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One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, ever

One of the best things that's happened to the web is all browsers moving over to an evergreen model of distribution. IE was such a cancer on the internet, everyone in the bad old days programmed to the lowest common denominator (IE6, 7, or 8). Even while brand new features and standards were widely adopted by everyone else. One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to render everything. Feels like slowly stepping backwards into the days when everyone writes for webkit rather than a more open internet. That being said, there's so little difference between webkit and gecko now-a-days that it's really hardly a major issue.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to render everything. Feels like slowly stepping backwards into the days when everyone writes for webkit rather than a more open internet. WebKit and Blink are separate engines.
- LordDragonfang 3y ago
  Yes, but the latter is a fork of the former's core components.
  - arccy 3y ago
    doesn't matter that it's a fork if behaviour / features diverge like they do
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - bitvoid 3y ago
    It was forked over 10 years ago now. I doubt their shared past is even recognizable now.
    - jwells89 3y ago
      There were substantial differences even from day one. As I recall one of the differences of opinion that was a driving cause of the fork was the multiprocess model; WebKit team wanted that to be part of the framework, letting any WebKit-embedding app get it for “free”, whereas the Blink team wanted it to be part of Chromium with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess.
      - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
        > with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess. Isn't that what happened anyway? The non-Chromium dists of Blink like Electron and WebView2 both employ the same multi-process approach as Chrome.exe (and my RAM availability is suffering for it...)
        jwells89 3y ago
        Electron bundles Chromium, not Blink directly. Believe this is true of WebView2 too but am not well-versed in Windows internals. In fact I’m not aware of any major non-Chromium usages of Blink, except maybe in Qt (where it replaced WebKit a few years ago) but I’m not sure about that either.
        Macha 3y ago
        Nah, QtWebEngine is using Chromium, not Blink directly
      - zx8080 3y ago
        > whereas the Blink team wanted it to be part of Chromium with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess. Is that why Electron basically means Chromium?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - randomdata 3y ago
    And WebKit is a fork of KHTML, so...
- breathen 3y ago
  ...sort of...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    They diverged from a common starting point, but they did diverge, pulled apart by wildly different priorities, contributors, and usecases.
junglistguy 3y ago
[dead]
bombcar 3y ago
The real dichotomy is Blink (Chrome/Android) vs Webkit (Apple/iPhone). Everyone tests everything on iPhone and Chrome.
ksherlock 3y ago
The thing about IE, one thing anyway, is that it's CSS support, box model, etc, was broken and non standard. So you would need to exploit CSS parser bugs to give IE a separate CSS, use DXImageTransformFilter to make png transparency work, etc. Maybe by WebKit you mean Blink and by Blink you mean V8, because when somebody does a "Show HN: something that doesn't work in Safari or FireFox" it's usually a javascript problem not a CSS or rendering problem. And every 6 months someone complains that Safari is literally worse than IE 5 because it doesn't support some non-standard privacy nightmare API that Google added last week.
- ttfkam 3y ago
  I came to hate IE with every fiber of my being, but let's call a spade a spade here: IE basically invented modern CSS. Netscape 3/4 and IE 3/4 had very different views on how web pages should be dynamic and how they should be styled. IE championed CSS and the DOM. Netscape was fixated on bgcolor, font tags, etc. Netscape introduced the <layer> tag. IE just made every tag a potential layer. Remember AJAX? Loading content from a script and injecting it into a page? That was 100% IE. The issue wasn't that IE 5, 5.5, and 6 were bad when they came out. They weren't. Not one bit. They were absolutely the cutting edge. Then Netscape died, Microsoft had no more competition in the field, and so they basically just stopped. For years. Mozilla (and shortly after, Firefox) prompted an eventual response, which was IE7: I minor update to an otherwise abandoned codebase. Once it was clear folks were seriously looking at dumping IE, IE8 followed shortly after. The CSS Acid Test showed how far IE had fallen behind, so IE9 and IE10 moved to stop the bleeding. IE 11 was the final release before Microsoft finally dropped the legacy IE baggage, aka the Trident engine. By that time Chrome had stormed the field, and Edge's renderer just couldn't keep up relative to the amount of money Microsoft was willing to pay. So they dumped their own engine and moved to Blink. (If you can't beat em…) But let's be clear, between 1998 and 2003, IE was at the forefront. Its CSS support wasn't broken. It was the best and only. Its box model wasn't broken. There were no other box models to compare it to. You didn't need to give it separate CSS, because it was the only one around really to parse it. It didn't have non-standard AJAX support. It WAS the standard since no XMLHttpRequest object existed at the time. You could write VBScript on a web page instead of JavaScript and have a >90% chance that client could run it. Flash didn't have to be bundled or installed separately, ActiveX just took care of it in the middle of your browsing session. It was the Bronze Age of the web. IE was the one that moved us beyond stone tools. Later supplanted by Firefox and Safari's Iron Age, but still an important and arguably necessary step toward the modern web we know today, including the box model.
