their own competing product if they should so choose. The prefixed CSS elements (the most common issue for claiming that WebKit is the new IE) are only becoming a problem because they're being abused by web developers who aren't providing graceful degradation and future-proofing at the same time. That's an issue with developers, not the rendering engine.

That said, I too want to see a healthy ecosystem with alternative choices to WebKit, but the threat I see facing Firefox and Opera today is not that WebKit is the new IE (i.e. a non-standards-compliant browser that attempts to extinguish the others by having non-standard features they lack), but rather that with two behemoth companies supporting WebKit (Apple and Google), it's likely to simply leave the alternatives behind by trying to push for more rapid adoption of standards, even if it means moving outside of W3C's immediate control. Of course, Opera and Mozilla kinda brought this on themselves when they went in with Apple on the WHATWG, but with HTML being a "living" spec now, more rapid changes can be made, meaning that the companies that can't implement them fast enough are likely to simply get left behind. That, more than anything, will push more companies to adopt the rendering engine that's already being developed by companies with massive budgets.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[tommituura]

I do know this is pedantry, but wasn't Webkit originally KHTML fork?

(not that this makes GP's point any clearer...

Re:It's a silly proposition

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh..the one I was responding to said "Win 8 and IE are design choices" implying its a personal taste kinda thing, sorry if it looked like I was responding directly to you but everybody knows /. when it comes to layout be fucked up. But I was simply pointing out that it is NOT a "personal taste thing" if your UI is completely non-intuitive and non-discoverable because ultimately the UI is NOT about going "Look at how fucking brilliant I am! LOVE ME LIKE APPLE!" but letting the users actually get to what they need for work or play and after the shining brilliance of Win 7, which honestly was the first one since Win2K that actually impressed me, to go backwards 25 years to one program at a time and primary colors and the "learn this cheat sheet" keyboard commands was just fucking astounding in its levels of fail. While I agree with everything you said running a little shop I have a much better test, its called "can the average person walking through my door use this?" and with all Windows pre 8, along with OSX, iOS, and Android the answer was "yes they can" .

As for IE I don't give a rat's ass if they made it safe as houses, they broke the cardinal rule as far as I am concerned by not backporting. MSFT may be under the delusion that when someone goes to buy a PC they throw away every PC in their home and buy all new computers with the latest hotness but I can tell you that is FAR from the truth. What actually happens is they upgrade in stages, usually the laptop wears out first and then once they have gotten a feel for the new OS in the laptop they then want the desktop in the den replaced so they can have the same experience in both machines. By not backporting to their STILL SUPPORTED OSes they have made it so the first thing I do on a new install is remove the IE icons and replace the browser with Dragon and IceDragon (I like the better security features and it integrates nicely with Comodo AV sandboxing) because otherwise I get pissed off customers because in this day and age folks are simply used to having one browser work multiple places and to suddenly have to use different browsers with different UIs based on what version of the OS you have? Really don't cut it. To steal a line from Tron Legacy "I stand for the users" and its my job to make things as easy and comfortable as possible and having such a wide difference between XP/Vista/7/8 really don't cut it anymore.

And while I agree about WinXP for fucks sake Vista is built on the new design and supported for another 4 years, they really have no excuse. Hell if folks wouldn't have pitched a shitfit the version of IE built for Win 8 (IE 11? 12? Can't remember off the top of my head) wouldn't have been backported either! That is just fucking lazy or retarded, whether you choose to believe the IE team is too lazy to backport or so retarded that they think withholding IE will force the corps to take Win 8 when the Win 7 rollouts just started in earnest is you choice, either way IE firmly in the "do not ever use" column as far as my users are concerned. Of course some may be thinking I'm biased in this as MSFT fucking killed Internet TV in Win 7 on the month before Win 8 release day, wouldn't be trying to cripple Win 7 to make Win 8 look better there would ya MSFT?

Finally as far as one browser to rule them all. History, repeat, doomed. Has everyone forgotten IE 6? How a zero day would spread like fucking skynet across the globe because everybody and their dog and their dog's rubber bone ALL had the same version of IE? It was a BAD idea when MSFT pushed it and they deserved to be spanked by antitrust, its a bad idea when Google does it with browsers being redirected into shitty mode if they ain't Webkit and they deserve an antitrust spanking as well. I give NO company a pass because of their name, the fangirls can boo all the fucking want but if a practice is shitty or a product terrible? I WILL call you out, period.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, except that we're 15 years down the line and no one has produced a working IWebBrowser2 interface for any other browser yet. I presume your complaint about ActiveX is not "OMG Microsoft dare to provide an interface to the browser and DOM that allows other applications to consume its capabilities"? So the whole shebang is going to be around until someone grasps that particular nettle.

As for rendering engines and standards, I say fuck the W3C, make whatever Webkit implements the standard. This obsession over paper standards is a huge anachronism in an age when we can write working cross-platform code and have that be the standard. It's like we understand what's wrong with the waterfall model now except in this singular case of "paper standards", when suddenly the waterfall model is fine.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[hairyfeet]

Good Lord you can't even get the fucking lingo right with it staring you in the face. For your complete fangirl failure here is your sign and so you might actually learn something here is the definition so you may at least learn from your fail.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

until they learn to play with others

What a tired & hackneyed expression that is (as is the idiom "Some company needs to do X Y Z").

You're not Microsoft's parent, or in any position of authority, nor do you have any special claim to wisdom.

Why not be honest? You fear Microsoft getting market share because you fear the consequences (which are trivial first-world problems around maintaining compatible codebases for multiple almost-standards, wrapped up in some ideological bullshit around an abuse of the word "monopoly") and you hope that Microsoft will stay an 'also ran' in the browser market because you can't cope with a world full of variety (i.e. you can't play with others, for instance Microsoft, unless they obey your terms).

Pro-Tip: Put Stallman's rhetoric in these terms.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly. Webkit is open source. IE 6 was not. If you're stupid enough to think similar market share = similar outcome, regardless of all other relevant factors, then ... I guess you should be a pcmag.com reader ... hmm.

I mean just your basic premise compares an ongoing project with a single version of a product. Is LLVM the new gcc-2.0? Is Eclipse the new Visual Studio 2008? See how silly that sounds? IE6 is a fixed point in time; it's never going to evolve. Webkit today is way different to webkit just 3 years ago, and webkit in 3 years.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Runaway1956]

Squee? FFS - obviously I'm not into memes and other stupid shits . . .

Apparently you are?

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Anonymous Coward]

IE's problem is not the engine, it's the shitty interface.

(Ditto about Windows 8, many would say.)

What and chromes interface is spectacular. Not at all.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Dr. Evil]

Alt-tab works in last-used order. Ctrl-Tab is normally sequential (but IMHO, should be last-used too).

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Kalriath]

Really? In Firefox 17 on my work desktop (NO addons at all), Ctrl+Tab is in last used order, not sequential. Is it different on yours?

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Kalriath]

It's missing the "giant fucking memory leak" and "takes half an hour to start" features that Opera invented too. (Hint: 3 tabs should not consume 1.7GB of fucking memory).

Re:It's a silly proposition

[Kalriath]

If/when Microsoft shifts to Webkit, they really, really, REALLY need to install it as an unprivileged application, and make certain that it just BROWSES. It doesn't need hooks into dozens of programs, it doesn't need privileges, it doesn't need much of anything. A few plugins, addons such as Mozilla and Google offer for their own browsers. Leave it at that.

A browser on Windows should be just as much, and no more than a browser on any Unix-like. The browser shouldn't even be used for updates, as Microsoft has done for all these years. A separate and distinct updating program is a requirement, with no overlap in privileges.

I love it when people spout this shit. Here, let me enlighten you:

1. Internet Explorer is not just an unprivileged application, it's sandboxed as well. It has less access to the system than the user it's running as does.
2. Internet Explorer does not hook into anything. In fact, Internet Explorer is just dumb chrome around Trident, which is just a bunch of libraries functionally equivalent to the Gecko or WebKit libraries. They aren't special libraries with more access or anything like that either.
3. Internet Explorer isn't used by Windows Update. Hell, even Trident isn't.

Re:It's a silly proposition

[ByOhTek]

It's been a long time since I've seen a browser WITHOUT a shitty interface :-(

That includes Chrome (probably the worst IMO), Opera and Firefox. A few years ago, I liked IE and Firefox, but they are trying too hard to mimic Chrome and Opera.

It's pretty bad what you start to think the browser with the best interface is lynx... At least it gets minimalist right.

Arguments of convenience

[blarkon]

In the past many on Slashdot argued vehemently for web standards. It's interesting that a lot of people who used to be pro-web-standard when Microsoft was non-compliant with IE are now saying "hey, we're only going to target webkit because ..." The same reasons that applied to avoiding an IE monoculture for web development apply to a webkit monoculture. Rather than bathing in schadenfreude, people should be kicking over bins just like they did with IE to ensure that the most popular implementation follows the standard, not the standard follows the most common implementation.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[danhuby]

Who are these people that are only targeting Webkit?

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Just about every web developer who uses OS X, which unfortunately is most of them. "Cross browser" to them means it works in Safari and Chrome, and to hell with anyone using Firefox, IE, Opera, or some other browser.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[pentadecagon]

Of course it is about convenience, in fact convenience is always goal, and standards are just one way to get there. Having a common implementation is a much faster way to get there. In fact you compare Apples and Oranges here. IE was proprietary and MS had a monopoly. Webkit is both open and free. And when three competing companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple) are working together on Webkit it's hardly a monopoly.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Runaway1956]

You make a fairly decent point. Not a good point, just a decent point. But, Webkit doesn't have a history that is anything like Trident. I don't care if Microsoft uses Webkit, Gekho, or something entirely new. Just get rid of Trident.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for one, which was the reason for the GMaps on Windows Phone brouhaha a few days ago.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[ikaruga]

Arguing against IE back in the days made sense because it was a closed-source engine controlled by one company with monopolistic policies. Webkit is open source, anyone can implement it anywhere and anyhow they want. What else do you want? If you ask me, webkit could become the web standard itself, and as long as it's renewed every few years for new features(webkit2 is already in the works, btw), I wouldn't care. The only webkit related issue I can think of is the iOS gimped implementation, but that is more of an Apple problem than Webkit problem.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing is, the reason developers are targeting WebKit is because of the iPhone (Safari) not because of Chrome.

