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Microsoft's Goals For Their New Web Rendering Engine
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has put up a post about explaining what they wanted to accomplish when they started working on Project Spartan, the new web browser that will ship with Windows 10. They say some things you wouldn't expect to hear from Microsoft: "We needed a plan to make it easy for Web developers to build compatible sites regardless of which browser they develop first for. We needed a plan which ensured that our customers have a good experience regardless of whether they browse the head or tail of the Web. We needed a plan which gave enterprise customers a highly backward compatible browser regardless of how quickly we pushed forward with modern HTML5 features." They also explain how they decided against using WebKit so they wouldn't contribute to "a monoculture on the Web."
I got a goal for you: Make it not an insecure steaming piece of shit!
Sounds like a good plan... a lot of people use sites like Tinder and Grindr to find both head and tail.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
You mean like Internet Explorer used to be?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
> "We needed a plan to make it easy for Web developers to build compatible sites regardless of which browser they develop first for."
Can you even IMAGINE Microsoft saying that 15 years ago? 10 years ago? So is it because they are a better company now before... or is it just because they have no choice but to cooperate (since people left IE in droves for Firefox, Opera, and Chrome)?
>" They also explain how they decided against using WebKit so they wouldn't contribute to "a monoculture on the Web."
Oh right.... because Microsoft would never want to support a monoculture... Hmm... I need to go find some Twilight Zone episodes to watch, now.
To be fair, at the time MS adopted the CRLF line ending style there were *four* standards, none of them dominant:
CR, LF, CRLF, and LFCR (called NLCR..new line carriage return). They picked one existing standard, and Unix was already using another. The supporters of the other standards have died off, so there are only two standards left.
So don't blame MS for all the bad decisions. Only some of them. I still wouldn't want to use their software, though. Perhaps if they live up to their current "We love FOSS" line for a decade or so I'll change my mind, but currently it just feels like their latest lie.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Standards compliance.
Seriously, all the solutions to those plans have been staring them in the face for 20 years. Ironically, MS's own desire for a monoculture on the web prevented them from seeing that.
I think this is because in the olden days having CRLF meant being able to dump a raw text file to a printing device. Unix had a tty driver that could handle adding the missing CR. CP/M and DOS didn't have any such thing. That doesn't mean I haven't spent 20+ years being annoyed by CRLF though.
That's not it, CRLF was a feature. How do you make strike-through text on a type-wheel printer? It automatically advances to the next position and it only has a fixed number of characters, you don't double it with strikethrough-a in addition to regular a. So you send a CR - carriage return - to return to first position, space your way over to the text to be striked out and make a ------- over it before you CRLF to the next line. And you have no idea how old knowing that makes me feel.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In history, the Spartans were the despotic enemies of democracy who constantly tried to defeat Athens. They could have stopped the Persians at the sea crossing, but delayed because they had a religious festival and finally sent a tiny troop to Thermopylae (too little too late). Those troops did acquit themselves well, but Greece would have been overrun if the Athenians hadn't brought up their army and crushed the Persians.
So yeah, an appropriate name for Microsoft (and for people who know movies but not history).
...wasn't it? I've sort of lost track, but I think Microsoft has made precisely this claim for every browser. Yes, here we go:
" That's your vision for IE7, to definitely support Web standards?
Chris: Absolutely, in IE7 we really are trying to support Web standards. Even at the expense of more backwards compatibility..."
Then much the same thing was said of IE8,
and then we read that
"I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised to read this post on el reg that highlights that IE9 is currently the most standards compliant beta browser on the block. Iâ(TM)m really proud of the work the IE9 team is doing to nail the the things that were previously levelled at Internet Explorer for being a 'bad browser.'"
It's the same every time. They acknowledge that the previous browser wasn't standards-compliant after all, and promise the one they are now working on is.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Web is in the mess it now is because Microsoft (and, to a lesser extent, Netscape, back in the day) has gone through so many iterations of deliberately trying to create subtly incompatible variants of HTML. Creating a browser which is backwards compatible with that mess simply perpetuates the mess. The new browser should simply refuse to render non-conforming legacy pages at all - that would force web site owners to clean up their act in short order.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.