The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

#1

Post by aaronbrethorst » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine
blogs.msdn.com

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

#2

Post by ocfx » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:42 PM UTC

I think they forgot the part where they explained why they did it that doesn't use doublespeak.

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

#3

Post by FreakyT » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:44 PM UTC

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 something that web devs should avoid at all costs. It manages to include "Safari", "Chrome", "AppleWebKit", "KHTML", "Mozilla", and "Gecko".

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn321432.aspx

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

#4

Post by Someone1234 » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

I feel like the "A new Web rendering engine is born" section covers quite honestly why they have chosen to fork IE. It seems, to me, to be pretty frank and doesn't contain much "doublespeak."

PS - This was originally a reply to a comment which got removed.

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

#5

Post by nakedrobot2 » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

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

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

#6

Post by leeoniya » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

"Fixing patterns instead of sites"

I don't understand this statement

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

#7

Post by leeoniya » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

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

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

#8

Post by Igglyboo » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:56 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #6

"Fixing patterns instead of sites" I don't understand this statement

They aren't targeting specific sites that are broken they are targeting more general patterns that seem to cause problems.

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

#9

Post by higherpurpose » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

The main thing I would want from a Microsoft browser is actually keeping up to date with the latest in security protocols and crypto algorithms. IE has always been several years behind everyone else in this area, which just meant developers had to keep their websites less secure just to be able to serve IE users as well. That needs to end.

I don't necessarily want Microsoft to be a leader in this area (not sure I'd trust Microsoft with any new security protocols anyway), but at the very least it should be a fast-follower. Looking forward to Microsoft adopting ChaCha20-Poly1305 or at least helping to speed up the standardization at IETF and then adopt that standard if their excuse right now is that they can't adopt "non-finalized standards".

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

#10

Post by lawnchair_larry » Thu, Feb 26, 2015, 5:59 PM UTC

Based on the team pics, it looks like they got rid of individual offices over there. That's too bad.