If it works in Chrome on Windows, it will work on Safari on the iPhone, without needing to test if it actually works on the iPhone.

Although that has problems too, as Chrome and Safari use different Javascript implementations, and Google uses an inherently terrible method of sandboxing that wastes extreme amounts of memory. Also Chrome has no 64-bit version on Windows which is a non-starter, where as MSIE does have a a 64-bit version. Chrome and other 32-bit only browsers are rapidly going to hit a memoryspace wall should there be some shift in the way graphics resolution comes along. We see this problem already on the Retina displays, as the browser engines become unable to deal with pages that are wider than 1000 pixels (let me ask... how many people actually run their web browser full screen? Probably nobody.) Imagine now UHDTV at 7680 × 4320 that's over 7 times wider. So right now the only released Windows browser that can conceivably render a UHDTV native web page is in fact 64-bit MSIE.

Someone needs to slap around the Chrome engineers and tell them the pre-fork model is dead.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[luke923]

Wrong! As a professional web developer who both uses OS X and works alongside other developers who use OS X, I know first hand a large number develop against Firefox before testing in Webkit. I also know a handful who develop against Opera before testing against any other browser; however, most of the decisions to not target Opera stems from management decisions based on analytics. Still these same management types still tell us to target Firefox and IE going back to IE7.

As far as using Webkit extensions, if any developer uses any Webkit extension it's because: a) they target mobile and the Webkit extensions render faster that any W3C/JQuery/Javascript implementation equivalent, or b) they're prototyping a new browser engine feature knowing full well that it won't be cross-browser compatible. That said, the problem in the past that many had with IE non-compliance had more to do with IE's reliance on ActiveX controls in order to implement new features which not only locked you into the browser, but also locked you into a particular OS. And, since Webkit has no OS constraint along with performance improvements attached to Webkit extensions, no one is -- to use the parlance -- kicking over bins over the purported standards non-compliance coming from Webkit.

Then again, the whole purpose of vendor extensions is for the community to experiment with new features before they become part of the W3C standard. Also, it's important to note that not only does Webkit have its extensions, but Firefox (with -moz-), Opera (with -o-), and even the newest versions of IE (with -ms-) have their own extensions for the purpose of introducing new features out into the wild. And, it seems very few have any problem with this setup.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[BZ]

A lot of people have problems with this setup, precisely because people end up shipping sites that only work in only one browser.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[BZ]

Everyone and their mother designing "mobile" sites. For some big names, Google, Disney, Comcast, DirecTV, Flickr will all sniff whether you're on "mobile" and either serve you WebKit-only sites or detect that you're not using WebKit and serve you totally different, mostly unusable, sites than they do to WebKit-based browsers.

You should really try using a non-WebKit browser on Android. It's worse than trying to use a non-IE browser in 2000-2001 or so.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past many on Slashdot argued vehemently for web standards. It's interesting that a lot of people who used to be pro-web-standard when Microsoft was non-compliant with IE are now saying "hey, we're only going to target webkit because ..."

The same reasons that applied to avoiding an IE monoculture for web development apply to a webkit monoculture. Rather than bathing in schadenfreude, people should be kicking over bins just like they did with IE to ensure that the most popular implementation follows the standard, not the standard follows the most common implementation.

Webkit is open source. IE was not.

The people and companies working on webkit are not trying to kill Mozilla. Hell, the biggest contributor to webkit is Mozilla's largest source of revenue.

Webkit is used by many browsers on many platforms from many companies (Safari on mac and iOS, Chrome on everything, RIM's blackberry browser, ...). IE was intentionally tied to a single OS.

WebKit has a long history of respecting standards. There are extensions which are prototypes for future standards, but they are clearly marked as such with vendor prefixes. If you don't believe me, read their mailing list. IE drew no line between standard and non-standard. From the trial we learned that this was an intentional strategy to kill competitors.

Webkit is nothing like IE in terms of standards compliance. I don't want a monoculture, but comparing webkit to IE is silly.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

really? anything to back that up?

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

No developer I ever have worked with has targetted chrome to get iphones "for free". Then again I tend to work with people who are competent at their job, and would think it silly to assume chrome and safari are the same. Those same people also still despise MS for having objectively the worst popular browser in the world. That is not likely to change until IE 9 is nothing but a terrible nightmare from the past.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[rdebath]

I would strongly disagree with this.

Having a standards committee design the next step in a technical advance is one of the worst ways of working possible. What you usually end up with is a huge conglomeration of random ideas and special interests. For programming the result is frequently described as "feeping creaturitus".

The reason for web standards is not technical, standards don't help make better mousetraps they exist so that a hundred mice can wrestle the cat into submission. So that the little guys can make stuff too and they don't get forced out of the market by a brute who can throw either money or lawyers around to kill off the competition.

If webkit became "the web browser" this would be no different from (for example) the single source of the Perl language. There wouldn't be the problem of the secret Trident, where nobody can compete or the technology can be politically leveraged to for the use of other software (eg an OS). Because, being freely forkable, if the current maintainers don't support an environment patches against the source can be added by others. What's more if the maintainers make enough of a fuckup they can be force out completely.

But there is a problem for Microsoft; several years ago they claimed that IE was an essential component of their OS and they very hurriedly tried to make sure that this wasn't a complete lie. Because of this lots of parts of the OS now use DLLs and libraries from IE to do simple jobs or use IE as a local display processor. The result is that Microsoft will have a difficult job removing IE and it's html engine, so much so that it's probably easier for them to fix IE than to navigate the maze of interdepartmental politics that would be involved in removing it.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Billly Gates]

I do not give a shit whether it is opensource. I do give a shit whether it enslaves the web and enforces another decade of stagnationm, where we can't move on to HTML 6 and corps lock a special version of Chrome from this decade to support their apps.

Maybe Android 3.x will be used and corps will downgrade their phones for just that one version 10 years from now if the W3C makes changes that the current webkit does not support. Only Google's way of doing it is different.

IE 5.5 was cutting edge and MS was inventing new standards and it was the best browser back then. THe problems came when w3c decided to recommend the same standards implemented differently. Then IE 6 did things one way, and Firefox rendered them in another.

Open source or not I do not want to see that problem again.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Billly Gates]

A standards committee is what caused IE 6 inertia.

The problem is the W3C decided to use a different box model and other things in CSS that IE 5.5 and IE 6 pioneered when it was still new and cutting edge. THe response was websites igoring the W3C due to content managers being older and corps locking IE 6 to this very day to all their users as their apps were made before the new standards were set.

Chrome just invets shit and throws it out for a pissing contenst for HTML5test.com to make the geeks drool. The W3C can do something different and then you have incompatibility. Chrome might as well keep their proprietary hacks ---webkit in order not to break these mobile sites. Its 2003 all over again!

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Guilty as charged.

Slashdot likes lives in a basement pollyanna where everyone codes to "standards" and all browsers perfectly support the "standards". But, just as with IE6, the unpleasant reality is mobile browsers are loaded with bugs and proprietary extensions and "W3C proposals". You can either deal with it or go back to coding table-sites that work on netscape 3.

Just getting stuff to work on a crappy (webkit-based) browser like Android 2.x was enough of a pain in the ass. Apologies that we do not have infinite budgets to support your favorite unpopular mobile platform, e.g. Windows Phone 7 or Firefox/Android. (although it actually works ok on WP8)

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Plumpaquatsch]

Google for one, which was the reason for the GMaps on Windows Phone brouhaha a few days ago.

False, Google didn't "only target Webkit", they claimed that GMaps a) was optimized for Webkit (which probably is true) and that b) they blocked Windows Phone users claiming that it wouldn't work (which was provably wrong).

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Pieroxy]

What is the problem with the iPhone browser? Do you mean to say it's worse than the default Android browser?

Oh my...

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Arguing against IE back in the days made sense because it was a closed-source engine controlled by one company with monopolistic policies. Webkit is open source, anyone can implement it anywhere and anyhow they want. What else do you want? If you ask me, webkit could become the web standard itself, and as long as it's renewed every few years for new features(webkit2 is already in the works, btw), I wouldn't care. The only webkit related issue I can think of is the iOS gimped implementation, but that is more of an Apple problem than Webkit problem.

I'd rather have a few renderers.

First, to avoid a monoculture for security reasons. Second, to avoid a monoculture for rendering bugs, which people will end up writing to instead of being honest and failing the developers.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone and their mother designing "mobile" sites. For some big names, Google, Disney, Comcast, DirecTV, Flickr will all sniff whether you're on "mobile" and either serve you WebKit-only sites or detect that you're not using WebKit and serve you totally different, mostly unusable, sites than they do to WebKit-based browsers.

You should really try using a non-WebKit browser on Android. It's worse than trying to use a non-IE browser in 2000-2001 or so.

I do (Firefox on Android). Mobile sites work just fine, and no differently than they do on the Android browser (and now with Firefox 18, at least as fast).

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Tenebrousedge]

You keep repeating this same point about "the new IE6".

I think that the proofs for that have not been established.

However, if you are not being paid to repeat that statement, then I would suggest that you should consider your point made.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[yuhong]

Actually, CSS1 and CSS2 dates years before IE 5.5.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Zero__Kelvin]

It isn't hypocritical at all. You just don't understand the issue. The argument against IE remains for the same reason it has always been there, while the argument against webkit doesn't.exist. Why?: What OS can IE run on? Micro$oft's only. What OS can webkit based browsers run on? All of them! See the difference?

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Arguing against IE back in the days made sense

Arguing against IE now, later on today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future makes sense as well. There is no need to qualify it with "back in the day".

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is about convenience, in fact convenience is always goal, and standards are just one way to get there. Having a common implementation is a much faster way to get there.

