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Boz, on 19 November 2012 - 06:28, said:
First of all.. this right here shows that you are uninformed or too young to remember/know.
Other browsers died or didn't get popularity in the time of IE5 and IE6 because Microsoft held a monopoly with Windows and made IE defacto standard due to forcing it on everyone. Netscape and other browsers at that time didn't stand a chance against Microsoft because Microsoft had IE on both Windows and they had IE even on a Mac. Not to mention that Microsoft did something even worse then (what they are actually doing now) is that they took Javascript and made their own standard JScript that was slightly different from ECMAScript based Javascript so they could make others build websites and stuff and it wouldn't work on other browsers. In essence, the most evil and destructive thing for innovation and progress they could do. I remember this very vividly because I built websites back then and I remember the nightmare we had with it..
Only when Microsoft was legally pushed by DOJ and others to stop with monopoly other browsers started getting a fair share of spotlight.
It had very little to do with the "quality" of other browsers.
Second, Google is pushing Webkit because it's an open source HTML rendering engine. Google doesn't own webkit and they dominate the web because their browser is hands down the best browser, and it's not the only webkit browser. They are not forcing the browser on anyone. They are NOTHING like MIcrosoft. Google invests in open source technologies because they want web to be open, unchained from proprietary garbage because they know that if there's a fair competition they will win out due to quality products and by killling proprietary dependencies they can offer advertising more freely. Yes, they want to sell advertising. Nothing wrong with that and if they push everything proprietary the whole web and market is better off because products and services will compete on quality and not proprietary chains and monopoly and unlike with Microsoft ANYONE can make better product than Google and compete on the same webkit base or anything that's open source because they are not blackmailed by anyone with licensing fees or platform holder. This is why they bought and invested and opened the WebM and VP8 video codec. Because they wanted to get rid of the proprietary h.264 format and offer something that is truly free and open source and where NOONE will have to pay licensing to anyone to use video and audio on the web.
The beauty of open source is that it's not dictated by Google. It's dictated by everyone who contributes to it. So if Google stops innovating with Chrome, Webkit will continue evolving and innovating because it's not owned by Google and someone else will rise up as the next best webkit browser because they continue innovating . That's what open source allows them. How can you not get that? Some of you can't really understand, or are unwilling to understand that there's a HUGE difference between Microsoft and proprietary software and something that is completely open and not owned by anyone. Webkit has nothing to do with Google. They just contribute to it just like everyone else.
Microsoft OWNS IE. It's completely proprietary This means that if Microsoft drops the ball again, you have ZERO choices. You are stuck with garbage like we were with IE6. Not to mention that it's not cross platform, it's tied completely to Windows and furthermore Microsoft wants to have developers build apps and everything for IE10 for Metro and desktop that will tie into WinRT with more proprietary hooks and IE exclusive crap that won't work anywhere else BUT on IE for Metro/Windows.
It's absolutely not the same as you claim. Stop trying to justify Microsoft because what you are claiming makes zero sense.
Other browsers died or didn't get popularity in the time of IE5 and IE6 because Microsoft held a monopoly with Windows and made IE defacto standard due to forcing it on everyone. Netscape and other browsers at that time didn't stand a chance against Microsoft because Microsoft had IE on both Windows and they had IE even on a Mac. Not to mention that Microsoft did something even worse then (what they are actually doing now) is that they took Javascript and made their own standard JScript that was slightly different from ECMAScript based Javascript so they could make others build websites and stuff and it wouldn't work on other browsers. In essence, the most evil and destructive thing for innovation and progress they could do. I remember this very vividly because I built websites back then and I remember the nightmare we had with it..
Only when Microsoft was legally pushed by DOJ and others to stop with monopoly other browsers started getting a fair share of spotlight.
It had very little to do with the "quality" of other browsers.
