4 ms·

Why All Browsers Should Move to WebKit

24 points by pavs 14y ago

J_Darnley 14y ago
I'm sure that won't cause a situation similar to the stagnation we saw when IE6 was the dominant browser! To anyone who says "you can fork it": If you aren't using the same features as everyone else, how is the situation then different to what we have now?
- erwanl 14y ago
  It's actually what's happening on mobile. Everyone uses webkit but they all have a different version, with their own set of patches and compilation options. So it's as fragmented as on the desktop.
  - khuey 14y ago
    The mobile web is far more fragmented than the desktop web.
- Svip 14y ago
  I'll have to admit, I could not for the life of me tell if the entry was sarcastic or sincere. He seems to think there is only one WebKit, which numerous articles following the news of Opera's switch has made clear isn't the case. He is also assuming that because every major browser is using the same engine, everyone will suddenly magically agree with one another on how to do stuff. Chrome and Safari uses different versions of WebKit, and trust me, it won't be long before Opera will use its own version of WebKit as well.
- derefr 14y ago
  "You can fork it" is pretty outdated as a concept. Today, with DCVS, we have "you can create a branch, then both continuously rebase from upstream, while continuously submitting pull requests to upstream."
  - Thrall 14y ago
    It does still depends a bit on which direction the 'fork' goes in and whether it remains compatible with upstream's intentions. So a minor feature branch can often be merged back into upstream, but significant changes to the core code may not be accepted upstream. What I'm trying to say is that while it is much easier than it was to create a branch and merge all or some of the modifications back into master, the concept of a fork, where development diverges because different parties want to do different things with the project, which can't easily coexist in the same codebase, is still relevant.
jeffjose 14y ago
I read the article intently up until the point where he unceremoniously dismissed the entire IE6 team as "lazy".
- Offler 14y ago
  Indeed, 'terrible', 'evil' but not 'lazy'. Nothing could cause such pain without a lot of hard work.
  - dmethvin 14y ago
    I invite you to submit your work from 14 years ago and have it judged by 2013 standards.
    - Scramblejams 14y ago
      IIRC IE6 was considered a pretty nasty piece of work by discriminating minds at the time (e.g. more of embrace, extend, extinguish[1]), so no need to time travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
      - simanyay 14y ago
        Back in the days, IE6 was the best browser out there.
        Scramblejams 14y ago
        Whether it was a good browser or not doesn't change the fact that it was also a crafty attempt at manipulating web standards in such a way as to promote vendor lock-in for the entire web, which supports Offler's post.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Remember Microsoft basically invented AJAX and XHR back in IE5/6. You could also run XSLT in the browser to easily transform the XML data to HTML presentation. No other browser had these capabilities for years.
Isofarro 14y ago
Be careful what you ask for. NetFront have switched to using WebKit as a basis for their rendering engines, finding their way to various gaming gadgets, both console and hand-held. Unfortunately, due to memory limitations of some of these devices, they don't really score well on automated compliance tests as "nice-to-have" features are trimmed in an effort to get a workable browser on constrained devices. Have a look at http://console.maban.co.uk/ http://console.maban.co.uk/ about the capabilities of these devices. Remember, there are more game consoles and handhelds than iphones and Android device. Surely we've learned from IE6 why a defacto standard is worse than an open and implementable standard? Monoculture is a terrible price to pay. Don't forget South Korea's 99%+ IE6 dominance. http://blog.mozilla.org/gen/2012/11/15/2012-update-to-the-2007-cost-of-monoculture-in-korea/ http://blog.mozilla.org/gen/2012/11/15/2012-update-to-the-20... -- such a lock-in that it becomes a political topic: http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2012/11/13/ahn-pledges-to-end-outdated-encryption-standard/ http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2012/11/13/ahn-pledges-to...
kryptiskt 14y ago
Opinions like this makes me want to create a new browser engine just to be contrary. And because the web deserves something better than C++.
- LeonidasXIV 14y ago
  So you mean Servo and Rust? Actually, I just installed the Rust compiler to tinker with Servo.
  - kryptiskt 14y ago
    I follow Rust a bit (not Servo yet). It seems a smidgen complex, lots of features there, but as long as it has pattern matching and ADTs I'm happy. I hope it stabilizes soon.
    - steveklabnik 14y ago
      It has both, and, if I remember correctly, 0.6.0 is going to be syntax final. > It seems a smidgen complex, The thing about Rust is that it seems that way, but that's because things that are library features in other languages are language features in Rust. For example, C++ has one kind of pointer. Unless you count smart_ptr<> and friends, in which case it has just as many as Rust does.
      - kibwen 14y ago
        > 0.6.0 is going to be syntax final That's a tentative "final" though. No guarantees until 1.0.