And if the one-and-only implementation doesn't run on your computer, or doesn't have the accessibility support you need, or doesn't have some other feature that makes your life so much easier that you can't imagine doing without it? Doesn't sound very convenient to me.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[disambiguated]

If it works in Chrome on Windows, it will work on Safari on the iPhone, without needing to test if it actually works on the iPhone.

What color is the sky in your world?

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

If webkit became "the web browser" this would be no different from (for example) the single source of the Perl language.

Note that the Perl community has decided that Perl 6 should be a standard with multiple implementations....

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not materially different.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[rklrkl]

Er, I use a non-WebKit browser - Firefox Beta - on Android (on my Nexus 7) and I do three things to make it actually nice to surf:

1. Side-load the Flash Player apk - yes, you can officially download it despite not being on Google Play any more.

2. Install the Phony extension and set it to Desktop Firefox mode (because you want desktop versions of sites on tablets, not the mobile versions).

3. Install the Adblock Plus extension.

This gives you the best Android tablet browser experience by some considerable distance (and probably a lot better than any iOS browser can manage).

Re:Arguments of convenience

[CrashNBrn]

Most of the browser extensions work pretty much the same or exactly the same -- there have been very few exceptions to this (or possibly only one). Extensions would be much easier to deal with - especially when the browsers have produced the same implementation prior to it becoming the spec if we could just use "--new-feature", and if there was an alternate/differing implementation by ms, opera, webkit, or mozilla then a specific extension could override the generic --new-feature as -o-new-feature or -moz-new-feature, etc.

As is, attempting to implement pre-spec features makes the css a complete mess, e.g. 4 rounded corner borders could require up to 16 lines of css.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[semi-extrinsic]

I can agree with the memory thing, I recently had to add more RAM to my girlfriend's netbook, as some of the crappy coded fashion blogs would use up a whole gigabyte with just a handful of tabs.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Billly Gates]

Go get your Android phone and try out the new FIrefox mobile?

Now go to disney, msnbc, hbo, and other sites. How many render properly? That is why I am up an arms as an Android user.

I hate my dataplan and want to get a Mozilla FirefoxOS dumbphone in a few months. I wonder how useful it is going to be. I am not a trident fan, but rather I want MS Surface users and Nokia users as well to have the same browsing experience.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[BZ]

I've been using Firefox on Android too, in the "eat my own dogfood" way, and while a lot of sites are fine, some are just completely broken because of all the WebKit-isms. :(

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Bill Dog]

And when three competing companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple) are working together on Webkit it's hardly a monopoly.

Fascinating. So Leftists aren't against monopolies because it limits consumer choice in products, but only because it limits consumer choice in vendors.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Bill Dog]

Okay, so it's okay if we have basically only one choice in browser as long as we have multiple choices in operating system to run it on.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof of a problem is confirmation that we failed to prevent it.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[bedouin]

What is all this Firefox incompatibility about? The first time I've ever heard anyone complain is in this thread. Firefox is my main browser on my MacBook and I can't remember ever encountering problems. Chrome is not even installed.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[martin-boundary]

No software should be a standard itself. Every bug it has becomes something others must copy. And that even includes newer versions of the same software, ie it must remain backwards compatible with itself and every stupid decision the first programmers made becomes unchangeable.

A standard should be a document that has a well defined publication date and versioning system. Unfortunately, Google's dumbass approach to making HTML5 a "living document" where nobody knows what's in and what's out over time is railroading us right back into the bad old days. Don't drink the cool-aid.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[rdebath]

As I remember it Microsoft jumped the gun on the standard with IE6 and made a guess as to which way the (ambiguous) draft standard should be interpreted. The committee went the other way.

After the release of IE6 there was some political stuff that basically meant that Netscape wasn't released again. Without the competition Microsoft didn't care and so IE6 froze too. Only when Mozilla actually threatened to get a larger market share than IE6 did Microsoft actually start updates again.

All through this the standards committee were still working (mostly without Microsoft's input) in their normal (slow) fashion.

The 'pissing contest' method is actually not a bad way of showing your users what you think they're asking for, normally it's called 'prototyping'. The important thing is to have a solid line between the parts that are 'stable' and the parts that are 'prototype'; in this case it's the "-webkit-" and similar prefixes. For IE6 there wasn't one.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[rdebath]

Not "multiple choices", he said "ALL choices".

That includes the super OS that's going to be released next year, the funny phone with the top secret library APIs and win32s on wfw3.1 (if someone cares to spend some time).

Re:Arguments of convenience

[Anonymous Coward]

Except thats false, as Safari is generally 6 to 12 months behind in the webkit implementation.

Re:Arguments of convenience

[rdebath]

I didn't say there weren't some disadvantages. As I understand it the perl thing is something of a documentation project so they explicitly specify what are the expected responses and what are artefacts of the implementation that the programmers aren't expecting. An example in C

x = 1;
x++ = x++ + x++;
printf("%d\n", x);

... What's the value of "x" ? Your implementation will give you one number, a different implementation may give a different number; the standard says both the implementations are right because the code is outside the standard even though the compilers accept it.

Once you have the documentation (standard) there may be better ways of coding a program that does what the standard says (but not necessarily exactly the same as the first implementation). For example in the perl case; how about a complier rather than an interpreter, would it run faster? With the standard in place you have a fixed target and (in theory) a test suite to check your implementation against the standard. Without the standard you only have the first implementation to compare against; with any significant program you will have differences ... but are they significant differences, there's no way to tell.

Unfortunately, the web standards are so weakly specified that they don't really supply this advantage. Browsers don't have to throw any errors, they don't have to have "validation modes" and there's no way for an older version to identify code that will work in a later version. So the result is that most web pages are "outside the standard" which means that the browsers can do what they want with them. Hopefully this is better with HTML5 though.

No monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a bad idea to put all your eggs on the same basket.

Re:No monopoly

[Sulphur]

I think it's a bad idea to put all your eggs on the same basket.

I think it's a bad idea to put all your egos on the same basket.

Re:No monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you honestly think there isn't a governing board which dictates what can and cannot be added, feature wise, into webkit? If you think so, wow, it must be nice to live in such a fantasy land.

Re:No monopoly

[marcosdumay]

Don't like that? Fork it.

One implementation is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Most programming languages have one de facto implementation, and that works out just fine.

Since WebKit isn't controlled by a single company, but is essentially an independent organization concerned only with fully implementing defined standards and developing cool new technology for the web, I think we would do well to have their engine as the foundation of any browser.

It'd make my life easier

[danhuby]

As a web application developer, this would certainly make my life much easier. I'd estimate that implementing work-arounds for IE can add 30 to 50% on to the initial HTML/CSS build, and IE specific issues add a fair amount of to ongoing support costs. This is for versions = IE8, I'm not sure if IE9 / 10 are better.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[gigaherz]

IE9 is mostly standards-compliant, and IE10 is better. The days of IE-specific hacks are in the past (or in people stuck with supporting XP clients). If you stick to the supported versions of the browsers (that means Firefox 10 long-term + the newest release Firefox, the latest chrome, IE9 and IE10), you only have very minor differences between browsers, at least when it comes to the standardized feature set. Now if you want to use experimental features, you have to start messing with prefixed identifiers and different implementations, but that would be completely your problem, then, not IE's fault.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[danhuby]

That sounds promising. Unfortunately, at the moment we must still support Windows XP and IE8, but it is good to know that the situation will improve.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[freezin fat guy]

This is for versions = IE8, I'm not sure if IE9 / 10 are better.

They are better than 8 although 9 is outdated and continues to hinder the adoption of HTML5.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

And developing to webkit instead of standards helps you with the XP/IE8 problem how exactly?

Re:It'd make my life easier

[luke923]

Not really since most places still target IE7 due to a still relatively large XP userbase. IE continues to improve; however, unless you're on Win8, you won't see IE10 and you'd still be stuck with the broken box model in IE9.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[BZ]

Firefox 10 ESR is out of support 6 weeks from now, for what it's worth, with ESR 17 taking over.

Very true what you say about IE, though. It's trying to handle IE8 and lower that people run into problems with.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'd estimate that implementing work-arounds for IE can add 30 to 50% on to the initial HTML/CSS build,

WTF? To be blunt perhaps the problem is not with IE if it's taking you that long every time. In my experience there's a list of maybe 5 things you need to do for any site to get it working in IE7/IE8 (and for IE9/10 the effort is no more than making sure it works on any other modern browser), and they're always the same.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[cbhacking]

IE10 is available for Win7. It's technically a "preview" release, but I use both Win7 and Win8, and IE10 behaves the same on both. It's the most release-candidate-level software I've ever seen go for more than a week without actually being released (it became available over a month ago).

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Billly Gates]

IE 10 is very close to being released. In a few months when MS puts it in WIndows Update you will see IE 9 die out fast.

Remember Webkit has hacks in it for CSS 3 and the W3C are still working out implementations on all but the most basic feature set that IE 9 has. IT is still new technology and by next end of the year HTML 5.1 and CSS 3.1 will cement it.

At this point that and jquery no longer supporting IE 8, you will see it die. By 2014, it will be the next IE 6 hopefully. Once IE 8 gets near 5% usage we can start to see next generation sites on non-mobile platforms.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Every *good* web developer knows how to whip IE into submission at this point. (It's not fun, but doable.) If this guy hasn't figured it out in the last 10 years and it still takes him 50% longer, he's a complete bozo.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Seeteufel]

But IE is not open source. That is a security issue.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Ever try using CSS with it?
No. IE9 is a steaming pile of shit.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

would you say the same thing if you had to support safari v3 or chrome v5, firefox v2, opera v4?
you complain about needing to support older version and blame the older versions for not working
most features web-devs are creaming themselves over still aren't standard
and even then, features don't even render right across browser for those that are keeping up

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Anonymous Coward]

what has hindered the adoption of html5 is that ultimately, no one wanted it.

users certainly didn't and even its most clueless and delusional advocates in the dev community have been forced to accept that last year was a very bad year for html5 - those poor souls that jumped onto the creaky bandwagon have had to watch in horror as it failed to get moving, yet again.

laughable indeed, but certainly not if you invested any serious time or money.

