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Honest question: what does Microsoft stand to gain by doing all this work instead of just using WebKit?
by mrshoe 17y ago
Honest question: what does Microsoft stand to gain by doing all this work instead of just using WebKit?
- chaosmachine 17y agoControl and influence. Backwards compatibility. And they probably still believe they can do it better.
- jmtulloss 17y agoI'm not sure that they can't. Give Microsoft a compelling business reason to build a great browser that also supports IE 8,7, and 6 rendering modes, and I bet they'll do it.
- dschobel 17y agoIsn't reclaiming the 20-30% market share they lost to Safari/Firefox/Chrome reason enough?
- mcav 17y agoThey're trying to support more standards -- by definition, they're just reinventing the work others have already done. So it's grunt work, only useful for their future influence and power. They could ship IE9 with WebKit in addition to custom rendering modes for IE<=8, and consumers wouldn't even need to know. It'd save MS a lot of work, that's for sure.
- etherealG 17y agoI say let them worry about the cost/benefit ratio. If they can afford it, another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market. Just think how hard it would push webkit/mozilla/chrome if they did manage to beat them on speed. It would push them to get even better. Compeition is always good as long as 2 or more projects stay alive.
- dschobel 17y ago...another engine with completely separate codebase is a good thing for the market. You've just made an enemy out of every web-dev on HN :)
- jmtulloss 17y agoProbably not. I suspect that as long as IE is the default browser on Windows, their revenue doesn't change that much year over year. People who don't change their default homepage don't change their browser either. What is a compelling reason is revenue loss in their cash-cow franchises like Office. If they come to believe that they need a version of Office that works in the browser or they will lose revenue, then developing a fast version of IE is very important. If they believe that people won't use a computer that doesn't provide them with great experiences on the sites they love right out of the box, then developing a standards compliant version of IE is important.
- cakesy 17y agoYeah, but if they destroy all other browsers again, then they don't have to do any work on improving browsers. Making browsers actually goes against their business process, they want everyone on the desktop, not the web. They have been dragged into the web, and hated every step of it.
- zefhous 17y agoI think part of the problem is that they don't seem to view building good products as a 'compelling business reason.'
- geuis 17y agoI think the different rendering modes in IE8 is a serious defect. For example, when testing locally IE8 defaults to IE7 mode instead of IE8 standards mode. You physically have to go into the developer toolbar to switch it. My friend(who's a .Net developer) ran into this exact problem last week and couldn't understand why his site was failing in IE8, looked good in IE7, and worked well in FF & Safari. I've run into this problem more than enough times. If people need to use a particular older browser for a very narrow application, then they should keep an installation of that browser around for that specific purpose. Its the same idea with modular programming methods. I build my js in modules. My comment system is separate from my login system. In the last couple of days I have been updating the Facebook Connect logic in my login system and I haven't had to worry about updating logic in my comment code.
- vorador 17y agoIE is deeply integrated within windows. Rewriting everything for webkit may be costly.
- dschobel 17y agoIf I recall correctly there's some weird incestuous relationship in the HTML rendering in Outlook, Word and IE. I agree it's almost definitely technically infeasible.
- ecoffey 17y agoNope, Outlook now uses the Word rendering engine, since it's part of the Office family. Totally makes sense right?
- snprbob86 17y agoI suspect the other replies are way off base. Legal concerns are probably the largest blocker by far. Apple and Google don't have enterprise customers for WebKit, but Microsoft has many for IE. Since buying Microsoft software is effectively like buying job-insurance for IT staff, Microsoft's risk accounting is wildly different from Apple and Google. I'm not saying deciding not to use WebKit is the right risk/reward trade off, but IANAL.
- scott_s 17y agoWhat do you mean by "enterprise customers" for IE? I don't understand the point you're trying to make.
- boundlessdreamz 17y agoPeople who have written IE only, active-x infested applications are the "enterprise customers" of IE :)
- WilliamLP 17y agoIs it still conspiracy theory to suggest that they are the ones with the most to lose from a universally reliable JS and HTML implementation, so they should want to do enough to keep IE competitive, but not enough to make it fully compatible with everyone else?
- etherealG 17y agoI think they will way the possibility of maintaining control through developers choosing their implementation over one the other engines choose to user. If they see a chance for developers to pick their standard they'll push it, if not they'll back off and adopt the other one. It can be seen in the history of the engines, and will continue that way. Like evolution of standards, the most awesome ones according to developers live, the others die.
- rbanffy 17y agoMicrosoft walks a fine line between having a browser that's broken enough so that web apps written and tested for it break on other browsers and a browser functional enough not to drive users to move to better products.
- rythie 17y agoActiveX support and other backwards compatibility with 5/10 year old Intranet systems people have bought.