        steveklabnik 14y ago
        Of course. 0.5.0 was supposed to be, too, until Things Happened. It's all good.
    - kibwen 14y ago
      Getting less complex all the time, thankfully: https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/4707 https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/4707
AshleysBrain 14y ago
Isn't the main point about competition? IE6 never had any meaningful competition until Firefox came along, then lo and behold, all browsers started getting a lot better a lot quicker. I don't see why WebKit-everywhere would be different. If they become lazy and slow at implementing features, what's going to make them get their act together other than a competing engine that's beating them in some regard?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ttaubert 14y ago
  If everyone switched to one browser engine competition would surely rise again after a couple of months or years. Engine features will differ and WebKit forks will compete even more. The market would roughly be at the same point it is now, it just started off of one engine.
- michael_miller 14y ago
  The reason that WebKit is different from Trident (IE's rendering engine) is that WebKit is open source. If a company comes along and says "hey, it would be really cool if we had an NFC API for the web", they're not stuck in a rut. They can hire some developers and submit a patch. So I'm not worried about lack of feature development. The thing I'd be most worried about with a single engine is lack of compliance with the standard. If multiple people are implementing the standard independently, there are bound to be some differences (for example, if an SVG line is rendered at 0px, with a 1px stroke width and crispEdges, do you snap to [-1px, 0px], or [0px, 1px]?) People run into these issues in practice, and report them; it causes clarifications in the standard to be made, and ensures there is an accepted standard of behavior for pages. This ensures we don't end up in a situation like Ruby, where Specs ran on the official compiler dictate language rules. It means that WebKit is allowed to change its implementation details without anyone crying foul when the maintainers change undefined behavior.
  - dkuntz2 14y ago
    You're working on the assumption that one of the biggest fallacies of open source software, which is that anyone can make any change they like and it'll be rolled back into the main branch. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that the gatekeepers of WebKit will accept your patch.
snambi 14y ago
If we had only webkit, they would eventually become like IE. IE had no competition from 1998-2005(?), until Firefox came. I think that ~5 years of dominance killed IE.
- khuey 14y ago
  It was more like 2001-2004 from when Netscape 6 launched to when Firefox 1.0 launched.
adulau 14y ago
Diversity is good not only for competition but also for security. For more information, I would recommend to read the article from Dan Geer about diversity and security - Monopoly Considered Harmful: http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~dblough/8813/geer.pdf http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~dblough/8813/geer.pdf
Sunlis 14y ago
> So when I heard Opera was switching its rendering engine to WebKit, a first major browser to do so among many other Opera firsts, ... What? There top 5 browsers are IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Chrome and Safari already use WebKit, so how would Opera moving to WebKit be "an Opera first"?
- guptaneil 14y ago
  Chrome and Safari started with WebKit, Opera is the first to drop their own engine and switch to WebKit.
steveklabnik 14y ago
Monoculture is bad, no matter what the monoculture. The web's strongest feature is that it's not tied to one particular implementation: that's why it's been able to grow, change, and sustain itself for so long.
- andraconda 14y ago
  Unfortunately when it comes to mobile browsing, with the market share that the webkit based browsers have,h its already a monoculture of sorts.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    For certain very loosely defined values of 'monoculture.' But yes, I agree: we need even more engines. I'm glad Mozilla is sticking to their guns. I personally installed Aurora today.
jakub_g 14y ago
There was an article [0] in the very top of HN two days ago from Brendan Eich why Mozilla won't move to WebKit. TL;DR: 1) it would require enormous amount of work, 2) add-ons compatibility would be in danger, and add-ons are the heart of Firefox. I also doubt that Microsoft will move after heavily investing in IE9 and IE10 standard compliance (apart from that it wouldn't be MS style). And basically that's end of "everyone should move" topic. The other top browser apart from Firefox and IE already are Webkit (or will become, as Opera announced). [0] https://brendaneich.com/2013/02/why-mozilla-matters/ https://brendaneich.com/2013/02/why-mozilla-matters/
sergiotapia 14y ago
Currently on my all of my websites, combined, Chrome accounts for 79% of traffic at the moment. It's good they're off IE (not because it's Microsoft, but because it doesn't follow standards), but they're just switching one single pony for another. In an ideal world the split would be even throughout all major browsers. I feel uneasy seeing Chrome so high. Even makes me a bit melancholic to see Firefox at a measly 17%. (again: for MY websites)