Re:It'd make my life easier

[Bill Dog]

jQuery has said they will continue to support IE8 as long as it's a significant factor on the web. I.e. jQuery is not dropping support of it and ushering in its death, IE8's eventual dying will usher in jQuery's dropping support of it. And IE8's dying will only *begin* in a year and three months from now.

I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using IE 10 for a while now under Windows 8, and I have to say that I find it a lot more responsive than Chrome, and they're both a lot faster than Firefox. Firefox is dog slow! The only browser that might be faster is Opera, but nobody really uses it.

I'm probably going to be labeled a "Microsoft shill" now for not being totally against modern IE. But before you toss around accusations like those, I wish that you'd at least give it a try for yourself. Allow yourself to see how fast and usable it has become.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Runaway1956]

Perhaps you misunderstood everything you read on the subject.

No one seems to be suggesting that Microsoft adopt Chrome, or Chromium. Both of those browsers belong to Microsoft's competition. What does NOT belong to the competition, is the ENGINE that underlies Chrome, Chromium, Safari, Arora, Bolt,

Oh here, just read the list for yourself, it's pretty long:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#WebKit-based

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[BZ]

Actually, in a very real sense the engine _does_ belong to the competition. To actually get your code landed in WebKit you have to convince the current project maintainers (mostly Google and Apple) to accept it.

Which means that if you want to do something that Google and Apple don't (both, often!) approve of, you have to maintain it as a separate branch and deal with the merge pain. No different from other projects where you have to collaborate with others, but a lot different from having control over the code as Microsoft does with Trident right now.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[jones_supa]

The only browser that might be faster is Opera, but nobody really uses it.

I wonder if Opera is going to experience a slow death. The browser feels like the ages-old Opera engine with some new HTML features hacked in every now and then. It carries the weird old bag of settings, like detailed font configuration (but because of CSS they have almost no effect!) and the "redraw page after x seconds" (an awkward which does not even seem to have any effect). No multithreaded tabs, poor extensions. Sigh. Well, it is quite fast actually.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't want multithreaded because it's not going to make the browser any faster only introduce complexity.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Seeteufel]

Why don't they open source the engine?

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[semi-extrinsic]

If MS switched to Webkit, I'm betting they would get some people in the team of maintainers. Competing vendors have never been a problem for the Linux kernel, where several of the large companies employ subsystem maintainers. Of course you have the unafilliated git on the top who calls you an idiot in public if you fuck up, which I suspect is part of the reason.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[BZ]

You mean Trident?

There's a nonzero chance that they don't own all the rights to all the pieces of it, if they licensed them from somewhere.

But past that, who knows. They might just not be ready for that sort of thing at all on an organizational level yet.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[BZ]

> I'm betting they would get some people in the team of
> maintainers.

Possibly. It's hard to say with these sorts of things. The question I'd be asking as a Microsoft executive is how risky a play this would be...

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Anonymous Coward]

M$ understands that FOSS is a mortal enemy to their "let's lock up the entire world into our products" strategy. That is why they are against FOSS of all shades. Their FOSS propaganda (and placebo measures) doesn't invalidate that statement.

M$ hates competition; they want to monopolize every market they go into. It's in their DNA.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Kalriath]

Last I saw, Internet Explorer is or was based on NCSA Mosaic, which means it probably contains code they either do not own or are not licensed to distribute in source form.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[Kalriath]

Oh yay, twitter's back.

Re:I find Trident faster than WebKit.

[hkmwbz]

Your feelings are irrational and factually wrong. Opera is actually ahead of other browsers when it comes to implementing some standards. The problem is that Opera doesn't get to influence web designers much, so they also have to implement whatever Chrome does.

Poor extensions? They are actually more powerful than Chrome extensions in some ways.

Diversity is good

[Anonymous Coward]

More different browser engines is a good thing. Monoculture has bad consequences.

Re:Diversity is good

[BonzaiThePenguin]

More different browser engines is a good thing.

How so?

Monoculture has bad consequences.

Such as?

Seriously, do people tell themselves that Chrome and Safari aren't competing with each other or something? Are we just supposed to ignore the fact that innovation and competition have been fierce and that web development has never been easier, out of irrational fears of "monocultures"?

Well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and a need for healthy competition to avoid having mobile developers begin to target WebKit rather than standards.

Sure, targeting the multiple flavors of IE as well as WebKit and "standards" is better? How about we straighten all this shit out so web developers can concentrate on the important stuff, like more dancing babies and flying toasters.

If more is better than why do we even want standards?

Re:Well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

All browser rendering engines should be standards compliant and compatible. That doesn't mean they should all use the same code.
Developers should not be coding to the browser, but to the standard.

Re:Well ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But coding to the standard means no browsers will render it properly unless it's so simple that it's uninteresting.

Microsoft != a healthy competition

[G3ckoG33k]

Microsoft most likely won't provide "healthy competition". History has shown that they are on the same low level as Apple when it comes to competetion.

Don't fool yourselves.

Re:Microsoft != a healthy competition

[cnettel]

Yes, they are on the same level, but the point in healthy competition is that you do not rely on the benevolent actions of the parties involved. A Microsoft and an Apple, with the same inherent company values and attitudes, are far better for the marketplace than just having either of them.

No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Xiph1980]

Why should Microsoft move to WebKit? I mean, yeah, it's a more secure browser engine perhaps, but it's still their prerogative to use their own. I think it'll be more important for Microsoft -- and any browser (engine) for that matter -- to follow the W3C standard accurately, possibly with their own extensions if they want, but in the basis they should support the standard to make sure web sites render uniformly and accurately over all browsers.
That'll finally bring more choice to the user, in stead of the pseudo-choice now.
I prefer opera and have that installed as my default browser, but still have IE and Chrome installed because some websites will only work on either of those. Between the three I can open all sites that I need, but it shouldn't be necessary if all just follow the standards, and consequently, all web sites only need to be written to that standard as well.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Runaway1956]

Webkit browsers passed all the acid tests long before Trident ever got close to passing. Trident was the lowest scoring engine, and as far as I know, it is still the lowest scoring.

Maybe Microsoft has simply given up on ever getting Trident to pass? Maybe they know that Trident can never attain all the standards implemented today, or standards that will be implemented in years to come? Face it man, MS has been working hard in recent years just to get into the same league as all the other modern browsers.

Webkit blows Trident away. Why WOULDN'T Microsoft take advantage of a more modern engine? It will save them tons of money!

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[fermion]

If we take Webkit to be the *nix engine, gecko the cross platform, and Trident the MS WIndows engine, then MS moving to webkit would make no sense for anyone. MS has no reason to make IE cross platform, which it abandoned over a decade ago as it became clear that the internet was not going to become an MS property.

So given that MS does what MS does, what would happen would be a fork with Webkit for MS Windows. In a way this would not be dissimilar with what happend when Apple came in, but one would assume that MS would have no incentive to resolve the problem.

The advantage with IE with respect to MS is that MS completely controls IE. MS has the resources to develop IE. MS Can make IE do whatever it wants. Right now it is MS interest to be standards based. There is no reason to believe that this interest will continue forever. If MS relinquishes control of IE in favor of an OSS browser, and convinces everyone to use it, then it loses the control it has over customers. And it still has control over customers. There are still plenty of developments that require IE>

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard would it have been to check before you wrote that? IE 9 and 10 both pass Acid 3 with 100/100.
IE 9 came out almost 2 years ago.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[__aaqvdr516]

I just ran Acid3 on IE10 and Palemoon 15.3.2-x64. Both achieved 100/100. That said, I only use IE10 when some site doesn't work properly in Palemoon.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[MightyYar]

Pretty hard, if he's not posting from a Windows machine of some flavor.

I'd hate to see Trident go, just because diversity and competition is nice. If they abandon it, I hope they open source it.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Jesus_666]

Right now would be a horrible time to switch to WebKit (besides it being pointless anyway). With IE10 they finally got Trident into a respactable shape and switching to WebKit wouldn't do anything to alleviate the main issue Internet Explorer has - Microsoft's utter disregard for backwards compatibility. IE versions are usually only compatible with the current and previous Windows release, leaving people with older versions of Windows with no upgrade path other than to replace the entire operating system. Thus web designers need to support ancient IE versions because they simply won't drop below the "we can afford to ignore this" margin for years after they've become obsolete.

IE/WebKit would be just as much of a standards-retarding nightmare as IE/Trident is, not because of the engine but because of Microsoft's policy on backports.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty hard, if he's not posting from a Windows machine of some flavor.

Extremely hard, agree. He would have to type IE9 (or 10) ACID compliance into some sort of Internet information retrieval device. If we only had one of those

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[Waccoon]

Why should Microsoft move to WebKit?

Variety. Competition. Vertical control. Consistent coding standards. Different ideas. Different priorities.

The BS surrounding IE is politics, not technology. If MS switches to WebKit and the company feels like being evil, they'll find a way to make their branch of WebKit evil. The engine is not the problem. I'd prefer not to have any one entity take over everything, so I don't want Trident to die any more than Gekko or Presto.

I find it very disturbing how many WebKit browsers there are on mobile devices, and how far behind Gekko mobile browsers are. Remember that Google controls both the OS and the browser on the vast majority of mobile devices.

Re:No, they simply should adhere to the standards.

[MightyYar]

Did you do this yourself? A collection of 2 and 3 year old links come up, with various descriptions of how IE does on ACID. You could do the usual Slashdot thing and cherry pick the link that supports your view, or you could check it yourself.

No, and I love Webkit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trident is getting better with each major release, which is a good thing.

And Microsoft still has some input towards standards as well, such as the WebRTC spec if I remember correct, or something similar that also had some features missing from it.

Yeah, you could argue that things would be simpler if there was just ONE thing, the one thing that correctly interprets the specs, but it is also those incorrect spec implementations that have driven competition, driven the creation of new ideas to replace old ones and inspired so many developers to create methods to deal with them in their own ways.
Not only that, without all this mess, there would be no experimentation with future specs, and all these separate browsers lead to browser prefixes being implemented, even by Microsoft recently.

