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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

#61

Post by spain »

FreakyT wrote: post #3

I'm glad to see that Microsoft is finally ripping out all the weird legacy modes -- IE11 essentially ships with 6 different rendering engines! [1] * IE5 (quirks mode) * IE7 (compatibility view) * IE8, IE9, and IE10 (available from the x-ua-compatible meta tag) * IE11's actual rendering engine As an aside, the hilariously long user-agent string is perhaps the best evidence that string-based browser detection is someth…

>As an aside, the hilariously long user-agent string is perhaps the best evidence that string-based browser detection is something that web devs should avoid at all costs. It manages to include "Safari", "Chrome", "AppleWebKit", "KHTML", "Mozilla", and "Gecko".

Further reading:

http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

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

#62

Post by joshuacc »

bsimpson wrote: post #53
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',…

Why the fuck did anyone ever think vendor prefixes are a good idea? If you want to prefix, prefix with versions. I should be able to type `-beta-mask-image: url()` and any browser that implements that version of the spec can pick it up. There's no good reason to have to type the same exact thing 3 times to target each browser engine.

Because the vendors sometimes proposed incompatible variants of the same feature before it was standardized. And they would implement it behind their individual prefixes so that you could experiment with both the IE and FF variants, for example.

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

#63

Post by higherpurpose »

melling wrote: post #55
EdSharkey wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pat…

Nah, it won't mean a thing. Microsoft still has almost 60% of the desktop browser market share. http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... Unfortunately, they have no mobile market share, and this is where most people will be browsing the web. http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/24/ios-android-duopoly-marketshar...

So they in fact don't have 60 percent market share of the browsing market anymore. The mobile markets count, if you're a developer.

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

#64

Post by ethomson »

kibwen wrote: post #49

> 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.

To be pedantic: even if there is code from MSHTML.dll in Spartan, there's no code from NCSA Mosaic in MSHTML.dll. Internet Explorer originally licensed Spyglass Mosaic, which licensed the name (and the code) from NCSA, but did not actually use any of the code. Though I suspect that there's not actually any Spyglass Mosaic code left in IE these days.

(Edited, I said that there's no MSHTML.dll code in Spartan. That I do believe exists.)

(Source: http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html)

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

#65

Post by aaronbrethorst »

bsimpson wrote: post #52
mishoo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Citation? IE shipped on Mac until Safari was released.

Mac IE used a different rendering engine than Windows IE. Windows' is (was) called Trident. Mac IE's was called Tasman[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman_(layout_engine)

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

#66

Post by stephenr »

leeoniya wrote: post #7
FreakyT wrote: post #3

I'm glad to see that Microsoft is finally ripping out all the weird legacy modes -- IE11 essentially ships with 6 different rendering engines! [1] * IE5 (quirks mode) * IE7 (compatibility view) * IE8, IE9, and IE10 (available from the x-ua-compatible meta tag) * IE11's actual rendering engine As an aside, the hilariously long user-agent string is perhaps the best evidence that string-based browser detection is someth…

if you're not detecting on the client (via javascript), then you have to rely on headers. well, maybe via IE conditional comments + cookie setting on transparent pixel request

the point is you should be doing feature tests, not browser tests.

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

#67

Post by mishoo »

bsimpson wrote: post #52
mishoo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Citation? IE shipped on Mac until Safari was released.

“Microsoft stated that the merging of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer was the result of innovation and competition, that the two were now the same product and were inextricably linked together and that consumers were now getting all the benefits of IE for free. Those who opposed Microsoft's position countered that the browser was still a distinct and separate product which did not need to be tied to the operating system, since a separate version of Internet Explorer was available for Mac OS.”

— from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.

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

#68

Post by melling »

higherpurpose wrote: post #63
melling wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it won't mean a thing. Microsoft still has almost 60% of the desktop browser market share. http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri... Unfortunately, they have no mobile market share, and this is where most people will be browsing the web. http://9to5mac.com/2015/02/24/ios-android-duopoly-marketshar...

So they in fact don't have 60 percent market share of the browsing market anymore. The mobile markets count, if you're a developer.

That's correct and that's what I said:

"Unfortunately, they have no mobile market share, and this is where most people will be browsing the web."

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

#69

Post by Retra »

akrymski wrote: post #32
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',…

Yes and no - our lives would be much easier if we could just assume that every user runs a WebKit fork. From testing to development, it would be enable devs to push apps to the limit without testing across multiple platforms. And I'm sure adding those vendor-specific extensions to a WebKit fork is also do-able. Since WebKit is open-source, I'd prefer to see companies put in more effort in enhancing its performance in…

HTML was the "universal standard", and what happened to that?

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

#70

Post by klenwell »

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',…

I upvoted this for sarcasm. But upon reflection I think maybe I missed the point.

I guess a lot of it hinges on your interpretation of the words "competitive" and "parity".

I'm hoping that it means the expression "IE issue" gradually becomes the exception rather than the norm.

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