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> From that point onwards they have been playing a perpetual game of catch-up, constantly lagging behind other browsers in implementing new specifications and f
by gsnedders 8y ago
> From that point onwards they have been playing a perpetual game of catch-up, constantly lagging behind other browsers in implementing new specifications and features.
There are definitely examples:
IE8 was the first browser with separate content processes (before Chrome was announced).
CSS Grid was heavily pushed by MS (and shipped, prefixed, in IE10).
Ultimately, being in a game of perpetual catchup in unsurprising when they stood still, with only an absolute minimal amount of work happening, for three years, while other browsers continued to march forwards.
- WorldMaker 8y agoIt's not just the interregnum/break that made it a game of perpetual catchup, though. Google certainly helped a lot to keep the goal posts moving. Web SQL, SPDY, QUIC, VP8, VP9, WebRTC, etc and so forth, are just some of examples of Google pushing half-finished standards into Chrome, then encouraging devs to use them (even in prefixed forms, where applicable), well in advance of standards processes. It's easy to be "standards compliant" when you are the ones building the standards and everyone else has to work to support your bugs/mistakes/half-finished backward incompatible solutions, because real world sites already rely on them. (That's exactly the IE6 problem in a nutshell.) When many of those real world sites that folks rely on are Google-owned properties themselves (looking at you, tube), there is almost no way to keep the goal posts from moving.