The main problem with web dev is most devs are terrible. Admittedly that is mainly a problem with such inconsistency in JavaScript, and HTML allowing spaghetti syntax all over the place.
And lets not get started on scope. Holy crap, so many people are clueless about it. And again, that it is true globally in any form of programming. Abuse of global namespaces being the biggest headache in all programming, such things that make you want to headbutt your monitor with your fist, a physical impossibility! But damn it I will find a way and collapse the universe just so THEY don't exist!

The next huge change in JS is going to bring a lot of new features, but also a bunch of changes to the way JS is executed.
It is going to be a shaky decade when that comes about. But it will be for the better. I hope...

Re:No, and I love Webkit.

[luke923]

The main problem with web dev is most devs are terrible. Admittedly that is mainly a problem with such inconsistency in JavaScript, and HTML allowing spaghetti syntax all over the place.

I wouldn't say they're terrible, but most front-end developers seem to come from a background with classical inheritance, which isn't what Javascript is about. Javascript is about the prototype and method delegation, which can be very elegant when done right; however, most front-end developers don't have enough of an understanding of the language in order to do it right.

And lets not get started on scope. Holy crap, so many people are clueless about it.

Again, it's because these people come from a classical background, which forces them to implement crazy hacks in order to work around their lack of understanding of prototypal languages like Javascript. When you combine that with having to deal with IE quirks, you get MacGyvered code -- you know, code held together with bubble gum and paper clips -- that pollutes the global namespace at every turn.

never gonna happen

[Anonymous Coward]

microsoft absolutely hates to admit defeat, especially publicly.

i can imagine the internal turmoil over whether to give the next gen xbox console a bluray drive (and with it, royalties to the enemy).

trident will soldier on, for better or worse until the end of days.

Healthy competition

[TheP4st]

IE = healthy competition? I can only presume that the author is a MS shill, alternatively is too young to remember all the anti-competitive moves made by Microsoft during most of Internet Explorers history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case

Re:Healthy competition

[Billly Gates]

That was over 10 years ago.

Lets go to today? Right now webkit is causing problems being this decades IE 6 in terms of mobile browsing and HTML 5 and css 3.

If you own a Windows Phone (I know you do not, but bare with me ..) and go to disney.com or cnn.com will it render correctly? Nope. THey use ---webkit prefixes. HTML5Test.com is part of the problem too as Google is in a pissing match on being the best browser, but what that site doesn't tell you is that these are not implemented the same as W3C drafting process.

In an open web you should be able to use the OS and browser you choose. What if you want to use a FirefoxOS phone? Will these sites still feed ---webkit specific code? THe answer is yes and you will have to click desktop version on it.

Don't you see a problem with that?

Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support. MS had to change as it is not the monster it once was. Google is just as evil and we all know Apple is after watching Samsung leave the US market due to crazy patent lawsuits.

Webkit is too prevalient in my opinion. We need more engines so webmasters wont do anything stupid and vendors do not get greedy and do anything stupid as well. Webkit is bringing flashbacks from IE 5. Remember at one time it was the best browser too and was just starting to convert Netscape users at the time. Chrome is the way point today.

Re:Healthy competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of posting links (which don't contain anything I find incriminating or evil), can you just tell me what anti-competitive things MS did?

Why shouldn't OSes come with a browser, which is universally agreed upon as being a basic app? Should OSes also not come with text editors like Notepad? What about Remote Desktop - should that be ripped out of Windows too because it's unfair to VPN? What about the Windows Command Prompt? It clearly is ruining the market for Cygwin and other commandline programs.

If bundling is anti-competitive, how is there so much browser competition NOW even though Windows still comes with IE (outside of Europe)? Could it be that instead of innovating a better browser than IE, people litigated? It wasn't until Firefox in 2004 that IE got real competition - and as soon as it got real competition, IE started losing market share.

Also, calling people shills just because they consider IE to be healthy competition just shows how truly biased and closed-minded you are.

Re:Healthy competition

[theArtificial]

THey use ---webkit prefixes.

How is this a fault of webkit browsers? This sounds like development teams targeting the least common denominator/platforms their clients use. This speaks more about the budget the web team gets than their lack of ability. Perhaps Microsoft should get off their ass and release a real multiplatform browser if they're so interested in remaining relevant. The main reason for webkit kicking so much ass is it supports many whizzbang features and is extremely popular on both mobile AND desktop platforms. Android suffers from horrible fragmentation, and Windows phone is a minority and thus gets minority treatment. If budgets were infinite (something you bring up constantly whenever we discuss web) perhaps support for marginal devices would improve. An anecdotal example, the company I work at has a mobile software division and their targeted platforms are iOS and Android. On average 7% of our clients applications are downloaded by Android users. In the states, most mobile phone stuff IS iOS, and is the focus. It's not just us though, if you'll notice companies typically release iOS apps first, why would that be? It has everything to do with targeting your audience, something Microsoft could learn to do better.

Don't you see a problem with that?

This has everything to do with budget, and less to do with ability.

Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support.

A great browser which runs on only the newest plaform atm, it hasn't been released for Windows 7 yet. The jury is still out on adoption rates and realistically won't become a least common denominator until Vista support is dropped and IE9 fades, which by the numbers you provided last time was ~2020. How many websites do you think will still be running in their current incarnation by that time?

Webkit is too prevalient in my opinion.

Why is it so prevalent? It's multiplatform, supports many standards, fast, and has features users want. It may be found on mobile devices and all major "deskop" OS. It's popular because it supports the latest and greatest. Back when MS couldn't get their JS engine performance worth a squat, webkit browsers were taking the lead, in addition to not having the latest and greatest standards support IE was a clunky experience. Microsoft dug themselves into a hole, and a great thing about choice is people choosing what's best for them, and they're voting with their feet.

We need more engines so webmasters wont do anything stupid and vendors do not get greedy and do anything stupid as well. Webkit is bringing flashbacks from IE 5. Remember at one time it was the best browser too and was just starting to convert Netscape users at the time. Chrome is the way point today.

Says the guy who is championing IE which has terrrible (to non existent) multiplatform support. Greed is part of human nature and you won't change that. If there are big enough incentives to support platforms, efforts will be made. Microsoft mobile market share is marginal at best, and that they're being treated as a minority shouldn't come as a surprise. Case in point: Opera support.

Re:Healthy competition

[Billly Gates]

Wouldn't it be just easier to use no prefixes and have it magically work on all browsers?

THe point of the story was how great it would be if Webkit owned a HUGE part of the market and how MS will benefit and how webmasters would be happy. I shudder at such situation regardless of how good webkit is right now and how large a marketshare it already has. I happen to view it as another dark age as webkit would be too large if IE fell. It might even start harming firefox users all over gain.

In mobile land right now we have the IE 6 right now. I want to use Firefox mobile when my plan expires in a few months and I wish these content management systems would support standards.

So my point is to learn from your mistakes. Not repeat them and the more engines and adherence to a uniform way of functioning the better. Perhaps the reason people use webkit is because it is what comes with their tablets and phones and works everyone? Not because they love it.

Re:Healthy competition

[theArtificial]

Wouldn't it be just easier to use no prefixes and have it magically work on all browsers?

If they're competent developers worth their salt, they'll list the nonstandard prefixes first, followed by the standard supported so things degrade gracefully. Its not like management likes to spend more money than they have to on things, even if it means brittle software. Done in by their own greed? Web development is further from traditional software development than closer and the quality variations attest to the low barriers to entry.

THe point of the story was how great it would be if Webkit owned a HUGE part of the market and how MS will benefit and how webmasters would be happy

How great is it is where we are presently at. It's not about developers being happy, it's about users. Without users buying these products/using software with rich features (because there is a market for them) there wouldn't be services offered for them. Why do users use it (Safari, Chrome)? Because it does what they want (in most cases) better than the competition. Competition is great for the end user because better products are created. Competition is what stopped the cluster fuck from the last decade which Microsoft is still playing catch-up on. Until they've got one of the top 3 positions with their latest browser wouldn't you agree that they're still playing catch up?

Perhaps the reason people use webkit is because it is what comes with their tablets and phones and works everyone? Not because they love it.

I made no claims about love, simply choice. Mobile phones are not bastions of choice, they're the exact opposite of general purpose computers, apples to oranges. Microsoft is late to the party and as such must make extra effort to woo people from entrenched players. Additionally there aren't any 3rd party browser choices on Microsofts platform either. Perhaps if they had moved faster they would've be like BSD to Linux. Your comment ignores the larger desktop market which presently still offers more flexibility software wise. For the sake of argument let's look at Statcounter metrics. Mobile platform market share in the US is split between iPhone and Android. Mobile browser market share lists Safari, Android Browser, and Opera Mini as the top 3 showing how much of an outlier these alternative browsers really are and should illuminate developers and clients support priorities. Most of the companies I've been at, ~10% or less of the market and management decrees we don't make a concerted effort, it's great if it does, but it's not a priority. We're not alone in this either.

So my point is to learn from your mistakes. Not repeat them and the more engines and adherence to a uniform way of functioning the better.

Even better, learn from the mistakes of others. The mistakes you're referring to should be attributed to the web developers, not the vendors, as the browsers support standards. Much like the situation where shoddily programmed applications require administrator rights to function and Microsoft incorrectly getting the ire of users when the developers are at fault for failing to follow proper coding conventions. Tools (markup) when wielded properly with experience and skill enable great things.

Re:Healthy competition

[LocalH]

Recently, IE 10 is a great browser with good HTML 5 and CSS 3 and standards support.

A great browser which runs on only the newest plaform atm, it hasn't been released for Windows 7 yet. The jury is still out on adoption rates and realistically won't become a least common denominator until Vista support is dropped and IE9 fades, which by the numbers you provided last time was ~2020. How many websites do you think will still be running in their current incarnation by that time?

"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; Trident/6.0)" - IE10 running on Windows 7

Re:Healthy competition

[theArtificial]

Software which isn't out of release candidate status doesn't count, IE10 for Windows 7 is a Release Preview. Until there is a release date it doesn't count since its still under active development.