- zaphar 14y ago
  I don't think it's possible to have what you describe. It would require roughly equivalent performance and features in multiple browsers. That won't happen unless you inhibit or penalize browsers for improvements above a certain level. Eventually someone will outdo Chrome and the web will switch over but there will always be a top dog.
- Turing_Machine 14y ago
  Firefox shot itself in the foot when they started breaking everyone's add-ons and plugins about three times per week (an exaggeration, but not by much).
lmkg 14y ago
1. Multiple browser engines are the only reason most webdevs code to the standards. 2. If people don't code to the standards, it's much more difficult to make new and better browser engines. 1, expanded: All browsers have quirks, or bug, or specific ways of handling ambiguous situations. IE6 has more than most, but even modern browsers do have their edge cases and unsupported features and whatnot. If there's only one browser, people will code to the quirks, not the browser. Historically, the single largest category of implementation-dependent behavior that people rely on is how an implementation handles erroneous input. That's why malformed HTML is now standardized. No, not you of course, but all those other web developers. Look, standards are nice, but to many developers (especially hobbyists), and to most suits, it's just a bunch of hot air. And the hard part is, they're right, at least in the short term. Coding to standards costs time, and coding to browsers produces a pixel-perfect functional site. Multiple, disagreeing browsers are what make standards practical. Coding to standards is a best-practice, low-cost way of dealing with the real problem of divergent browser implementations. If that problem becomes theoretical, but the cost does not, then the sensible path is to code write pages that work in Webkit, standards be damned. 2, expanded: The more that existing code relies in the quirks of one implementation, the harder it is for a new implementation to arise. The surface area of features they have to match is expanded. Furthermore, these new "features" are more constraining to match because they are undesigned, not always consistent, and often closer to the metal. Not only does this make it harder to write a new engine, it constrains the ways in which new engines can be better. The easiest example is how having to match another implementation's order-of-evaluation can limit the benefits of concurrency. So the sum of this is that Webkit wins now, it will be incredibly difficult to get anything better than Webkit in the future (note that this applies equally to forks of Webkit--they're still limited in how much they can differ). Not that Webkit's bad or anything, but I think it's myopic to say that we won't ever want anything more. Servo, of course, is right now the most concrete example of something that we might want in the future, with its promise of a fundamentally concurrent architecture. But even aside from that, the future has a way of surprising us, and I wouldn't like the be stuck with outdated tech in 2018 because webdevs in 2013 got a bee in their bonnet about webkit vs gecko.
- ajross 14y ago
  Not to be glib, but... most webdevs code to the standards? News to me. Most webdevs code to their favorite API. And their favorite APIs code to an insane list of quirks. No one but book authors seems to care about standards.
daleharvey 14y ago
Its a shame to have something so ill informed so highly voted, but ignoring the whole fact that there is no 'webkit' and people will still need to deal with these nightmares (hello safari) This comment I felt gave a good practical example of the more handwavey 'competition is good' argument "Doing this would mean being forever stuck in single-threaded land for rendering (e.g. nothing like Mozilla's Servo project could ever happen). People have tried to parallelize WebKit and failed: too entangled, too much code making too many assumptions... Parallelism is one of those things that's just incredibly hard to bolt on after the fact. So if you want browsers to never really scale well to large number of cores, by all means try to get them to all switch to WebKit." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213200
brianfcoleman 14y ago
WebKit is a great technology but we really need viable alternatives such as Gecko as used in Firefox to guarantee a healthy future for the web. The situation ten years ago where most websites targeted IE 6 led to a stagnant period in the history of browser and web technologies. The past few years have seen enormous progress directly as a result of the competition between Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even IE. It would be sad if we were to return to a browser monoculture. It makes me sad that Apple and Microsoft restrict the development of third party browsers for their phone OS's. I would love to be able to use Firefox on iOS just as I can for Mac OSX. Mobile Safari is great but the risk of web developers ignoring standards and targeting mobile websites at WebKit alone is worrying. I have a more detailed argument at http://compile-link-run.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-john-gruber-is-wrong-about-webkit_16.html http://compile-link-run.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-john-grub... and would be interested in hearing what others have to say.
lignuist 14y ago
All browsers? Even Lynx?

