Dear Microsoft, please use WebKit

There will come a time when WebKit isn't innovating the fastest, just like the previous darling browser engines (IE included). A dominant WebKit engine isn't really any more desirable than a dominant IE.<p>I would much prefer that MS wise up about the special requirements of a browser engine and do as well as they can with their own. Opera is more than welcome to switch to Webkit though. :)

One of the things that IE is working on for IE9 along with Mozilla and Webkit is more rendering and layout-based tests, so when you specify things like "dotted line border", it will look identical in all browsers.<p>Things like this will serve the web better than "Hey everyone, let's all use Webkit".

This post is relevant to why this advice will not and should not be heeded: <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard-lets-go-shopping.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard...</a><p>In summary: "If it's a core business function -- do it yourself, no matter what."<p>Building runtimes (and a web browser is a runtime for web apps) is a core business function to Microsoft.

Yes, it is a pain to test pages in different browsers. But I would prefer to have competition in the browser front.

"When you don’t have to worry about the development of a rendering engine then you can focus on the actual browser. Google understood this with Chrome and it is fast climbing up the charts. I know that WebKit development is essentially controlled by Apple, but since it is open source who really cares?"<p>Actually, Google surpassed Apple in commits to the WebKit repository a few months ago. Google adopted WebKit with Chrome but by no means are they not worried about the rendering engine's development.

&#62; "In a perfect world Mozilla would adopt it as well, but I don't see that happening because they have too much invested in Gecko along with too many different projects using that particular engine. Maybe one day though."<p>Hasn't occurred to him that maybe MS also has invested too much in its rendering engine?

"I’m tired because it’s 2010 and we are still dealing with the same issues that we thought we were solving with CSS back in 2002."<p>I don't know, maybe you weren't doing real work in this industry back then, but things are light years beyond what they were like in 2002. We've got JavaScript implementations that actually perform well. DOM works largely the same across browsers (remember that Layers debacle from Netscape? WTF). PNGs work properly. We have <i>largely</i> similar rendering across all browsers. I'm talking about things at least being in roughly the same place on the screen, having mostly the same styling, whereas you couldn't even count on things being in the same general location between browsers before.<p>"We are all working from the same W3C specs so why can’t we at least make everything render the same way."<p>Have you read the W3C spec? It defines a plethora of optional features and many key required features are ambiguously stated. In other words, it's a poorly written spec. What do you think is more likely, Microsoft intentionally breaking spec or the spec being poorly worded? Considering the differences between Gecko and WebKit that you yourself have also mentioned, I'm going with the common denominator here, the spec.

Maybe I completely missed the point, but, why WebKit? Why is WebKit better? I mean, I could use the exact same arguments for Gecko, and even for the IE rendering engine. I mean, if everyone uses the IE rendering engine, it'll always look the same, but that wouldn't resolve all problems.

There is a theory which states that if we did adopt one rendering engine to rule them all, the healthy competition that keeps (most of) the various rendering engines innovating would collapse and progress would stall.<p>Eventually, some upstart would seize the opportunity by launching a new browser with a better rendering engine.<p>There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

IE already CAN use webkit:<p><a href="http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/</a><p>Just gotta convince the users to install it.<p>But that's going to be way easier than convincing Microsoft to dump millions in invested development.

If you can't convince Mozilla to adopt WebKit, how can you expect MS to do the same? I really wish Mozilla and Opera adopted WebKit and devs from all the non-MS browsers worked together on WebKit. Then we'd have an IE and non-IE web. Right now, we have a IE vs FF vs Safari vs Chrome vs Opera web and it really really sucks as a developer.<p>The whole "develop for standards" doesn't work when each browser renders things slightly differently. While coding up <a href="http://bulletxt.zetabee.com" rel="nofollow">http://bulletxt.zetabee.com</a> I realized that each browser handles line-height, padding, margins, and font-alignment differently, especially when applied to textarea. Sure, most of the non-IE browsers handle things in a similar way but similar is not good enough in many instances. If I do margin-top: -4px, it works fine in Chrome and Safari but I need to make it -6px in Opera and -2px in Firefox. IE doesn't even work that way so I end up doing something completely different.<p>I would be completely fine with there being 1 rendering engine and 1 JS engine no matter the browser. And all browsers could improve on the speed/performance of these engines without changing the output or requiring different input. If I do padding-right:10px for a float:left element with position:fixed, I want it to look the exact same in ALL browsers.<p>I know standards try to do that but it just doesn't work. Standards work in theory but in practice, it is the code that works. WebKit works like WebKit. If I created the spec/standard based on WebKit and implemented it based on this new standard, it would NOT be WebKit. Standards work well for protocols and communication methods but for actually rendering arbitrarily complex window elements, they don't work and last decade of failed attempts at standardization have shown us that. Think of how many websites/tutorials/articles exist solely to help deal with browser inconsistencies. Now imagine if that effort could have been made towards something productive.