Re:Healthy competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Mr M$ shill. M$ did nothing to kill Netscape's business. They just shelled out a billion dollars and gave the product away for free, because Netscape could theoretically undermine the Windows platform. M$ was scared of Netscape providing the Java (not JS !) runtime with Navigator.

Now M$ have a much more capable and powerful competitor in Google, who finance both Chrome and FF (and their fast JS JIT compilers) to rip the guts out of Windows fat clients. I run Google Docs and from a pure tech point of view, it is excellent.

My sister works with a big Swiss corporation and they plan to move their whole email and office stuff into Google Docs. All hugh-value knowledge work, btw. Masses of PHDs and so on.

Re:Healthy competition

[LocalH]

I was merely rebutting your statement that it "runs on only the newest plaform atm" and "hasn't been released for Windows 7 yet". It may be a release candidate/preview, but being released after the release of Windows 8 RTM, the Release Preview for Win7 was actually a very slightly newer revision (Win8 shipped with 10.0.9200.16384, the IE10 RP in question shipped as 10.0.9200.16438, and with the "Install updates automatically" checkbox that is visible in the screenshot on Wikipedia, even though I never really use it except for when I'm doing HTML+CSS, the version on my box is build 16439). Seems to me that while it's still "release candidate", that just means that it's pretty much in final form except for minor bug fixes (which in this case makes the difference between shipping and release preview/candidate moot, as I'm likely running the majority of the same code when running IE10 that someone on Win8 is running when they run the desktop version).

Re:Healthy competition

[theArtificial]

the Release Preview for Win7 was actually a very slightly newer

Software released at a later date is newer than previous releases, I'm shocked =). In all seriousness the quicker IE8 (even IE9) and below fade away the better. HTML5 and CSS3 are wonderful when used properly and its a shame the past incarnations offer such poor support for wiz-bang features. Until then, yet another IE to support. The next 6 months should be enlightening with CSS nuances at least.

that just means that it's pretty much in final form

Traditionally Internet Explorer has supported "pretty much" the same things as everything else, yet those subtle differences added up significantly (Ex: DirectX filters). This browser will make more of a difference, once more people are using it, hopefully.

Re:Healthy competition

[hkmwbz]

How is this a fault of webkit browsers?

Because they shipped the prefixes in production versions, and didn't even remove them again later.

Re:Healthy competition

[theArtificial]

Because they shipped the prefixes in production versions, and didn't even remove them again later.

It has nothing to do with production versions because the standard itself is incomplete, but that isn't the crux, also it's disingenuous to imply that this only occurs with webkit. Proprietary exensions ARE the way to do non standard things (as long as you do support the standard) which is the case. The wrong way would be Microsoft's way, which still haunts us over a decade later, and uses proprietary by default in their older but still prevalent browsers. You'd be more on point if the markup, which uses mostly the proprietary extensions, was written by the browser's developers.

TLDR Poorly executed markup is the sole responsibility of the author (website developers) and may have many valid reasons for being executed in this fashion (budget, skill, time etc.)

A need for healthy competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, Microsoft has a looong history of promoting that. I say if they're down keep kicking them. They've earned it.

abbreviation

[Anonymous Coward]

Sooo... ''Microsoft MVP'' is M$ vs people i guess.

Not possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Trident (or MSHTML) is built on COM+ like everything else in Windows. Bundled with it comes numerous COM interfaces, maybe 100+ in total. Interfaces that are used by the OS all over the place and also by a lot of 3rd party software. To integrate WebKit into Windows would require making it compatible with all those COM interfaces and that is simply not worth the amount of work required.

Here they are, laid out for all to see...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh801967(v=vs.85).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj206442(v=vs.85).aspx

Konqueror indeed!

[Dr. Spork]

I wonder if the people who were writing KDE back in the 90's ever suspected that their code would make it so far! If they heard 15 years ago that some Microsoft MVP would be talking about replacing the rendering engine of IE with the rendering engine from Konqueror, they would have shit themselves.

Re:Konqueror indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm largely disinterested in tech politics (rah rah apathy!), but WebKit is a wonderful success story proving that private companies can help the open source community challenge even the most entrenched closed source software.

Imagine if OpenOffice/LibreOffice had been the beneficiary of the same amount of help from Apple, Google, et al.

Sigh, one can dream...

Re:Konqueror indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Libreoffice is progressing very nicely, and Google and Apple and others are free to throw money on it to kill the Cash cows of their competition.

Re:Konqueror indeed!

[jbolden]

Open Office exists because of Sun. They are the ones that opened up the Star Office code base. They also funded OO for years taking it from a very so / so product to something that really is clearly a serious office suite in terms of features roughly on par with Microsoft Office (sans enterprise extensions).

Re:Konqueror indeed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely most of the work on webkit has been done by Apple. Yes, webkit was based on khtml and it was something of an achievement to produce something that Apple wanted to use, but Apple must have made significantly more total contribution to Webkit than the KDE devs have by now. This suggestion would never have come about if Webkit hadn't been adopted by Apple and Google and made what it is today by them.

Should Microsoft Switch To WebKit?

[Lisias]

No.

I think that Microsoft should adopt the IEC 60312-1 Standard.

It's the best and fastest way to deliver products that doesn't suck! :-)

Ditch HTML5 for stronger web and user protection

[Marcion]

In the U-turn post, TFA says: "...Microsoft adopting WebKit [means] there wouldn’t be a strong opposing implementation of HTML5 to keep WebKit honest"

Well who keeps Microsoft honest? It is better for users that they use software that can be independently peer reviewed by the public. The line between a piece of proprietary software and a computer virus is merely an arbitrary choice of what negative side effects you can personally tolerate - both cannot be independently reviewed to see what they are doing. So getting rid of proprietary software for open source software is always a win.

There are plenty of other alternatives to webkit, Mozilla's gecko being the most competitive. Ditching HTML5 would also make writing Javascript a lot easier, since currently a lot of wrapper code is always required to cope with Internet Explorer's non-standard behaviour.

No

[buddyglass]

The summary insinuates switching to WebKit would somehow help Microsoft increase its share on mobile and tablets. How? Consider the three main categories of device: Microsoft, Apple and "not Microsoft or Apple":

Microsoft devices: How many folks are going to buy a mobile or tablet device running some flavor of Windows then install a third party browser rather than use the IE that's available by default? I'd say close to zero.

Apple devices: Is there even a version of IE available to install on iOS phones and tablets? If so, what Apple device user is going to install and use it instead of the default Safari that's already available? More over, for the switch to WebKit to "matter" there would need to be folks who would not download and use a Trident-based IE who would download and use a WebKit-based IE. Does such a person exist?

"Other" devices: Basically Android. Same questions as above. Same answers. I can't think of anyone who would download and use IE on Android unless there were some specific website they wished to use that was incompatible with the default Chrome browser but worked with IE.

+1 put it to a vote

[Anonymous Coward]

The challenge in the short term is keeping thier existing engine working so that users depending on MS behavior are not left in the cold. The other option for them is to release a 'new' browser and name it something else.

Went back on his suggestion

[denpun]

There is an update on MVP Bill Reiss's blog now.

http://www.billreiss.com/follow-up-to-webkit-for-ie-hint-i-was-wrong/

Seems like he changed his mind. He is now against the idea and has instead suggested allow Win mobile devices to be allowed to change their default browser.
Sounds like a good idea, effectively making IE, a tool used by the OS that has browsing functionality.

Effectively what he is saying is that the other browsers, can serve as browsers while IE is now reduced to a tool!

Re:Went back on his suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

I really wish, I could construct awesome sentences with awkward, pauses like yours Captain.

why stop with the engine

[Anonymous Coward]

how nice would it be if they built their OS based on one of the BSD/Linux flavors!

honestly

[ruir]

Who cares about Microsoft those days...?

Re:honestly

[Zontar The Mindless]

YOU should care.

It'd be a rotten shame if we couldn't get those nice optical mice any longer...

Re:honestly

[ruir]

lol...would you believe me I hate mice and use an EXTERNAL trackpad?...

Re:honestly

[Zontar The Mindless]

But wait! I hear they make pretty nice keyboards, too!

(FYI, first thing I do when I get a new laptop is to figure out how set the touchpad so it's disabled by default.)

Webkit equals crashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Safari on iPad is webkit based, can't say I'm too impressed. Crashes out frequently, despite my having done a reset/reload of iOS back to factory image. As do a number of other web browsers and apps (including the App Store app itself) which are all presumably built on top of the same underlying web foundation/tools. Suppose it could be that the iPad (1) is getting old enough to be suffering intermittent hardware issues, but demanding 3D games run fine/stable on it... Very frustrating for an otherwise superb tablet.

Re: Webkit equals crashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The original iPad only has 256MB of RAM. Not enough for all the fancy shit people cram in to the web these days, not on top of an OS that isn't optimised for low memory like that.

Diversity is good

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition between multiple equal players is a good force for standardisation.

But who asks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft? Then yes, that would save them.
Rest of the world? Then no, everybody wants to see microsoft dead.

Monocultures are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make it any easier for the bad guys to take over everyone's browsers in one throw.

Security?

[gmuslera]

So one of the reasons to keep Trident and avoid Webkit is security? They are right, windows is at risk of having security at last, that must be avoided. I think that since IE 1.0 that was the main attack vector, it must be kept alive, else won't be windows anymore.

Wrong approach

[brunes69]

Microsoft is a public corporation.

The default opinion should not be "why SHOULD we switch to webkit", it should be, "why SHOULD we continue to invest tens of millions of dollars per year into developing, testing, and maintaining an engine that does not serve a competitive purpose anymore".

Trident literally makes Microsoft NO money, and costs them a TON of money. They don't license it. It serves no marketing or branding purpose, because people using IE do not know or care what engine is running their web pages. And the original plan of embrace the web and extend it with trident-specific extensions failed, and doesn't look like it is going to succeed any time soon.