24 points by pavs 14y ago

I'm sure that won't cause a situation similar to the stagnation we saw when IE6 was the dominant browser! To anyone who says "you can fork it": If you aren't using the same features as everyone else, how is the situation then different to what we have now?

erwanl 14y ago
It's actually what's happening on mobile. Everyone uses webkit but they all have a different version, with their own set of patches and compilation options. So it's as fragmented as on the desktop.
- khuey 14y ago
  The mobile web is far more fragmented than the desktop web.
Svip 14y ago
I'll have to admit, I could not for the life of me tell if the entry was sarcastic or sincere. He seems to think there is only one WebKit, which numerous articles following the news of Opera's switch has made clear isn't the case. He is also assuming that because every major browser is using the same engine, everyone will suddenly magically agree with one another on how to do stuff. Chrome and Safari uses different versions of WebKit, and trust me, it won't be long before Opera will use its own version of WebKit as well.
derefr 14y ago
"You can fork it" is pretty outdated as a concept. Today, with DCVS, we have "you can create a branch, then both continuously rebase from upstream, while continuously submitting pull requests to upstream."
- Thrall 14y ago
  It does still depends a bit on which direction the 'fork' goes in and whether it remains compatible with upstream's intentions. So a minor feature branch can often be merged back into upstream, but significant changes to the core code may not be accepted upstream. What I'm trying to say is that while it is much easier than it was to create a branch and merge all or some of the modifications back into master, the concept of a fork, where development diverges because different parties want to do different things with the project, which can't easily coexist in the same codebase, is still relevant.

jeffjose 14y ago

I read the article intently up until the point where he unceremoniously dismissed the entire IE6 team as "lazy".

Offler 14y ago
Indeed, 'terrible', 'evil' but not 'lazy'. Nothing could cause such pain without a lot of hard work.
- dmethvin 14y ago
  I invite you to submit your work from 14 years ago and have it judged by 2013 standards.
  - Scramblejams 14y ago
    IIRC IE6 was considered a pretty nasty piece of work by discriminating minds at the time (e.g. more of embrace, extend, extinguish[1]), so no need to time travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
    - simanyay 14y ago
      Back in the days, IE6 was the best browser out there.
      - Scramblejams 14y ago
        Whether it was a good browser or not doesn't change the fact that it was also a crafty attempt at manipulating web standards in such a way as to promote vendor lock-in for the entire web, which supports Offler's post.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Remember Microsoft basically invented AJAX and XHR back in IE5/6. You could also run XSLT in the browser to easily transform the XML data to HTML presentation. No other browser had these capabilities for years.

Isofarro 14y ago

Be careful what you ask for. NetFront have switched to using WebKit as a basis for their rendering engines, finding their way to various gaming gadgets, both console and hand-held. Unfortunately, due to memory limitations of some of these devices, they don't really score well on automated compliance tests as "nice-to-have" features are trimmed in an effort to get a workable browser on constrained devices. Have a look at http://console.maban.co.uk/ http://console.maban.co.uk/ about the capabilities of these devices. Remember, there are more game consoles and handhelds than iphones and Android device. Surely we've learned from IE6 why a defacto standard is worse than an open and implementable standard? Monoculture is a terrible price to pay. Don't forget South Korea's 99%+ IE6 dominance. http://blog.mozilla.org/gen/2012/11/15/2012-update-to-the-2007-cost-of-monoculture-in-korea/ http://blog.mozilla.org/gen/2012/11/15/2012-update-to-the-20... -- such a lock-in that it becomes a political topic: http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2012/11/13/ahn-pledges-to-end-outdated-encryption-standard/ http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2012/11/13/ahn-pledges-to...

kryptiskt 14y ago

Opinions like this makes me want to create a new browser engine just to be contrary. And because the web deserves something better than C++.