I miss the days the web was about content and people didn't expect accuracy down to the pixel in their HTML.

I wish it were this simple but it's not.<p>Most small and medium sized businesses still run at least one web applications that was written when IE had 90% of the market and which relies on Microsoft's backwards implementations.<p>I suspect Microsoft couldn't make Webkit backwards compatible to those apps if it wanted to. The trident code base probably has quirks Microsoft itself has completely forgotten about. But many small web based programs rely on those quirks to run.

<i>The logic behind this is that the browser wars aren’t won by who can render HTML the best, browser wars are won by speed and features.</i><p>I don't think the author understands the nature of the "browser wars". He seems to think that none of the players have had the specific desire to have their browser dominate so that it could control, through the power of <i>de facto</i> standardization, exactly how HTML &#38; kin will behave. There's one notable player, namely the one he's beseeching, who has historically been aiming at exactly that. I'll grant that it's possible that they're in the process of having a change of heart: maybe in the future their desire for market share will be a mere matter of pointing user's searches to bing instead of google. But we're still waiting on delivery of a version of IE that proves this.<p>For all we know, they could be stalling to switch strategies at the last moment possible. But I think it's more likely that they will strategically leave something like Canvas out and continue the same old strategy, but on a slightly different front.

No, one company controlling the rendering would be a bad thing.<p>What they need to do (IMHO) is to have W3C create a reference implementation of the spec (and tests) and release that open source with say a BSD like license. So the different engines can use that if they want. Also if the browser doesn't display it exactly like the reference implementation then it shouldn't be called a web browser.

Does the author like AJAX? Because it grew out of Microsoft's initially IE-only XMLHttpRequest functionality. A marketplace in which multiple browsers compete and the best platform-specific features rise up to enjoy broader cross-platform support is what's best for the web. Dear Microsoft, please ignore this misguided blogger.

If MS changed their browser so significantly, many websites would break. A doctor's office I support uses dozens of web sites for insurance, lab results, hospital admissions, etc... I would have installed Firefox or Chrome on all the PCs if the web site worked properly on those browsers. The ugly truth is that many government and corporate systems _only_ test their sites in IE. Its a shame, but thats the state of the industry. If MS changed to WebKit, many of their enterprise customers would feel pain.

I really don't mind developing for the latest and greatest versions of the popular browsers. I think there is a surprising amount of congruency among them. Where it gets difficult is developing for older versions of browsers.<p>This article should have made an argument about retiring old browsers faster and getting people to use the latest versions sooner.<p>Other than that, I can empathize with his position. Web development is hard. I guess that's why we get paid to do it.

I don't understand how people who favour browser diversity can be making websites unless they are masochists. MS can use WebKit and still innovate. It's not either-or.<p>If MS would just implement the &#60;canvas&#62; tag (and according to the standard) then I'd be a little less disgruntled.<p>I really don't care if they all use WebKit or they all adhered more closely to some standard. I want less work for me to create a website. I guess I could always use Flash. ;-)

<i>"I’m insane because it just makes too much sense to me and when something makes sense it usually means large corporations won’t do it"</i><p>Of course not. If a corporate IT department wanted everyone to use a WebKit browser, then they'd already have done it.

Didn't read it all, but I think creating an unambiguous specification is indeed very hard, if not impossible.

Never gonna happen. Too many enterprise apps depend on IEs render engine and ActiveX.

Please don't.<p>If Microsoft starts using WebKit, they'll find a way to fragment it and make their implementation of WebKit incompatible and unmergeable with the rest of the crowd.<p>No. Please, Microsoft, stay away from the projects I depend on.

The argument for one browser vendor switching from engine A to another engine B "just like that" is <i>entirely</i> invalid unless engine B is <i>strictly</i> better than engine A. And by the looks of it there are areas in which IE9 Trident is going to be better than WebKit (e.g. hardware acceleration), which means that the argument is invalid. The argument for Mozilla switching to WebKit similarly falls flat -- Gecko is better than WebKit in several areas -- it is the only engine capable of rendering Firefox's interface, for instance.

WebKit sucks, when it comes to performance, compared to Chrome and Opera. I'm sure you'll always find compatibility 'issues' but Microsoft is also planning to pull out all the stops when it comes to HTML 5 application performance.