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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

#191

Post by icantthinkofone »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #181
icantthinkofone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I were to rank the browsers in the order in which they give more issues to me: 1. Safari iOS 2. Firefox 3. Chrome / Chrome Android 4. IE11 / IE11 Metro I only curse IE9/IE10 when they don't support a moden feature, but I don't mind using display:table instead of flexbox (to name an example) as long as it gets the work done in IE9/IE10. Although I don't bother testing IE10- to be honest, I just blindly trust the do…

If you are having problems in the other browsers, and not IE, then you're doing it wrong. Never, ever use IE as a reference for how things should work. THAT is the reason you are having trouble with the other browsers.

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

#192

Post by icantthinkofone »

Encosia wrote: post #165
Throwaway90283 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach. This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE. I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest wei…

Have you used IE in the past few years? IE is (by far) already the fastest browser on my two Windows 10 machines right now. That was also the case when they were running Windows 8 and 8.1 in the past. The latest versions of IE make Chrome feel like Netscape Communicator 4, and they're noticeably faster than Firefox too. If it had a nice LastPass extension, Ghostery, Buffer, and a few others, I'd probably be using IE…

Speed is not the mark of a good browser. If you are using speed as your mark, then you have never coded for the web and have never gone through the trials and tribulations of IE. If speed was the target, then Lynx would be the best of browsers.

http://html5test.com/

http://css3test.com/

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

#193

Post by eyeareque »

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…

I'm sure the reasoning behind those modes is because they had big (paying) customers who needed them there to help their "never ever getting an update" mission critical system webpages continue to work properly.

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

#194

Post by mattdesl »

For add-ons and DevTools plugins: it would be cool to have AtomIO style architecture. Easy to install, easy to develop for, easy to publish to npm, and written in pure JavaScript. IMHO it would quickly propel Spartan to the forefront of the developer community and would really help move the web forward.[1]

[1] http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/motion-graphics

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

#195

Post by mtrpcic »

taf2 wrote: post #186

When MS decides to release an open source rendering engine - we can start taking them seriously... until then they're never going to be worth taking seriously.

Releasing a rendering engine is what it takes, but releasing the entire .NET core isn't good enough?

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

#196

Post by rebootthesystem »

>Our mission to create a Web that “just works”

Errr. Sorry MSFT. The web pretty much does work. So long as you don't use IE.

Seriously, I haven't touched IE in probably four years. OK, here and there when there's no choice for some reason. I could probably count those instances -over four years-- with two hands.

We don't even test on IE any more. It's shit and I have no problem ignoring it. MS needs to understand that standards compliance is important. Don't waste my time and money dealing with your crap just because you were too incompetent or couldn't bother to make your browser standards compliant.

And it is slooooooow.

This coming from someone who's been with MS since day one. They are going to have to walk on water for me (and I am sure others) to give the new browser more than 30 seconds of a chance. That's how much trust they've lost.

Oh, yes, what's up with this business of breaking fonts with a routine OS update. Do any of you folks at MS actually use the operating system you create and maintain? Nobody tested this KB3013455 update? Nobody saw that it is destroying fonts on various systems? And you are going to create a new browser?

Sorry. A bit tired of bullshit. Don't tell me. Show me.

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

#197

Post by Turing_Machine »

Encosia wrote: post #167
klenwell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To second what Navarr said, I don't really see IE issues these days unless it's on a site that needs to support versions prior to IE9. As often as not, issues in modern IE are due to developers writing code that targets only a single vendor-prefixed version of an API instead of supporting standards, which makes IE look deficient (instead of that sloppy developer) even when it has good support for the APIs that a site…

To name just one thing that IE still doesn't support: setting the download attribute on a link. Neither does Safari.

This makes it very clumsy/impossible to write real web apps that need to save to the local file system. The scenario is generating a document client-side using JavaScript. Now you want to let the user save it. In Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and no doubt others, this isn't a problem. Just set the download attribute on the link to the file name you want to use.

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

#198

Post by Aldo_MX »

icantthinkofone wrote: post #191
Aldo_MX wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to rank the browsers in the order in which they give more issues to me: 1. Safari iOS 2. Firefox 3. Chrome / Chrome Android 4. IE11 / IE11 Metro I only curse IE9/IE10 when they don't support a moden feature, but I don't mind using display:table instead of flexbox (to name an example) as long as it gets the work done in IE9/IE10. Although I don't bother testing IE10- to be honest, I just blindly trust the do…

If you are having problems in the other browsers, and not IE, then you're doing it wrong. Never, ever use IE as a reference for how things should work. THAT is the reason you are having trouble with the other browsers.

Your assumption is wrong, IE is usually the last browser I test. In my experience the rendering of Webkit and Gecko have more issues than Trident.

I don't remember every edge-case I have faced since ever, but for example, the following selector used to fail with Webkit browsers, and the response from Apple were "WONTFIX for performance reasons":

.checkbox:checked + .sibling + .second_sibling { display:block; }

Also, in my experience, the sites that look broken in IE11 (ex. Facebook) is because the website author (or the compatibility lists from MS) set an old/faulty document mode via X-UA-Compatible.

I'm not trying to claim that IE is a better browser than Firefox/Chrome, because this is subjective (and personally I prefer Opera), but I'm trying to say that you must not develop a website in Firefox/Chrome assuming they never have faults.

IE is not as broken as people claim, and there are edge cases where IE is right and the other browsers wrong.

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

#199

Post by ethomson »

jonathansampson wrote: post #122
0x0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet Explorer 1.0's "About" box claims it is "Based on NCSA Mosaic": http://utilu.com/IECollection/img/iecollection_ie100_win40nt... (Curiously, Internet Explorer 1.0 showed a version number of "4.40" in the about box.)

IE is (originally) based on NCSA Mosaic code, by way of Spyglass. Spyglass had nearly 70 or so vendors using the same code if I'm not mistaken. The original source code of IE 1 can be seen (an Easter egg) in the video on our blog post (at about 40 seconds): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/02/26/a-break-from-t... .

More than 100, in fact. But in the end only one of those vendors actually mattered.

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

#200

Post by tkubacki »

gtjrossi wrote: post #179
Throwaway90283 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach. This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE. I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest wei…

Actually, our approach is effectively yielding the results you're looking for. Removal of old IE legacy cruft is slimming Spartan's disk and memory footprint when compared with IE. Advances in the Chakra engine are pushing performance ahead. We're rearchitecting our DOM, which is yielding perf and security wins too. We're planning an extension platform also, with top add-ons like ad block being a clear target. There'…

hope you are going to support Shadow DOM/Web components soon - otherwise we will face new generation of "works only on Firefox and Chrome" apps
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