tracker1 3y ago
The difference with today and blink is that it's open source and if there's a serious issue it will be forked. And has been, twice, in order to get to Blink.
adrr 3y ago
Webkit isn't the issue. The issue is Apple is making the same mistake as Microsoft by tying a browser version to a version of the OS. With no upgrade path for people with older phone, you have support the lowest common dominator instead of pushing people to install a new browser.
- toast0 3y ago
  OTOH, Apple does tend to get OS updates to their users a lot faster than anyone else with market share. At least until they stop supporting a beloved device.
behnamoh 3y ago
I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. And I don't think the conspiracy in this article is something to boast about. It's literally using dishonesty with the higher-ups (no matter how much you might hate them) as a way to make your own job easier. Plus, stuff like this is why we ended up in a Chrome monopoly, to the point that even Edge finally got Chromified.
- cogman10 3y ago
  > Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. Ehh, plenty of corporate IT decided to force employees to use IE. That's actually my main interaction with programming for it, clients that HAD to use IE due to corporate policy.
- II2II 3y ago
  > I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. No one was forced to use IE, but many people had the decision made for them. Sometimes it was because it shipped as the default on the dominant operating system. (I suspect people forget how dominant Windows was. While Windows remains the dominant operating system on desktop computers to this day, their share wasn't diluted by platforms like Android and iOS.) Other times it was because sites designed exclusively for IE were visibly broken in other browsers. (I suspect part of the reason why I am not bothered by incompatibilities with Firefox to this day is because the incompatibilities are minor compared to those we faced in the past.) I do agree with your sentiment about conspiracy boasting, though from a different perspective. Their actions represent a group of people in a position of power making a decision for other people, even if it wasn't an officially sanctioned decision. (Though I have no doubt that many people cheered for their actions.)
- icedchai 3y ago
  In the early 2000's, IE was really the only viable option. Nobody else provided a fully functional browser. Netscape was rotting. Safari, Firefox, Chrome were not yet released. If you wanted something that worked and didn't crash every 30 minutes, IE was it.
assimpleaspossi 3y ago
The reason it's not a major issue anymore is that most developers are smart enough to follow the web standards first and then make sure the browser supports it. They've found that following standards--just like all other programming--is the foundation of computer programming.
tomxor 3y ago
> all browsers moving over to an evergreen Except Safari.
ozim 3y ago
Browser engine for me is like a Linux kernel for me. Everyone should be banding together to work on one. Not making a separate one each year. We have js libraries and frameworks for that. Of course some innovations that requires to be done in engine won’t happen as fast - but on the other hand amount of innovation in software that runs in browsers will be much higher. We saw that with IE “innovations” of Microsoft blocked decades of innovations in web apps.
- al_borland 3y ago
  I thought that was happening years ago with WebKit, but then Google forked it into Blink.
  - ozim 3y ago
    If I go to its Wikipedia page Blink is backed by many more companies than just Google. Where WebKit is or was basically Apple and some companies. Not dropping links because anyone can check wiki pages.
    - al_borland 3y ago
      Those companies listed on Wikipedia are ones which have contributed over time, they are far from exhaustive and lack a lot of context. WebKit itself was a fork of KHTML by Apple, and Blink was a fork of WebKit by Google. Both initially started with the one company and then had others contribute to the open source projects. In the WebKit wiki it is noted that WebKit had 50% market share at its peak. This is when IE and Firefox still had about 15-20% market share each. WebKit was well on its way to being where Blink is today. It was used by Apple, Google, Palm, Sony, Nokia, Nintendo, and more. It wasn’t the industry banding together to create Blink. It was Google. Then one by one, various companies gave up the fight, Microsoft and Opera are two of the most notable. Maybe if Apple was easier to work with Blink wouldn’t have happened, but I probably had more to do with Google having their own view of what the web should be, and their own engine lets them push that on everyone.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> One of the worst things that's happened is nearly everyone converging on using webkit to render everything. Feels like slowly stepping backwards into the days when everyone writes for webkit rather than a more open internet. WebKit and Blink are separate engines.