LeonidasXIV 14y ago
So you mean Servo and Rust? Actually, I just installed the Rust compiler to tinker with Servo.
- kryptiskt 14y ago
  I follow Rust a bit (not Servo yet). It seems a smidgen complex, lots of features there, but as long as it has pattern matching and ADTs I'm happy. I hope it stabilizes soon.
  - steveklabnik 14y ago
    It has both, and, if I remember correctly, 0.6.0 is going to be syntax final. > It seems a smidgen complex, The thing about Rust is that it seems that way, but that's because things that are library features in other languages are language features in Rust. For example, C++ has one kind of pointer. Unless you count smart_ptr<> and friends, in which case it has just as many as Rust does.
    - kibwen 14y ago
      > 0.6.0 is going to be syntax final That's a tentative "final" though. No guarantees until 1.0.
      - steveklabnik 14y ago
        Of course. 0.5.0 was supposed to be, too, until Things Happened. It's all good.
  - kibwen 14y ago
    Getting less complex all the time, thankfully: https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/4707 https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/4707

AshleysBrain 14y ago

Isn't the main point about competition? IE6 never had any meaningful competition until Firefox came along, then lo and behold, all browsers started getting a lot better a lot quicker. I don't see why WebKit-everywhere would be different. If they become lazy and slow at implementing features, what's going to make them get their act together other than a competing engine that's beating them in some regard?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ttaubert 14y ago
If everyone switched to one browser engine competition would surely rise again after a couple of months or years. Engine features will differ and WebKit forks will compete even more. The market would roughly be at the same point it is now, it just started off of one engine.
michael_miller 14y ago
The reason that WebKit is different from Trident (IE's rendering engine) is that WebKit is open source. If a company comes along and says "hey, it would be really cool if we had an NFC API for the web", they're not stuck in a rut. They can hire some developers and submit a patch. So I'm not worried about lack of feature development. The thing I'd be most worried about with a single engine is lack of compliance with the standard. If multiple people are implementing the standard independently, there are bound to be some differences (for example, if an SVG line is rendered at 0px, with a 1px stroke width and crispEdges, do you snap to [-1px, 0px], or [0px, 1px]?) People run into these issues in practice, and report them; it causes clarifications in the standard to be made, and ensures there is an accepted standard of behavior for pages. This ensures we don't end up in a situation like Ruby, where Specs ran on the official compiler dictate language rules. It means that WebKit is allowed to change its implementation details without anyone crying foul when the maintainers change undefined behavior.
- dkuntz2 14y ago
  You're working on the assumption that one of the biggest fallacies of open source software, which is that anyone can make any change they like and it'll be rolled back into the main branch. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that the gatekeepers of WebKit will accept your patch.

snambi 14y ago

If we had only webkit, they would eventually become like IE. IE had no competition from 1998-2005(?), until Firefox came. I think that ~5 years of dominance killed IE.

khuey 14y ago
It was more like 2001-2004 from when Netscape 6 launched to when Firefox 1.0 launched.

adulau 14y ago

Diversity is good not only for competition but also for security. For more information, I would recommend to read the article from Dan Geer about diversity and security - Monopoly Considered Harmful: http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~dblough/8813/geer.pdf http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~dblough/8813/geer.pdf

Sunlis 14y ago

> So when I heard Opera was switching its rendering engine to WebKit, a first major browser to do so among many other Opera firsts, ... What? There top 5 browsers are IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Chrome and Safari already use WebKit, so how would Opera moving to WebKit be "an Opera first"?

guptaneil 14y ago
Chrome and Safari started with WebKit, Opera is the first to drop their own engine and switch to WebKit.

steveklabnik 14y ago

Monoculture is bad, no matter what the monoculture. The web's strongest feature is that it's not tied to one particular implementation: that's why it's been able to grow, change, and sustain itself for so long.

andraconda 14y ago
Unfortunately when it comes to mobile browsing, with the market share that the webkit based browsers have,h its already a monoculture of sorts.
- steveklabnik 14y ago
  For certain very loosely defined values of 'monoculture.' But yes, I agree: we need even more engines. I'm glad Mozilla is sticking to their guns. I personally installed Aurora today.

jakub_g 14y ago

There was an article [0] in the very top of HN two days ago from Brendan Eich why Mozilla won't move to WebKit. TL;DR: 1) it would require enormous amount of work, 2) add-ons compatibility would be in danger, and add-ons are the heart of Firefox. I also doubt that Microsoft will move after heavily investing in IE9 and IE10 standard compliance (apart from that it wouldn't be MS style). And basically that's end of "everyone should move" topic. The other top browser apart from Firefox and IE already are Webkit (or will become, as Opera announced). [0] https://brendaneich.com/2013/02/why-mozilla-matters/ https://brendaneich.com/2013/02/why-mozilla-matters/

sergiotapia 14y ago

Currently on my all of my websites, combined, Chrome accounts for 79% of traffic at the moment. It's good they're off IE (not because it's Microsoft, but because it doesn't follow standards), but they're just switching one single pony for another. In an ideal world the split would be even throughout all major browsers. I feel uneasy seeing Chrome so high. Even makes me a bit melancholic to see Firefox at a measly 17%. (again: for MY websites)

zaphar 14y ago
I don't think it's possible to have what you describe. It would require roughly equivalent performance and features in multiple browsers. That won't happen unless you inhibit or penalize browsers for improvements above a certain level. Eventually someone will outdo Chrome and the web will switch over but there will always be a top dog.
Turing_Machine 14y ago
Firefox shot itself in the foot when they started breaking everyone's add-ons and plugins about three times per week (an exaggeration, but not by much).

