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The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

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Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#41

Post by cwyers »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #5

Is there anything wrong with the ones that already exist, which developers already cater to? What are they accomplishing here, exactly?

Well, let's flip the question around -- why are there three major open-source rendering engines in the world right now already? Why did Google fork Blink from WebKit?

The answer seems to be, major browser vendors have a hard time cooperating at the engine level. Apple and Google had different opinions over WebKit, which eventually led to it being forked. Microsoft has no real reason to think that it could partner with Apple or Google any more successfully than they partnered with each other in developing a rendering engine.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#42

Post by EdSharkey »

melling wrote: post #25
EdSharkey wrote: post #15

YES! 1-2-3-4, I declare a browser war! Finally. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting for! No more rolling over and no defeatist talk of adopting WebKit or whatever. Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser. We need more competition, and we need the default browser in Windows to be just as good as Chrome and Firefox. Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin',…

We have a already have lot of competition. In fact, it's never been better: Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, Chromium, Opera. You can even get the source code for Firefox and Chrome and contribute. I'm glad Microsoft is making a better go at it, but honestly, Microsoft could have built a more compliant browser any time they wanted too. https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

We got the Gecko family of browsers, the Trident family of browsers, and the WebKit family of browsers. Sure, there are varying JS engines, and Blink and Servo are on the way, but WebKit is the 900lbs gorilla. It is a monoculture in a lot of ways. I use and promote Firefox because I want to check the other vendors.

Microsoft makes, hm, how can I be positive here ... patchy software. There are always lots of rough patches reflecting pointy-haired boss decision making process, and there's cruft that builds up. But, very often you'll see these weird, beautiful bits just sticking out all over the place in Microsoft code. The weirdo geniuses at MSFT are allowed to do their thang and leave their mark. And the seminal releases of their software are always the best. Like, there are parts of IE6 that make me go, "how the HELL did Microsoft pull this tech off in 2000?" IE6 was this crumbly tower of awesome. If IE6 were a game, I won that game.

Anyhow, if development on Spartan goes RIGHT, then this browser will be the 2015 version of IE6. It will be the completest vision of kickassitude. There will be weird, crazy bits, and it'll take Microsoft and the rest of us a decade to untangle the proprietary parts. I can feel my blood pressure rising already!! The rage and the triumph and the glory!

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#43

Post by pacofvf »

mishoo wrote: post #35
thebouv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, with as much OSS as they've been putting out there recently, I wouldn't be surprised to see this browser go that route too. Maybe.

They can't. They said in a court of law that IE can't be separated from Windows.

But this is another Browser:

> This new rendering engine was designed with Project Spartan in mind, but will also be available in Internet Explorer on Windows 10 for enterprises and other customers who require legacy extensibility support.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#44

Post by Denvercoder9 »

mishoo wrote: post #35
thebouv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, with as much OSS as they've been putting out there recently, I wouldn't be surprised to see this browser go that route too. Maybe.

They can't. They said in a court of law that IE can't be separated from Windows.

Spartan isn't IE.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#45

Post by tomjen3 »

freehunter wrote: post #19
pdknsk wrote: post #14

It doesn't matter unless they make it open-source or at the very least cross-platform. I'm not downloading a 4GB VM from http://modern.ie to try it.

I think the point is that you shouldn't need to try it. If you write standard code, it should work.

That would be a first.

It is always write once, debug everywhere and always will be.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#46

Post by icantthinkofone »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #33
melling wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a already have lot of competition. In fact, it's never been better: Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, Chromium, Opera. You can even get the source code for Firefox and Chrome and contribute. I'm glad Microsoft is making a better go at it, but honestly, Microsoft could have built a more compliant browser any time they wanted too. https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

Haven't they? Since IE7, every new version is more and more compliant. IE11 gives a good experience and seems easy to work with (at least with the web dev I do). It just seems that they got sick of the baby steps approach and needed to start from scratch. They figured out yet another way to handle legacy code and want a new engine, and by new I mean, a Trident-based engine without some/most of the fluff IE has for le…

No. Despite the experience of those who do a little bit of web dev, those of us who treat the web as our operating system still curse IE on a daily basis.

I hope that all those who currently talk about how wonderful IE11 is take note that Microsoft is, essentially, saying they're abandoning it for all these reasons.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#47

Post by Touche »

Mithaldu wrote: post #30
melling wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a already have lot of competition. In fact, it's never been better: Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, Chromium, Opera. You can even get the source code for Firefox and Chrome and contribute. I'm glad Microsoft is making a better go at it, but honestly, Microsoft could have built a more compliant browser any time they wanted too. https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

Chrome and friends aren't webkit anymore, but only by way of forking. Otherwise Chrome, Chromium and Opera 15+ are the same engine. The family tree kind of looks like this: -- Internet Explorer -- Firefox -- Safari \ -- Chrome, Chromium, Opera 15+ -- Opera 12 (abandoned) I'm a little unclear on how differentiated Webkit and Blink are in practice, but sadly we have only 3.5 major engines competing at this point.

    -- Konqueror
      \
       -- Safari
         \
          -- Chrome, Chromium, Opera 15+
If you want to go further Firefox's lineage is interesting but it's parent browsers are all dead.

Re: The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#49

Post by kibwen » 

  > the new engine began as a fork of MSHTML.dll but has 
  > since diverged very quickly
Curiously, this means that Spartan will still be able to trace its lineage back to 1992's NCSA Mosiac (in contrast to Mozilla's Servo, which is a greenfield project). I expect that it will be fascinating to compare the two projects as each matures.
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