LordDragonfang 3y ago
Yes, but the latter is a fork of the former's core components.
- arccy 3y ago
  doesn't matter that it's a fork if behaviour / features diverge like they do
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- bitvoid 3y ago
  It was forked over 10 years ago now. I doubt their shared past is even recognizable now.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    There were substantial differences even from day one. As I recall one of the differences of opinion that was a driving cause of the fork was the multiprocess model; WebKit team wanted that to be part of the framework, letting any WebKit-embedding app get it for “free”, whereas the Blink team wanted it to be part of Chromium with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess.
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      > with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess. Isn't that what happened anyway? The non-Chromium dists of Blink like Electron and WebView2 both employ the same multi-process approach as Chrome.exe (and my RAM availability is suffering for it...)
      - jwells89 3y ago
        Electron bundles Chromium, not Blink directly. Believe this is true of WebView2 too but am not well-versed in Windows internals. In fact I’m not aware of any major non-Chromium usages of Blink, except maybe in Qt (where it replaced WebKit a few years ago) but I’m not sure about that either.
        Macha 3y ago
        Nah, QtWebEngine is using Chromium, not Blink directly
    - zx8080 3y ago
      > whereas the Blink team wanted it to be part of Chromium with non-Chromium users of Blink needing to bring their own multiprocess. Is that why Electron basically means Chromium?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- randomdata 3y ago
  And WebKit is a fork of KHTML, so...
breathen 3y ago
...sort of...
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  They diverged from a common starting point, but they did diverge, pulled apart by wildly different priorities, contributors, and usecases.

junglistguy 3y ago

[dead]

bombcar 3y ago

The real dichotomy is Blink (Chrome/Android) vs Webkit (Apple/iPhone). Everyone tests everything on iPhone and Chrome.

ksherlock 3y ago

The thing about IE, one thing anyway, is that it's CSS support, box model, etc, was broken and non standard. So you would need to exploit CSS parser bugs to give IE a separate CSS, use DXImageTransformFilter to make png transparency work, etc. Maybe by WebKit you mean Blink and by Blink you mean V8, because when somebody does a "Show HN: something that doesn't work in Safari or FireFox" it's usually a javascript problem not a CSS or rendering problem. And every 6 months someone complains that Safari is literally worse than IE 5 because it doesn't support some non-standard privacy nightmare API that Google added last week.

ttfkam 3y ago
I came to hate IE with every fiber of my being, but let's call a spade a spade here: IE basically invented modern CSS. Netscape 3/4 and IE 3/4 had very different views on how web pages should be dynamic and how they should be styled. IE championed CSS and the DOM. Netscape was fixated on bgcolor, font tags, etc. Netscape introduced the <layer> tag. IE just made every tag a potential layer. Remember AJAX? Loading content from a script and injecting it into a page? That was 100% IE. The issue wasn't that IE 5, 5.5, and 6 were bad when they came out. They weren't. Not one bit. They were absolutely the cutting edge. Then Netscape died, Microsoft had no more competition in the field, and so they basically just stopped. For years. Mozilla (and shortly after, Firefox) prompted an eventual response, which was IE7: I minor update to an otherwise abandoned codebase. Once it was clear folks were seriously looking at dumping IE, IE8 followed shortly after. The CSS Acid Test showed how far IE had fallen behind, so IE9 and IE10 moved to stop the bleeding. IE 11 was the final release before Microsoft finally dropped the legacy IE baggage, aka the Trident engine. By that time Chrome had stormed the field, and Edge's renderer just couldn't keep up relative to the amount of money Microsoft was willing to pay. So they dumped their own engine and moved to Blink. (If you can't beat em…) But let's be clear, between 1998 and 2003, IE was at the forefront. Its CSS support wasn't broken. It was the best and only. Its box model wasn't broken. There were no other box models to compare it to. You didn't need to give it separate CSS, because it was the only one around really to parse it. It didn't have non-standard AJAX support. It WAS the standard since no XMLHttpRequest object existed at the time. You could write VBScript on a web page instead of JavaScript and have a >90% chance that client could run it. Flash didn't have to be bundled or installed separately, ActiveX just took care of it in the middle of your browsing session. It was the Bronze Age of the web. IE was the one that moved us beyond stone tools. Later supplanted by Firefox and Safari's Iron Age, but still an important and arguably necessary step toward the modern web we know today, including the box model.