So, why continue throwing all this money into this sinkhole? That is what I don't understand. As a shareholder, that is the question I would be asking.

Re:Wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

"why SHOULD we continue to invest tens of millions of dollars per year into developing, testing, and maintaining an engine that does not serve a competitive purpose

So, why continue throwing all this money into this sinkhole? That is what I don't understand. As a shareholder, that is the question I would be asking.

Are we talking about IE or Android? And don't you find it just a little bit disingenuous to talk about IE wanting to "embrace the web and extend it" when this whole thread is about webkit and its extensions in the first place?

Re:Wrong approach

[afgam28]

Right....maybe they should switch from using NTOSKRNL.EXE to Linux too. After all, no one cares about the kernel; users and developers only care about the UI and APIs that sit above it. And maybe they could turn Visual C++ into a front-end to LLVM, and have .NET target the JVM. All of these changes would save Microsoft from the trouble of developing several large pieces of software.

From Microsoft's point of view, of course they should keep Trident development going. I'm surprised this is even being questioned. To do otherwise would be to give control of the web over to Apple and Google. The only reason that Apple and Google care about standards right now is because Microsoft is still a big player in the game. If it was up to Google, they'd be making their own proprietary versions of HTTP, JavaScript and ActiveX ;)

Then there's Apple - and even though I'm a Linux user, I'm happy that Microsoft is there to keep Apple in check!

Re:Wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

A "TON of money"? Have you met Microsoft?

Re:Wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

Right....maybe they should switch from using NTOSKRNL.EXE to Linux too.

Good point! Maybe they should.

Re:Wrong approach

[disambiguated]

[...] an engine that does not serve a competitive purpose anymore

Trident literally makes Microsoft NO money [...]

Both false.

Internet explorer does many things in the Windows/Office universe that no other browser does. Those things make Microsoft money by driving sales of Windows and Office and many other pieces of the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g. Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc.).

If all your desktops are Windows with Office and IE, you can develop intranet applications that use Office and can make direct calls to Win32. Yes this totally ties your application to Windows and Office, but many businesses are fine with that, even like it that way.

Active-X may be a security disaster on the internet, but in a locked down corporate intranet environment, you can easily do powerful things, like have a web page that embeds a live excel spreadsheet (the real excel, not a bloated, slow, feature-deprived javascript 'spreadsheet') displaying editable data from a database or web service. Click a link to open in excel, still editable, still connected to the server. You can do that kind of thing with very very little code, but only if you can assume you have Windows and Office on the client, and it only works in IE.

That is one of the competitive purposes of IE, and one of the ways they make money from it.

Re:Wrong approach

[brunes69]

I know this is flamebait but I'm responding anyway.

There are many, many differences between swapping the windows kernel and a browser engine. The two largest being...

- The cost of the development effort to swap out the OS kernel would be at least a hundred fold. Instead of a million, think more like a hundred million.
- It would break an enormous number of Windows applications relying on kernel apis. Changing from Trident to webkit is not going to real many web apps, they all have to already.

I still see no competitive advantage Microsoft gains by developing Trident that they would not by adopting and contributing to webkit. They would not lose any "control over the web" (whatever that means really), because they would be contributing to the engine that everyone uses to browse it, as opposed to today where they instead contribute to one only a minority uses.

Re:Wrong approach

[brunes69]

I am sorry but I think you are living a bit in the past. All of the technologies you are talking about have been deprecated by Microsoft for a long time and are not sold as solutions anymore. They have all been replaced with .Net based solutions. And guess what, .Net runs in Gecko and Webkit as it does in Trident.

Also, this is all a moot point anyway. Adding ActiveX support to webkit would be a TRIVIAL excersize, compared to developing and supporting an entire browser engine (Trident). So it still makes no sense.

Re:Wrong approach

[disambiguated]

They look on the surface like .Net based solutions, but the .net components are thin wrappers around COM. If anything, Microsoft is moving back toward native and away from .net (although they seem admittedly schizophrenic about it.) But that doesn't matter, because one thing we can be sure of is that backward compatibility with COM is not going away. Actually .NET is just the new COM anyway (In fact it started out being called COM 3.0... then they dropped the name).

As for adding ActiveX support to Webkit, well, your idea of trivial is different from mine. But lets say they did it. As someone pointed out elsewhere in this thread, there are hundreds of interfaces involved. Implementing them in a way that was backward compatible with existing COM would just tie their fork of Webkit to Windows, for what exactly?

Re:Wrong approach

[devent]

First of all you are comparing a System Kernel with a Web-Engine.
I'm a user of Linux myself, and it would be great if Microsoft would port all their Windows APIs to the Linux Kernel.
But you forget that with a new Kernel you need new drivers. So it wouldn't make sense for Microsoft to ditch all the Nvidia, AMD/ATI, Wireless, etc. drivers.

But a Web-Engine is something completely different. Nobody would really care at all if tomorrow IE would use Webkit.

Also, how would Microsoft loss any control if they would switch to Webkit? Last I checked it's under LGPL/BSD license. That means, Microsoft can do whatever it wants with Webkit.

Re:Wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Keeping Microsoft in check, you say? Seems that all Microsoft is doing lately is trying to be exactly _like_ Apple. Restricting what can run on their hardware and what can't, that's the exact reason why I stopped buying the iPod several years ago despite it being my favourite media player -- if they're going to intentionally break compatibility with everything but iTunes on every release, why buy the piece of shit in the first place? And now Microsoft is doing the exact same thing -- the problem there is that Microsoft isn't a symbol. It isn't a big, shiny illuminated logo on a Macbook telling everyone, "I'm cool, I have money to waste." Microsoft are so thoroughly uncool that they're almost destined for failure every time they vary from what people have gotten used to hating the past 5-10 years. They're so uncool that they can't even manage selling a TABLET to people who are desperate for the fucking things.

Microsoft isn't keeping Apple in check. Microsoft is in serious trouble, and they're following in Apple's footsteps in a blind, flailing attempt at trying to get out of said trouble. How can I tell they're in trouble, besides all the negative reviews of their current products? Their defense contract with the U.S. military. A few measly hundred million? For _Microsoft_? The US government is spending literally trillions on their "war that doesn't end" and the most Microsoft can manage to squeeze out of its "networking" contacts in congress is a few hundred million? The government _loves_ wasting money and even they aren't willing to break the bank for Windows 8.

Re:Wrong approach

[spongman]

You realize, of course, that IE isn't the only application that uses trident? There are a zillion and one apps that embed the WebBrowser ActiveX control and still more that use mshtml.dll directly. None of which would be supported by WebKit. So they still need to ship and support trident regardless - it's part of the OS, like the kernel.

Re:Wrong approach

[Anonymous Coward]

On the list of things that stops companies switching to competitors, or even looking into alternatives to Windows, IE-centric applications ranks right after MS Office, AD (which should be a non-issue). IE is part of the walled garden experience and therefor does generate profit.

Also, I don't know if it's still the case, but in IE 5 to IE 6 times it seemed to share lots of code with the Windows Explorer, so it wasn't necessarilly the sinkhole it appeared to be.

For MS IE is more than just a webbrowser - adapting a different Render Engine and retrofitting all the additional crap might be a lot more expensive than keeping their own browser up to date

Re:Wrong approach

[Kalriath]

Internet explorer does many things in the Windows/Office universe that no other browser does. Those things make Microsoft money by driving sales of Windows and Office and many other pieces of the Microsoft ecosystem (e.g. Sharepoint, SQL Server, etc.).

Um, no, actually. SharePoint 2010 and higher not only works the same on IE7 as on Firefox, Chrome, or Safari, it's actively hostile to IE6. SQL Server doesn't even use a browser anyway (except Reporting Services, and that works fine in Firefox at least).

If all your desktops are Windows with Office and IE, you can develop intranet applications that use Office and can make direct calls to Win32. Yes this totally ties your application to Windows and Office, but many businesses are fine with that, even like it that way.

So what? With NPAPI, you can do the same thing in Firefox.

Microsoft should just FOSS Trident.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, it's just losing money and with HTML5 it's EXTREMELY unlikely anyone will be developing any browser specific code in the foreseeable future.
So, if it was me, I would just open source Trident and it's older versions. At the very least the Maxthon guys (and just about any Chinese browser) will work on it. Half a year later both WebKit and Gecko should become mostly\fully compatible without Microsoft lifting a finger or spending a dime.
Then, they can move to whatever engine they want if they still want to.

Hell, if they still want\need some branding or special tweaking done, they can even fork WebKit or Gecko*.

* See: Debian IceWeasel...

M$ should not be allowed to switch to Webkit

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't remember, the strategy at M$ has always been to embrace, extend, and finally extinguish. M$ used that tactic to extinguish Netscape, Wordperfect, and many others. M$ is using that tactic in their feeble attempt to extinguish free software and M$ would continue to use that tactic to extinguish Webkit if they have their chance. Do not ever trust convicted monopolists such as M$.

--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.

Re:Ditch HTML5 for stronger web and user protectio

[Billly Gates]

Webkit is making MS honest.

Have you tried IE 10? I know the thought probably sends shiver down your spine but I have to say MS really is caring and shaking in their boots. It is a great browser. I fear webkit becoming too dominate at this point and Windows Phone users are whinning they can't view mobile sites as they cater to just webkit.

I can't advocate openstandards and bash IE 6, yet fully support webkit at the same time. I would be a hypocrite otherwise. What if you want to use FirefoxOS in your next phone? Will you be screwed over? Right now, yes.

IE has standard behavior now. Since IE 9 it passed all the acid tests. Just because you hate one browser doesn't mean you should support the entrenchment of another or support things like html5test that test non standard non implemented things. It encourages all the things that caused IE to be proprietary when implementations of things like the CSS box model came about locking corporate desktops up for decades.

Is anyone targetting Windows Phone anyway?

[Rix]

There are more people using Baidu. Who cares if it works on Windows Phone or not?

Re: Content management

[Billly Gates]

Content managers upload code today.

