4 ms·

I'm curious why Microsoft just doesn't drop Trident, and replace it with Webkit. I'm sure it will bring them and endless amount of great publicity. There shoul

by ggordan 16y ago

I'm curious why Microsoft just doesn't drop Trident, and replace it with Webkit. I'm sure it will bring them and endless amount of great publicity. There should really be just one rendering engine. Dare to dream..

daleharvey 16y ago
because having one rendering engine for most web users has worked so well previously competition is good
- ggordan 16y ago
  I agree, competition is great; it spurs innovation. But I don't see how all browsers using the same rendering engine is bad for competition. Are Safari and Chrome not competing? Are they not innovating? Users would still have a choice of browsers, but the web would be a much better place for users, and developers/designers.
  - bzbarsky 16y ago
    Has either Safari or Chrome fixed the known bugs in their CSS selector matching? No, because fixing those is not a priority for the core webkit developers. Is it a good thing for designers for those bugs to be enshrined as a de-facto standard? I don't think so. The fact that other UAs don't have them might serve as pressure on webkit to fix them too. Maybe.
shaggyfrog 16y ago
Have you ever known Microsoft to give away control over something as major as a Web browser... not to mention, but to one of its greatest competitors? The overwhelming dominance of a single browser caused big problems on its own. We need healthy competition in this technology marketplace.
- ggordan 16y ago
  I agree, it will never happen. What are they giving away to it's competitors though? Webkit it open source. They would still have IE.
  - shaggyfrog 16y ago
    Control. Right now they control Trident as they like. A shift to WebKit would mean ceding a lot of that control to Apple and Google and all the other WebKit contributors/maintainers.
    - rmc 16y ago
      And if they don't want to control it (by not working upstream), then we have the same problem now since they will act differently.
yuhong 16y ago
What is sad that MS had it's own Tasman engine used in IE5 for Mac. Why didn't MS port that to Windows?
Raphael 16y ago
I don't recall Microsoft using anything open source.
- melling 16y ago
  JQuery
- WalterGR 16y ago
  You'll find many references in the following. http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+uses+open+source http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+uses+open+source
bzbarsky 16y ago
Well, one reason might be that they care about not having buggy code. You may laugh, but for the standards IE9 claims to implement it does a very good job. Much better than Webkit, in my testing. > There should really be just one rendering engine. No. That's really a terrible idea, because different rendering engine consumers have different priorities. Luckily, even "webkit" has a number of forks that are somewhat incompatible for precisely that reason. So we're in no danger of this "one rendering engine" thing. (A note: while we've already been close to having one rendering engine with a priority of "change nothing", having one with pretty much any other priority set is no better; those priorities will be wrong for _some_ consumer.)

by ggordan 16y ago

daleharvey 16y ago

because having one rendering engine for most web users has worked so well previously competition is good

ggordan 16y ago
I agree, competition is great; it spurs innovation. But I don't see how all browsers using the same rendering engine is bad for competition. Are Safari and Chrome not competing? Are they not innovating? Users would still have a choice of browsers, but the web would be a much better place for users, and developers/designers.
- bzbarsky 16y ago
  Has either Safari or Chrome fixed the known bugs in their CSS selector matching? No, because fixing those is not a priority for the core webkit developers. Is it a good thing for designers for those bugs to be enshrined as a de-facto standard? I don't think so. The fact that other UAs don't have them might serve as pressure on webkit to fix them too. Maybe.

shaggyfrog 16y ago

Have you ever known Microsoft to give away control over something as major as a Web browser... not to mention, but to one of its greatest competitors? The overwhelming dominance of a single browser caused big problems on its own. We need healthy competition in this technology marketplace.

ggordan 16y ago
I agree, it will never happen. What are they giving away to it's competitors though? Webkit it open source. They would still have IE.
- shaggyfrog 16y ago
  Control. Right now they control Trident as they like. A shift to WebKit would mean ceding a lot of that control to Apple and Google and all the other WebKit contributors/maintainers.
  - rmc 16y ago
    And if they don't want to control it (by not working upstream), then we have the same problem now since they will act differently.

yuhong 16y ago

What is sad that MS had it's own Tasman engine used in IE5 for Mac. Why didn't MS port that to Windows?

Raphael 16y ago

I don't recall Microsoft using anything open source.

melling 16y ago
JQuery
WalterGR 16y ago
You'll find many references in the following. http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+uses+open+source http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+uses+open+source

bzbarsky 16y ago

Well, one reason might be that they care about not having buggy code. You may laugh, but for the standards IE9 claims to implement it does a very good job. Much better than Webkit, in my testing. > There should really be just one rendering engine. No. That's really a terrible idea, because different rendering engine consumers have different priorities. Luckily, even "webkit" has a number of forks that are somewhat incompatible for precisely that reason. So we're in no danger of this "one rendering engine" thing. (A note: while we've already been close to having one rendering engine with a priority of "change nothing", having one with pretty much any other priority set is no better; those priorities will be wrong for _some_ consumer.)