tracker1 3y ago

The difference with today and blink is that it's open source and if there's a serious issue it will be forked. And has been, twice, in order to get to Blink.

adrr 3y ago

Webkit isn't the issue. The issue is Apple is making the same mistake as Microsoft by tying a browser version to a version of the OS. With no upgrade path for people with older phone, you have support the lowest common dominator instead of pushing people to install a new browser.

toast0 3y ago
OTOH, Apple does tend to get OS updates to their users a lot faster than anyone else with market share. At least until they stop supporting a beloved device.

behnamoh 3y ago

I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. And I don't think the conspiracy in this article is something to boast about. It's literally using dishonesty with the higher-ups (no matter how much you might hate them) as a way to make your own job easier. Plus, stuff like this is why we ended up in a Chrome monopoly, to the point that even Edge finally got Chromified.

cogman10 3y ago
> Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. Ehh, plenty of corporate IT decided to force employees to use IE. That's actually my main interaction with programming for it, clients that HAD to use IE due to corporate policy.
II2II 3y ago
> I don't find it okay to bash IE so harshly. Sure it wasn't the best but no one forced people to use it. No one was forced to use IE, but many people had the decision made for them. Sometimes it was because it shipped as the default on the dominant operating system. (I suspect people forget how dominant Windows was. While Windows remains the dominant operating system on desktop computers to this day, their share wasn't diluted by platforms like Android and iOS.) Other times it was because sites designed exclusively for IE were visibly broken in other browsers. (I suspect part of the reason why I am not bothered by incompatibilities with Firefox to this day is because the incompatibilities are minor compared to those we faced in the past.) I do agree with your sentiment about conspiracy boasting, though from a different perspective. Their actions represent a group of people in a position of power making a decision for other people, even if it wasn't an officially sanctioned decision. (Though I have no doubt that many people cheered for their actions.)
icedchai 3y ago
In the early 2000's, IE was really the only viable option. Nobody else provided a fully functional browser. Netscape was rotting. Safari, Firefox, Chrome were not yet released. If you wanted something that worked and didn't crash every 30 minutes, IE was it.

assimpleaspossi 3y ago

The reason it's not a major issue anymore is that most developers are smart enough to follow the web standards first and then make sure the browser supports it. They've found that following standards--just like all other programming--is the foundation of computer programming.

tomxor 3y ago

> all browsers moving over to an evergreen Except Safari.

ozim 3y ago

Browser engine for me is like a Linux kernel for me. Everyone should be banding together to work on one. Not making a separate one each year. We have js libraries and frameworks for that. Of course some innovations that requires to be done in engine won’t happen as fast - but on the other hand amount of innovation in software that runs in browsers will be much higher. We saw that with IE “innovations” of Microsoft blocked decades of innovations in web apps.

al_borland 3y ago
I thought that was happening years ago with WebKit, but then Google forked it into Blink.
- ozim 3y ago
  If I go to its Wikipedia page Blink is backed by many more companies than just Google. Where WebKit is or was basically Apple and some companies. Not dropping links because anyone can check wiki pages.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    Those companies listed on Wikipedia are ones which have contributed over time, they are far from exhaustive and lack a lot of context. WebKit itself was a fork of KHTML by Apple, and Blink was a fork of WebKit by Google. Both initially started with the one company and then had others contribute to the open source projects. In the WebKit wiki it is noted that WebKit had 50% market share at its peak. This is when IE and Firefox still had about 15-20% market share each. WebKit was well on its way to being where Blink is today. It was used by Apple, Google, Palm, Sony, Nokia, Nintendo, and more. It wasn’t the industry banding together to create Blink. It was Google. Then one by one, various companies gave up the fight, Microsoft and Opera are two of the most notable. Maybe if Apple was easier to work with Blink wouldn’t have happened, but I probably had more to do with Google having their own view of what the web should be, and their own engine lets them push that on everyone.