4 ms·
ELI5 why we need more engines? I shipped my first commercial website in 2001. I have PTSD from times when you had to basically do at least twice the work to en
by zeroq 1y ago
ELI5 why we need more engines?
I shipped my first commercial website in 2001. I have PTSD from times when you had to basically do at least twice the work to ensure that your page worked - not just looked, but worked - on multiple browsers over multiple systems.
I recall a postmortem from a project of a major telecom website which took its pride in being accessible "everywhere". They had a matrix of systems and browsers, like 10x10, and they described how painful it was to check all the boxes.
I remember a tiny JS library I wrote at Wikia in 2006 for deep linking. It started with ~10 lines implementing documentation. But by the time I had all major browsers covered it grew to 500 lines.
I also have very fond memories of Flash. Apart from resolution - when I had my project working on my machine I had 100% certainty that it would work exactly the same on every client. Including mobile, kiosks, and desktop deployments.
Times were different, BigCos lived in siloes, ES4 went to shit and we needed another 15 years to reinvent the wheel with TS, but today everyone seems to be on the same team and browsers are shockingly compatible.
- kouteiheika 1y ago> ELI5 why we need more engines? We don't. But we could use a memory safe one, so that a random website can't steal your credit card info. Unfortunately Servo is the only one that's actively developed and is written in a memory safe language; the rest are all C++.
- beeflet 1y agobecause otherwise google will control the web standards via chrome implementation. Whatever pains you deal with cross-browser compatibility, it's nothing like the pain of web development when IE was dominant. Like the IE era, we are heading towards an environment where whatever google says, goes.
- zeroq 1y agoWDYM "pain when IE was dominant"? It was anything but. For a decade macromedia had monopoly on web standards with their player and it was marvelous. Can you imagine a simple straight implementation and knowing it will work across all of your clients today?
- scuff3d 1y agoBecause its probably not a good idea to have one company essentially control the internet through their browser. Firefox is practically irrelevant and Safari only matters if you're on an Apple device.
- zeroq 1y agowhat do you mean "control the internet"? Microsoft for all intents and purposes controls all documents across the globe with their Office suite and it doesn't mean you can't write "hitler" in your document. I mean, c'mon.
- timeon 1y agoSure that is fine with Microsoft. Now imagine you are ICC judge using Microsoft service.
- scuff3d 1y agoThat analog doesn't fit at all. The internet is public infrastructure, akin to roads or utilities. Not just document writing software. Your web browser is your primary gateway to the Internet, which is a fundamental part of our daily lives now With Google dominating the vast majority of the market (not just through Chrome but also Chromium) they dictate the mechanisms used to access it. Google Chrome is already the defacto standard. Web developers design sites with it in mind first, everything else is an after thought. If Chrome decides to implement a feature that impacts user access or website design, everyone just has to go along with it. Look at the "Web Integrity API" fiasco from a while back. Google was basically proposing that websites be able to block access if they don't like something about the clients environment. That is entirely antithetical to a free and open Internet, and had they decided to move forward with it the rest of the web community would have had no choice but to go along.