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WebKit As Broken As Older IE Versions?
An anonymous reader writes "It's not everyday that we get to hear about the potential downsides of using WebKit, but that's just what has happened as Dave Methvin, president of the jQuery foundation and a member of the core programming team that builds the widely used Web programming tool, lamented in a blog post yesterday. While most are happy to cheer for IE's demise, perhaps having three main browser engines is still a good thing. For those that work in the space, does the story ring true? Are we perhaps swearing at the wrong browser when implementing 'workarounds' for Firefox or IE?"
If you read TFA (haha!) make sure to scroll down to the comment of Pater Kasting (Chrome dev).
Frameworks to do simple things may be stupid, but it's just as stupid to write your own code every time too. It's hard to say which one is worse, but I'm going to say it's worse to never use a framework than to always use one unless your time has no value and you always write perfect code.
I code everything by hand, if it doesn't work in some browser, then that browser's implementation is broken.
You say this like that somehow is a solution.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
This isnt a 'WebKit' problem, this is a Mountain Lion + Safari problem. Safari started implementing a lot more things to leverage the GPU in rendering and it did not turn out very graceful.
It's inertia. IE6 was a terrible browser. IE7 and 8 were better, but not markedly so. IE9 was a total turnaround for Microsoft, and IE10 is keeping with that trend.
However, the damage is already done. On top of it being a Microsoft product and thus being automatically terrible, dangerous and likely to cause the death of a few Linux whackjobs, its bad reputation in the past has stuck to it like a skunk's stink. Is it deserved? Not anymore, no. But you probably have noticed by now that for all our claims of technology being a fast moving sector, a lot of the people working in it are old men shouting at you to get off their lawn ;)
Opera's shift to WebKit should concern everyone. It's likely a good decision for them, but it consolidates WebKit's position as the dominant rendering engine, and having any dominant engine is bad, as you go from standards directing engines to the dominant engine imposing "standards".
Ironically, it's Firefox which is still doing its job: never the dominating browser, but always a significant enough force to stop any one browser from entirely dominating. Those who think Mozilla's outlasted their welcome should think again.