4 ms·

> It seems to me that having a single pervasive open source web rendering engine is actually the ideal state of affairs. How is fragmentation helpful in this ar

> It seems to me that having a single pervasive open source web rendering engine is actually the ideal state of affairs. How is fragmentation helpful in this area? Because the Chromium monoculture has allowed Google to dominate the web standards process. They can veto any feature or force one through by shipping it and pushing sites to depend on it (including their own). There is an army of Googlers whose job it is to keep tacking on new web standards. And Google will implement the features before proposing the specs, so their competitors—well, now it's just Mozilla and Apple, I guess—are kept playing constant catch-up. Meanwhile, anything that comes from outside of Google will have to brave the same army trying to smother it in committee. Just ask anyone who's dealt with web standards politics from outside of Google. It isn't fun anymore. (Oh, yeah, and because there's essentially no accountability now, plenty of these new features rushed through the door are buggy and introduce security holes. It's like IE all over again.)

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Apple’s WebKit is kept in-sync with Chromium - whenever Google adds something then Apple gets it for free within a couple of months - though Apple tends to disable or vendor-prefix new features it doesn’t like.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  This hasn't been true since Google hard-forked WebKit to Blink in 2013.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  The opposite is true. WebKit is now quite far diverged from Blink. Apple very much does not keep it "in sync" with Chromium.
  - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
    Ah - my mistake. I was operating on the assumption the Blink and WebKit teams were exchanging patches regularly. That's a dang shame then :/ Apple's a big company - but we saw how they mishandled their own first-party Maps service after divorcing from Google - I can see Apple's Safari potentially falling behind badly if they can't keep-up with Google's work on Blink.
    - emn13 7y ago
      They already are; there are some pretty glaring bugs/missing features in webkit nowadays. In fact, I can't think of any webkit developments that positively surprised me the past few years; development seems glacial, at best. A list of somewhat notable stuff chromium and gecko have that webkit is still missing: Stuff because it's better to make your devs pay licenses for no good reason: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp - https://caniuse.com/#feat=av1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=av1 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=opus https://caniuse.com/#feat=opus - https://caniuse.com/#feat=ogg-vorbis https://caniuse.com/#feat=ogg-vorbis - In "fairness": https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc There's a whole bunch of stuff that would make it easier for webapps to replace app store apps or otherwise appear native; can't have that! - https://caniuse.com/#feat=vibration https://caniuse.com/#feat=vibration (trying to push people to the apple app store?) - https://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl2 https://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl2 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=fullscreen https://caniuse.com/#feat=fullscreen - https://caniuse.com/#feat=registerprotocolhandler https://caniuse.com/#feat=registerprotocolhandler - https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-containment https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-containment Weird stuff: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root https://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root (supported on osx, not ios?) - https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime (mostly supported on ios, but not osx?) There are the missing features that just seem there to bug users and devs: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-png https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-png (I mean, seriously?) Then there's useful stuff they don't seem to be willing to work with: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-text-align-last https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-text-align-last - https://caniuse.com/#feat=requestidlecallback https://caniuse.com/#feat=requestidlecallback - https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=custom-elementsv1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=custom-elementsv1 Obviously, there are features that webkit has that others do not, but by and large they're not as interesting or plausibly useful. Webkit is definitely not blink; not anymore.

DaiPlusPlus 7y ago

Apple’s WebKit is kept in-sync with Chromium - whenever Google adds something then Apple gets it for free within a couple of months - though Apple tends to disable or vendor-prefix new features it doesn’t like.

Jasper_ 7y ago
This hasn't been true since Google hard-forked WebKit to Blink in 2013.
pcwalton 7y ago
The opposite is true. WebKit is now quite far diverged from Blink. Apple very much does not keep it "in sync" with Chromium.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  Ah - my mistake. I was operating on the assumption the Blink and WebKit teams were exchanging patches regularly. That's a dang shame then :/ Apple's a big company - but we saw how they mishandled their own first-party Maps service after divorcing from Google - I can see Apple's Safari potentially falling behind badly if they can't keep-up with Google's work on Blink.
  - emn13 7y ago
    They already are; there are some pretty glaring bugs/missing features in webkit nowadays. In fact, I can't think of any webkit developments that positively surprised me the past few years; development seems glacial, at best. A list of somewhat notable stuff chromium and gecko have that webkit is still missing: Stuff because it's better to make your devs pay licenses for no good reason: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp https://caniuse.com/#feat=webp - https://caniuse.com/#feat=av1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=av1 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=opus https://caniuse.com/#feat=opus - https://caniuse.com/#feat=ogg-vorbis https://caniuse.com/#feat=ogg-vorbis - In "fairness": https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc https://caniuse.com/#feat=hevc There's a whole bunch of stuff that would make it easier for webapps to replace app store apps or otherwise appear native; can't have that! - https://caniuse.com/#feat=vibration https://caniuse.com/#feat=vibration (trying to push people to the apple app store?) - https://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl2 https://caniuse.com/#feat=webgl2 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=fullscreen https://caniuse.com/#feat=fullscreen - https://caniuse.com/#feat=registerprotocolhandler https://caniuse.com/#feat=registerprotocolhandler - https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-containment https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-containment Weird stuff: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root https://caniuse.com/#feat=flow-root (supported on osx, not ios?) - https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime https://caniuse.com/#feat=input-datetime (mostly supported on ios, but not osx?) There are the missing features that just seem there to bug users and devs: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-png https://caniuse.com/#feat=link-icon-png (I mean, seriously?) Then there's useful stuff they don't seem to be willing to work with: - https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-text-align-last https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-text-align-last - https://caniuse.com/#feat=requestidlecallback https://caniuse.com/#feat=requestidlecallback - https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=shadowdomv1 - https://caniuse.com/#feat=custom-elementsv1 https://caniuse.com/#feat=custom-elementsv1 Obviously, there are features that webkit has that others do not, but by and large they're not as interesting or plausibly useful. Webkit is definitely not blink; not anymore.