4 ms·

-Microsoft IS NOT going to suggest that people download Firefox or Chrome. I really don't understand the benefit of IE having its own rendering engine. While

by wheels 16y ago

-Microsoft IS NOT going to suggest that people download Firefox or Chrome. I really don't understand the benefit of IE having its own rendering engine. While I can't imagine MS abandoning IE, I can't see any business reason (other than hubris) for them maintaining a worst-of-breed rendering and JS engine at great cost to themselves. (And just for the record, basically agree with you on all points.)

statictype 16y ago
Because a lot of companies rely on IE's rendering engine. There are a lot of sites (mostly internal but external as well) that use technologies like ActiveX which only work on IE's engine. For example, almost every site served up by an ip camera uses an activex plugin to view video.
- wheels 16y ago
  I don't see any reason why ActiveX couldn't be bolted on to Webkit. As for backward compatibility they update their engine all of the time; perhaps quirks mode could be left as the old engine.
ryanwatkins 16y ago
I guess you missed the articles here about about Microsoft's massive commitment to backward compatibility and why they do it? From just the other day :http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281045 and http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html Ditching the current rendering engine would break a ton of apps.
- alanh 16y ago
  Those “web” apps are then already broken, by definition.
  - bzbarsky 16y ago
    They are broken from the _user's_ perspective, yes. They are not necessarily broken from the app developer's perspective. Changing IE so as to break them would cause MS a good bit of grief (and depending on the contracts they have with people might cost them money directly).
  - ryanwatkins 16y ago
    They're not 'web' apps, they're apps built to a specific platform. Many of those are internal intranet apps, and some are not even networked - they're actual apps that use the IE rendering engine for UI. You may not like that they're not built to your "web" standard (or whatever that standard was 10 years ago), but other people just care if their apps still work. These apps are built to a Windows platform, and not a web standard. A platform that the current IE rendering engine is a component of. MSFT has a commitment to backward compatibility for some very strong business reasons. And people build to MSFT's platforms and buy their operating systems, in part, because of this commitment to compatibility.

by wheels 16y ago

statictype 16y ago

Because a lot of companies rely on IE's rendering engine. There are a lot of sites (mostly internal but external as well) that use technologies like ActiveX which only work on IE's engine. For example, almost every site served up by an ip camera uses an activex plugin to view video.

wheels 16y ago
I don't see any reason why ActiveX couldn't be bolted on to Webkit. As for backward compatibility they update their engine all of the time; perhaps quirks mode could be left as the old engine.

ryanwatkins 16y ago

I guess you missed the articles here about about Microsoft's massive commitment to backward compatibility and why they do it? From just the other day :http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281045 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2281045 and http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html Ditching the current rendering engine would break a ton of apps.

alanh 16y ago
Those “web” apps are then already broken, by definition.
- bzbarsky 16y ago
  They are broken from the _user's_ perspective, yes. They are not necessarily broken from the app developer's perspective. Changing IE so as to break them would cause MS a good bit of grief (and depending on the contracts they have with people might cost them money directly).
- ryanwatkins 16y ago
  They're not 'web' apps, they're apps built to a specific platform. Many of those are internal intranet apps, and some are not even networked - they're actual apps that use the IE rendering engine for UI. You may not like that they're not built to your "web" standard (or whatever that standard was 10 years ago), but other people just care if their apps still work. These apps are built to a Windows platform, and not a web standard. A platform that the current IE rendering engine is a component of. MSFT has a commitment to backward compatibility for some very strong business reasons. And people build to MSFT's platforms and buy their operating systems, in part, because of this commitment to compatibility.