8 ms·

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink

I agree that it's good to have multiple browser _products_, but why is it better that MSFT has its own engine instead of investing in OSS ones like webkit/blink? This is the same question I have for Firefox. They can still achieve their privacy goals without having to invest in and maintain a separate engine. Is having a unique engine really all that beneficial in the long run?

jeffdavis 9y ago
There should be some freedom to render the same page in different ways. Lynx is an extreme version, but there is lots of room to consider different platforms, environments, input devices and users.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Why? When I design a page, I know what I want it to look like. I don't want to have to waste a bunch of my time in compatibility hacks to get around crap that they do different.
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    I always thought we had this backwards. We should abandon sending the UA altogether and design pages according to the standards. If a browser doesn't render then correctly, then tell the browser to fix their shit. I realize that nowadays this isn't as simple as that, but if we had started along that path, things would be much better now.
    - ConceptJunkie 9y ago
      IIUC, we _did_ start out that way. it was probably Microsoft that first started differentiating itself by adding non-standard features and functionality. EEE, ya know.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      Unfortunately I don't have anywhere near the clout to be able to tell Microsoft to do that. And in the meantime, my users look at a broken site.
  - jeffdavis 9y ago
    You are asserting that the provider of the website should have complete control over the experience. But not everyone agrees with you -- the readers want control, too, and it's their hardware, after all.
  - flukus 9y ago
    Then you should publish PDF's or JPEG's because the user agent has always had final say in how a page renders, your style hints are merely recommendations.
mintplant 9y ago
- Because that would leave Google with near-total power to drive the evolution of the web, via their control of Blink's development. - Gecko was around before either of WebKit or Blink, so targeting this toward Firefox is getting history backward.
- yesimahuman 9y ago
  1) They could fork it, adopt standardized changes, but continue to innovate on it if they like 2) That wasn't my point. WebKit derivatives clearly won. Does Firefox even need to also own an engine when their goals seem to be entirely around the browser product?
  - mintplant 9y ago
    A fork that tracked Blink upstream would still leave Google with control over the direction of development. A fork that diverged from Blink would end up equivalent to an independently-developed engine. Adopting Blink would, furthermore, impose a set of design and architectural constraints not necessarily in line with Firefox's priorities as a project. With Gecko they're investing in parallelism and pulling in more and more components from Rust/Servo, for example. Firefox has been something of an underdog from its inception, releasing at a time when IE had already "won". Chrome taking that spot won't make Mozilla scrap everything and start over—this is familiar territory. Of course, this is all ignoring the absolute upheaval and loss of momentum a total rewrite on top of Blink would wreak on Firefox as a project.

jeffdavis 9y ago

There should be some freedom to render the same page in different ways. Lynx is an extreme version, but there is lots of room to consider different platforms, environments, input devices and users.

s73ver_ 9y ago
Why? When I design a page, I know what I want it to look like. I don't want to have to waste a bunch of my time in compatibility hacks to get around crap that they do different.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  I always thought we had this backwards. We should abandon sending the UA altogether and design pages according to the standards. If a browser doesn't render then correctly, then tell the browser to fix their shit. I realize that nowadays this isn't as simple as that, but if we had started along that path, things would be much better now.
  - ConceptJunkie 9y ago
    IIUC, we _did_ start out that way. it was probably Microsoft that first started differentiating itself by adding non-standard features and functionality. EEE, ya know.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    Unfortunately I don't have anywhere near the clout to be able to tell Microsoft to do that. And in the meantime, my users look at a broken site.
- jeffdavis 9y ago
  You are asserting that the provider of the website should have complete control over the experience. But not everyone agrees with you -- the readers want control, too, and it's their hardware, after all.
- flukus 9y ago
  Then you should publish PDF's or JPEG's because the user agent has always had final say in how a page renders, your style hints are merely recommendations.

mintplant 9y ago

- Because that would leave Google with near-total power to drive the evolution of the web, via their control of Blink's development. - Gecko was around before either of WebKit or Blink, so targeting this toward Firefox is getting history backward.

yesimahuman 9y ago
1) They could fork it, adopt standardized changes, but continue to innovate on it if they like 2) That wasn't my point. WebKit derivatives clearly won. Does Firefox even need to also own an engine when their goals seem to be entirely around the browser product?
- mintplant 9y ago
  A fork that tracked Blink upstream would still leave Google with control over the direction of development. A fork that diverged from Blink would end up equivalent to an independently-developed engine. Adopting Blink would, furthermore, impose a set of design and architectural constraints not necessarily in line with Firefox's priorities as a project. With Gecko they're investing in parallelism and pulling in more and more components from Rust/Servo, for example. Firefox has been something of an underdog from its inception, releasing at a time when IE had already "won". Chrome taking that spot won't make Mozilla scrap everything and start over—this is familiar territory. Of course, this is all ignoring the absolute upheaval and loss of momentum a total rewrite on top of Blink would wreak on Firefox as a project.