

Ask HN: Why can't Microsoft make a better browser? - mwill

Basically I want to know why IE, mainly the rendering engine, seems so fundamentally broken compared to the competition.<p>I'm sure the IE dev team are awesome developers, but it seems like each IE release is significantly behind other major browsers, and attracts the ire and hatred of web devs around the world.<p>Surely the IE team is aware of the complaints against IE, and the multitude of cool things that just don't work properly even in the newer versions of IE.<p>What's stopping them from focusing on supporting the features devs want, or rivalling other browsers in compatibility, or just straight up use webkit or something similar?
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Fizzer
_What's stopping them from focusing on supporting the features devs want_

They're trying to be more customer-focused, but with limited success. I don't
know anyone that uses slices, for example. They did invent private browsing
though, but it was quickly copied by the other browsers.

This doesn't mean they ignore developers. The integrated developer tools are
pretty good.

 _or rivalling other browsers in compatibility_

They've been trying since IE7, but they're basically being out-engineered.
They 're trying to keep backwards compatibility with all of the IE plug-ins
which slows them down, and of course they also started out behind.

 _or just straight up use webkit_

Microsoft suffers from the not-invented-here syndrome. They'll use their own
engine or die trying.

------
pbreit
I don't see any reason, competitive or otherwise, why it cannot at least match
the basic rendering qualities of Webkit and Mozilla. It's maniacal that
something like Twitter Bootstrap renders so poorly in a current version of IE.

There were two decent reasons why IE performed differently than its
competitors: 1) competitive distribution of technologies such as ActiveX and
2) inability of locked down computers (ie, corporate seats) to update. But
neither of these reasons hold water anymore (if they ever did).