Most web-designers do not even know how to code today. Usually some intern comes in and cuts and paste word docs into the system and she clicks the upload button. If the content management software was from 2011 it will only include -webkit support.

Go upgrade? HA, didn't we just blow $50,000 for this just over a year ago! I DONT THINK SO! etc.

Watch what happens when the W3C decided to make changes to the standard and older webkit engines do not render it properly? It will be IE 6 all over again where corps will downgrade new phones with out of date Android versions ... shudder. ... it gets better. Website makers will now have to put conditional comments for specific webkit versions as these corps will run outdated versions of android to run their enterprise apps. We do not want to loose those customers do we? Hmmm this sound very familiar like I heard this before?

The prefixes might cause more problems than they fix. I will wait for a few years and see what happens? I think all this will do is make new IE 6,s and IE 7s in specific webkit versions if this fucks up.

Re: Content management

[Firehed]

People ought to know that the prefixed attributes are in beta and may change. If they ship that to production anyway, they had better be ready to change it if the standard is updated before the prefix is dropped.

Fortunately none of the vendor-specific extensions are anything but minor enhancements, so they can't do any serious damage. It's not like W3C is going to redefine a pixel here.

Remove the browser altogether

[Anonymous Coward]

From a corporate point of view, Microsoft should get rid of the browser. Because every time someone uses a browser (IE or whatever else) Google probably ends up making some money.

DID BALMER FIND OUT?

[bussdriver]

He still has his job... oh wait, not that kind of CEO... Does he have any bruises from the furniture that hit him or is he good at dodging? How many times did he have to allow the stuff to hit him before his job was safe?

Yes Yes!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of all things decent, a thousand times yes, and Firefox should too.
Consolidate on the single webkit standard and a lot of cruft will be wiped out.

Additionally, W3C standards shouldn't take 10 flipping years to happen.

Re:Ditch HTML5 for stronger web and user protectio

[Anonymous Coward]

IE has standard behavior now. Since IE 9 it passed all the acid tests.

Almost. I just ran acid3 in the Windows 7+IE9 VM image Microsoft provides for web developers. It scored 100/100, but the shading of the 'acid3' text was missing. It came close but did not fully pass.

Don't worry, you won't

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason the web of 200x was stagnant was a direct consequence of IE being closed-source. It was stagnant because the only group that could move web technology forward was Microsoft, and Microsoft had no impetus to do that.

Breaking the deadlock meant writing a browser (and HTML engine) pretty much from scratch, which took the Mozilla organization (and, later, Apple) the better part of the decade.

With an open-source engine, anyone who has a good idea can move the web forward, just by contributing a patch. Or a fork, if it comes to that.

Re:Don't worry, you won't

[Anonymous Coward]

MS did try to move IE forward albeit at a glacial pace. It did not work as apps were tied to only version 6.

MS tried to make IE 7 a little more compliant which caused people to stick with IE 6 instead. I see this as a problem if W3C standardizes HTML 5.1 and css 3.1 differently a year from now. Many CMS only output with -webkit specific code that Chrome may not support if it is different than W3C.

It is a problem right now if you own a phone or tablet

Re:Don't worry, you won't

[martin-boundary]

No. All throughout 200x, there were plenty of open source browsers out there that anyone could modify. KDE's Konqueror had its own engine, and Netscape (remember them?) open sourced their browser too. And that's not counting all the other open source browsers, like Mosaic, Lynx, etc.

The web was stagnant because Microsoft's browser was dominant and didn't follow standards, so it _was_ the standard. A standard that every body else had to copy or they wouldn't render pages as intended. A standard which implemented all the stuff that Microsoft happened to care about, and (naturally) didn't implement stuff they didn't care about. And since Microsoft cared about Office and Windows, and not about web apps, the web didn't progress much.

Now we have browsers being pushed by Google and Apple. And they naturally care about some things, and don't care about others. And if we're stupid enough to define the standard as "whatever Google or Apple do", then we'll have the same bullshit stagnation that we used to have with Microsoft. Open code or closed code makes no difference.

Standards need to be thought through carefully by a wide group of engineers over many years, to make sure they make sense and meet future needs of everybody, not just Google's or Apple's customers.

Lets look at the facts (i.e. the source code)

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a lot of opinions in the replies "I'm impressed with this, i'm not impressed with that.." but I get the overall feeling many of these people haven't actually built Webkit on any platform. Building Webkit on windows is not for the faint of heart if you can take a daily snapshot and make it run even somewhat I give you props. For those who are interested it is built on VS 2005 express edition and Cygwin however it is possible to thrust it into VS2010 if you are feeling lucky. A bunch of work will have to go into this to make it natively run on WinRT. Probably wondering "Why is that?" well because it relies on objective-c all the way down to JSCore the javascript engine- in order to get your .NET hooks into the thing you must import the DLLs via interop and/or a managed wrapper because it is still using the C language. Custom interfaces can be made with the interface definition language to help with that and it kind of feels like shooting in the dark. If Microsoft wants to contribute enough to fix all that more power to them I think they should at the very least make their own version much like QT or Enlightenment it is certainly missing from the party so I am for this decision 110%. The portability of Webkit has nothing to do with just the open source libraries it uses but rather because of all the things written in C that's what makes it portable. Ok, now you know how it works but how does it compare to IE? IE is built in a way that it is very difficult to integrate it with other technologies without making "plugins" which means less new technologies which means less features- Webkit wins again. With the newest advances of WinRT, mainly the JS API, mixing the the two technologies would make for a very potent combination however they would have to deal with those pesky Apple copyrights all over the JS code- so just rewrite it and add WinRT hooks. Seems like the logical choice to make without exposing legacy M$ code to bring us newer features, develop them faster, and pay as little as possible. This concept is known as "Economies of Scale" which all software engineers should know very well. In summary, this is a very logical next step for Microsoft wish they thought of it sooner.

NO NO NO NO NO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We wouldn't have fun if their browser suddenly got compatible...

Standardize

[docmur]

I think Microsoft should! Either all browsers should support a standard or not. The Web should be based on standards and what we see time after time is that every browser has its own issues and it's own strange work arounds. This isn't just Microsoft, I think all browsers need to standardize, implement the same libraries and system and globally decide which aspects of HTML and CSS they support. So yes I think Microsoft should make the move.

Re: Content management

[BZ]

> People ought to know that the prefixed attributes
> are in beta and may change.

That would be true if WebKit didn't explicitly promise to never remove or change them. Which they do. So people assume they can use them with no fear.

> Fortunately none of the vendor-specific extensions
> are anything but minor enhancements,

That's just not true for transforms, where not supporting them makes a page done entirely using positioning via transforms totally unreadable.

Or for animations where an element is display:none or off-screen and then animated in: no CSS animations means you never see the element at all.

Seriously, I suggest using a non-WebKit mobile UA for a bit and seeing just how broken some sites are.

Who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

There shouldn't be anything such as an interface on a Browser. I don't want to see one pixel of chrome. Browsers should be speed and function exclusively.

Stick to operating systems, give up browser devel.

[Lime Green Bowler]

Microsoft is better at making operating systems (yes, Millennium, Vista, and 8 not totally fitting that argument) and should give up their browser dreams to focus on what they know best. Er, just not quite in a Metro way. We're still running a mix of IE6 / IE7 at work, and yes, I know that sounds retarded but can't move to IE9 because there are a few expenSive APlications that are not fully compatible. I'm on the IE9 Acceptance Team there and there are enough fugs and daily UFOs that I'm willing to drop back to IE7.

Re:Symbol on main page should be an Apple not Chro

[Anonymous Coward]

You and Apple can suck a big bag of dicks.

Everybody knows that Apple stole WebKit from KDE.

Just stick to web standards please...

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont care what engine...Just please for the love of God...stick to web standards.

The clue you requested:

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Okay, so it's okay if we have basically only one choice in browser as long as we have multiple choices in operating system to run it on."

No. You don't have even a basic understanding of the situation. It is OK, and in fact desireable if we have one "choice" for a standard. There are already numerous browsers based on webkit, and it is Library GPL (LGPL) licensed, ergo anyone can use it. What stops others from reusing IE code to make a competing browser? The proprietary license. what stops others from using the webkit library? Nothing, excepting greed, since it is LGPLed. I sincerely hope that helps you become informed, so that you will stop spreading absurd memes. HAND.

There are always issues

[Gavagai80]

Any browser with a different rendering engine has to be tested against. If IE used webkit (or anything else that runs on linux), a lot of web developers like myself would have no incentive to ever buy another Windows license. Which is why it's not in Microsoft's interest to use webkit.

Re:Ditch HTML5 for stronger web and user protectio

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean M$ now wears a sheep's clothes since 2011 ? Yeah, very furry and likeable if it weren't for these teeth and claws. But thanks for the sheepish propaganda. We have FF, Webkit and some more. Plenty of alternatives to $corporate-software.

Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the fish, but the FOSS world had LaTeX for a long, long time and AbiWord since 98.

Before you tell me that "these tools don't match business requirements", I would like to add that LaTeX actually scales to large books in the hands of a professional. Combined with CVS, SVN or git you can do excellent change tracking for LaTeX.
  AbiWord invented XML storage instead of intransparent binary files.

Did the FOSS community need OO ? Certainly not. Nice to have it, but we could very well live without.

Re:Well

[jbolden]

GP was asking what if OO had had corporate support.

First off OO is an integrated office suite not a word processor. So saying that we don't need an integrated office suite because there were open source word processors doesn't mean much.

As for LaTeX in particular. Fundamentally a typesetting engine is a not a word processor. That's like saying you don't need a car because you own a television. As for it scaling up to books no question, I've used it for much larger documents than that. If does fall apart badly when you start scaling to print streams in hundreds of thousands of pages which typesetting engines in business do handle but LaTeX doesn't handle well. LaTeX is free and feature rich and interesting but lets not oversell what it does.

Embrace it!

[Anonymous Coward]

They definitely should. There is plenty of room for embracing and extending. Breaking compatibility with existing WebKit browser is of course high on the list.
It wouldn't really be breaking it, since they'd call it "MS WebKit", which of course would have more features.