Second, Google is pushing Webkit because it's an open source HTML rendering engine. Google doesn't own webkit and they dominate the web because their browser is hands down the best browser, and it's not the only webkit browser. They are not forcing the browser on anyone. They are NOTHING like MIcrosoft. Google invests in open source technologies because they want web to be open, unchained from proprietary garbage because they know that if there's a fair competition they will win out due to quality products and by killling proprietary dependencies they can offer advertising more freely. Yes, they want to sell advertising. Nothing wrong with that and if they push everything proprietary the whole web and market is better off because products and services will compete on quality and not proprietary chains and monopoly and unlike with Microsoft ANYONE can make better product than Google and compete on the same webkit base or anything that's open source because they are not blackmailed by anyone with licensing fees or platform holder. This is why they bought and invested and opened the WebM and VP8 video codec. Because they wanted to get rid of the proprietary h.264 format and offer something that is truly free and open source and where NOONE will have to pay licensing to anyone to use video and audio on the web.
The beauty of open source is that it's not dictated by Google. It's dictated by everyone who contributes to it. So if Google stops innovating with Chrome, Webkit will continue evolving and innovating because it's not owned by Google and someone else will rise up as the next best webkit browser because they continue innovating . That's what open source allows them. How can you not get that? Some of you can't really understand, or are unwilling to understand that there's a HUGE difference between Microsoft and proprietary software and something that is completely open and not owned by anyone. Webkit has nothing to do with Google. They just contribute to it just like everyone else.
Microsoft OWNS IE. It's completely proprietary This means that if Microsoft drops the ball again, you have ZERO choices. You are stuck with garbage like we were with IE6. Not to mention that it's not cross platform, it's tied completely to Windows and furthermore Microsoft wants to have developers build apps and everything for IE10 for Metro and desktop that will tie into WinRT with more proprietary hooks and IE exclusive crap that won't work anywhere else BUT on IE for Metro/Windows.
It's absolutely not the same as you claim. Stop trying to justify Microsoft because what you are claiming makes zero sense.
Not only do you start by rewriting history, you try to rewrite the present with non-sense. I use chrome (check the logs on the website). Everything you said was just outright wrong.
I mean I don't even know where to start because it's all just propaganda and pure lies. I bought my first PC in 1991 (it's not my first computer, my first computer was the Atari 800XL back in the early 80's).
I used the Internet before Trumpet Winsock was used with Mosaic. I used Netscape for years when you could even get a beta before 1.0 and it fit on a floppy disk. So, I remember what happened and you are wrong.
Netscape was free for education and if I remember personal and non-commercial use only. If you were a corporation you had to buy it. Netscape screwed themselves because when they start adding in Java it kept crashing all of the time when you visited a web page with Java and it became really bloated where it crashed a lot and was huge. Microsoft's browsers sucked for a long time and were not even usable until 5 came out and then 6 which did add in proprietary crap, you are right. IE did dominate but it did so because Netscape became unusable. It went like this for me... Unix Lynx (Text based that I used on Windows from Dialing in to a Unix system at a University from a Terminal program on Windows), Mosaic, Netscape, IE 5, IE 6, FireFox, and then Chrome for today. The first versions of IE were crap and everyone was using Netscape at the time, but because Netscape started screwing up and became unstable a bunch of us switched to IE because by then IE was just a better browser at the time. Those two were the only viable versions out and one was getting terrible and the other one was getting better, then Firefox came out and changed the world once again. Competition is a good thing and I agree with that, but you don't understand the history of what us nerds went through on Windows OSes before everyone else was on the Internet. I am speaking to a Windows only history here, Unix and Linux will have a different story.,
IE 9 and 10 is a complete rewrite of the HTML/Javascript engine (google channel9 an msdn channel to educate yourself). It is a rewrite based on the latest standards of the W3C standards.
Webkit is an engine that is open source (I believe this to be the case) that is also based on the W3C standard. IE uses 3D acceleration of the HTML5 standard to make things faster, this is not in the W3C standards, but it doesn't affect rendering other than speed.
Microsoft does not support WebGL which is not a part of the W3C HTML5 or CSS standard.
