
Microsoft considers adopting WebKit for Internet Explorer - rlm
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/11/06/microsofts_ballmer_considers_using_webkit_within_ie.html
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biohacker42
It makes sense.

Apple did not chose it because they are commie hippies.

They are a cut throat for profit company and they chose it because it is a
free and good code base.

And that makes development cheaper and faster - good for any for profit
company,

There is also no giving up of control to speak of. You can fork any time you
like, and you can do what ever you like. You lose no control.

So why wouldn't Microsoft do it?

Pride, not invented here syndrome, internal politics, what ever, I just don't
think we'll see it happen any time soon. But I hope to be proven wrong.

~~~
Herring
If you were Apple, you would want to decrease the costs of switching to a new
browser. The same's not true for Microsoft.

~~~
neilc
MS would also face a _considerable_ cost in emulating the various IE
brokenness in a WebKit-based browser (and accurate emulation would be very
important to a lot of people).

~~~
ivank
If Microsoft adopts WebKit, they'll probably keep IE7 emulation mode in, as it
is now in IE8. I doubt they'll try to port IE bugs to WebKit; there's just too
many.

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unalone
God, I wish it was a possibility. But this headline seems specious. Ballmer's
saying that for the time being Microsoft is staying the same. Them
"considering" the route means nothing for current development.

If Internet Explorer become a WebKit browser I'd cry with joy.

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tlrobinson
Yes please.

Though this was apparently an off the cuff remark. I'll believe it when I see
it. I also take anything reported by AppleInsider with a grain of salt.

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honeybee
Simply: no, microsoft is _not_ considering adopting WebKit for IE.

This appleinsider article, and others like it, took an out-of-context
statement by Ballmer and stretched it into a farce.

I happen to live in Seattle and have friends who work on the IE team. IE8
sports a completely new rendering engine built in-house. It ain't webkit. My
friends claim that when it is finished the new engine will render things,
y'know, in a standards-compliant manner. Personally, I'm not holding my breath
:-)

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mattmaroon
I don't really care much about their desktop browser, but dear God I hope they
do something about the mobile one. It's truly awful.

I actually like WinMo 6 for the most part, but find myself using third-party
browsers, which is not nearly as seamless an experience as it is on the
desktop.

~~~
jodrellblank
Well you're in luck, they're bringing the IE6 engine to Windows Mobile:

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10039152-56.html>

~~~
charlesju
That is the worst idea ever, IE6 is such a piece of junk.

~~~
mattmaroon
Yes but trust me, it's an improvement for Win Mo.

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lacker
I'm sad to say it but this doesn't make sense. Strategically, the easier it is
to develop web applications, the less people are dependent on Windows. It is
to Microsoft's advantage to make web development as hard as possible.
Therefore they will try to _break_ compatibility whenever possible.

~~~
snprbob86
I still don't understand why everyone subscribes to this conspiracy theory...

Microsoft builds web apps. Lots of them. The IE issues suck for those teams
too. Microsoft is building an online version of Office which needs to work in
IE, FF, and Safari. They are also building a huge collection of Live services
web apps. Why would they make it harder on themselves?

~~~
andreyf
Inaction doesn't require a conspiracy - it would take a lot of resources to
fix IE, so if it's not in Microsoft's interests to fix it, they won't. (I
don't agree with lacker that they break it intensionally)

Microsoft isn't in the business of revolutionizing the computing market
anymore. It's in the business of sustaining a billion-$ enterprise based on on
the status quo.

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jfornear
What are the advantages for Microsoft if they were to make the change to
WebKit? I know developers would love it, but is it really worth giving up
complete control on their end? When it comes down to it they have their own
best interest in mind, not developers'.

~~~
jeroen
They would have a faster and more compliant engine than they seem to be able
to build themselves.

And "giving up complete control"? We're only talking about the rendering
engine, not the rest of the browser. And WebKit is open source, they can just
fork it if MS is unhappy with where it is going.

~~~
jwilliams
> They would have a faster and more compliant engine than they seem to be able
> to build themselves.

I don't believe it's a lack of ability - Microsoft could easily produce a
standard complaint browser. Adopting WebKit doesn't necessarily they would
keep it compliant.

Given how important IE is to the Operating System in general, I doubt
Microsoft could do this technically - not without breaking a raft of things...
Given the incompatibility bumps with Vista I'll suspect they're would be
seeking a more conservative path for the moment.

~~~
axod
"Microsoft could easily produce a standard complaint browser"

So why don't they? Is it to hold back the web so that they milk their desktop
applications like Office a little bit more?

~~~
briansmith
Download IE8 beta 2.

~~~
ivank
It has event bugs all the way back from IE6. It's not even close to compliant,
except for the most complained-about things.

~~~
briansmith
DOM 2 event support and other javascript issues are easy to work around. If
you use any kind of framework like jQuery then you usually don't even have to
worry about them.

~~~
axod
That's a silly argument. The creators of the framework _really_ have to worry
about them.

IE8 seems to be worse than the rest. Once again my site is broken in IE8. Just
like it was in IE7 when that came out. They can't even keep the same basic
functionality as previous versions.

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halo
I don't see it happening. Webkit is LGPL, and Microsoft have always been anti-
GPL. It'd be a major shift in their position to suddenly embrace it out of
nowhere.

The Internet Explorer's Trident engine is slowly but surely catching up with
its competitors, so it's less of an issue than it was a couple of years ago.
Let's not forget IE8 passes Acid2. The real problem for developers it that
users aren't upgrading from IE6 fast enough, and that's not going to change
whether Microsoft embrace Webkit or not.

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bradgessler
That would be awesome if this happened. It makes a lot of sense too;
proprietary HTML/JS parsing engines aren't necessarily a competitive advantage
these days...

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Zev
I read it as "Microsoft may look at Open Source" not "Microsoft may look at
WebKit"