lmkg 14y ago

1. Multiple browser engines are the only reason most webdevs code to the standards. 2. If people don't code to the standards, it's much more difficult to make new and better browser engines. 1, expanded: All browsers have quirks, or bug, or specific ways of handling ambiguous situations. IE6 has more than most, but even modern browsers do have their edge cases and unsupported features and whatnot. If there's only one browser, people will code to the quirks, not the browser. Historically, the single largest category of implementation-dependent behavior that people rely on is how an implementation handles erroneous input. That's why malformed HTML is now standardized. No, not you of course, but all those other web developers. Look, standards are nice, but to many developers (especially hobbyists), and to most suits, it's just a bunch of hot air. And the hard part is, they're right, at least in the short term. Coding to standards costs time, and coding to browsers produces a pixel-perfect functional site. Multiple, disagreeing browsers are what make standards practical. Coding to standards is a best-practice, low-cost way of dealing with the real problem of divergent browser implementations. If that problem becomes theoretical, but the cost does not, then the sensible path is to code write pages that work in Webkit, standards be damned. 2, expanded: The more that existing code relies in the quirks of one implementation, the harder it is for a new implementation to arise. The surface area of features they have to match is expanded. Furthermore, these new "features" are more constraining to match because they are undesigned, not always consistent, and often closer to the metal. Not only does this make it harder to write a new engine, it constrains the ways in which new engines can be better. The easiest example is how having to match another implementation's order-of-evaluation can limit the benefits of concurrency. So the sum of this is that Webkit wins now, it will be incredibly difficult to get anything better than Webkit in the future (note that this applies equally to forks of Webkit--they're still limited in how much they can differ). Not that Webkit's bad or anything, but I think it's myopic to say that we won't ever want anything more. Servo, of course, is right now the most concrete example of something that we might want in the future, with its promise of a fundamentally concurrent architecture. But even aside from that, the future has a way of surprising us, and I wouldn't like the be stuck with outdated tech in 2018 because webdevs in 2013 got a bee in their bonnet about webkit vs gecko.

ajross 14y ago
Not to be glib, but... most webdevs code to the standards? News to me. Most webdevs code to their favorite API. And their favorite APIs code to an insane list of quirks. No one but book authors seems to care about standards.

daleharvey 14y ago

Its a shame to have something so ill informed so highly voted, but ignoring the whole fact that there is no 'webkit' and people will still need to deal with these nightmares (hello safari) This comment I felt gave a good practical example of the more handwavey 'competition is good' argument "Doing this would mean being forever stuck in single-threaded land for rendering (e.g. nothing like Mozilla's Servo project could ever happen). People have tried to parallelize WebKit and failed: too entangled, too much code making too many assumptions... Parallelism is one of those things that's just incredibly hard to bolt on after the fact. So if you want browsers to never really scale well to large number of cores, by all means try to get them to all switch to WebKit." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5213200

brianfcoleman 14y ago

WebKit is a great technology but we really need viable alternatives such as Gecko as used in Firefox to guarantee a healthy future for the web. The situation ten years ago where most websites targeted IE 6 led to a stagnant period in the history of browser and web technologies. The past few years have seen enormous progress directly as a result of the competition between Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even IE. It would be sad if we were to return to a browser monoculture. It makes me sad that Apple and Microsoft restrict the development of third party browsers for their phone OS's. I would love to be able to use Firefox on iOS just as I can for Mac OSX. Mobile Safari is great but the risk of web developers ignoring standards and targeting mobile websites at WebKit alone is worrying. I have a more detailed argument at http://compile-link-run.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-john-gruber-is-wrong-about-webkit_16.html http://compile-link-run.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/why-john-grub... and would be interested in hearing what others have to say.

lignuist 14y ago

All browsers? Even Lynx?