Microsoft begs Web devs not to make WebKit the new IE6


Recommended Posts

Redmond doesn't want Internet Explorer 10's standards compliance to go unnoticed.

Internet Explorer 10 is a fast browser with good standards compliance, and the version of Internet Explorer 10 included with Windows Phone 8 is no exception, as it's almost identical to its desktop sibling. But Internet Explorer 10 has a problem: Web developers don't expect to see it on the mobile Web. The mobile Web is dominated by WebKit-based browsers, and mobile sites tend to be developed exclusively for, and tested exclusively on, WebKit browsers. A similar problem exists for tablets.

Often the development is even narrower; although both Android and iOS sport WebKit-based browsers, iOS is the one that dominates mobile browser usage, and dominates testing as a result.

This situation is all rather familiar; WebKit, especially on iOS, is occupying a similar position to that once held by Internet Explorer 6 on the desktop, where Web content was "best viewed in Internet Explorer 6" and was prone to breaking in Netscape or Firefox.

Keen to avoid being left out, Microsoft is imploring Web developers to adapt their sites. In a recent blog post, the software giant explains a variety of ways in which devs can update their sites to work well in browsers other than WebKit. Key to this was proper handling of incompatible features.

There are several sources of incompatibility. The hardest case is features that are simply proprietary to WebKit; these need to be worked around in some way or other.

Most other cases are a result of the standardization process used for Web specifications. When a CSS or JavaScript specification is under development and still subject to change, browsers implementing it are supposed to add a browser-specific prefix to the pieces of CSS or JavaScript they use. So for example, while still in development, WebKit's implementation of CSS rounded borders should use properties like -webkit-border-radius. Once the standard is stable and a browser is implementing that stable standard, the property should be renamed to simply border-radius.

For some standards, both browsers implement the stable version, without any prefix required. However, developers often fail to update their pages to accommodate this improving standard conformance, leaving their pages using prefixed properties, but not including equivalent unprefixed code. In this case, the solution is typically to remove the prefixes. Sometimes, the spec still isn't stable and the different browsers implement mutually incompatible versions of the spec, each with their own prefixes. In this case, the properties must be translated from one dialect to the other.

There are also some cases where the translation is more complex still, particularly when it comes to handling touch input. Apple pioneered work in this field in Safari, and a specification called Touch Events based on Safari (but created without Apple's involvement) is currently a Candidate Recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the body that works on producing Web standards. Microsoft has proposed an alternative system called Pointer Events which would handle not just touch but also mouse and pen input in a consistent way. For both technical and legal reasons, W3C has decided that rather than work on Touch Events version 2, all future development in this area will be to Pointer Events.

The problem for developers is that WebKit supports Touch Events; Internet Explorer 10 supports a prefixed version of Pointer Events. Translating between the two should be broadly possible, but there are nuances to this; it's not simply a case of doing a quick search and replace.

For those who remember the Internet Explorer of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Microsoft's stance may seem a little amusing ? the company wasn't so bullish on following standards back when it commanded more than 90 percent of the browser market share. Redmond has been banging the "use standards" drum for some years now, and has been actively participating in standard development and stabilization.

http://arstechnica.c...it-the-new-ie6/

IE needs to die completely.. end of..

and, no, IE8, IE9 and IE10 will be the new IE6. Apple and Google along with Mozilla are following W3C and WHATWG in implementing new features and support for CSS3 and HTML and thus when we build web stuff today it just works across all of these browsers with most of the fancy effects and we are still jumping hoops and having to put up with Microsoft's IE crap.

So ironic but expected that Microsoft can't understand why they are terrible in this regard as well. IE 10 is better than all other IEs but it's STILL IE and it's still Microsoft, so we will continue supporting webkit because it evolves and browsers update themselves to be always current on user's machines while Microsoft still peddles their old proprietary crap..

Hey Microsoft, here's an idea for you.. MAKE IE based on webkit and help build a better webkit base since it's open and help developers develop for one HTML/web engine? Oh you don't want to, or you have to deal with your users who you screwed with terrible IEs? Well the web and internet in general won't wait for you. Nobody cares what you think anymore. You have shown us what web looks like with you and it's not a pretty picture and it's so ironic that we are being warned by MS about competing rendering engine not being "good" for us.

Just die already and stop whining since you are a decade late to the next generation.

  • Like 2

If microsoft really cared about web developers and standards compliance they would release IE10 for vista and backport the necessary technologies for it to run. In april 2014 i'm sure we will see a lot of website drop support for IE6 but unfortunately vista came with IE7 if i remember correctly so they can't really ditch IE7 or IE8 for quite some time.

Good to see Boz supporting the use of proprietary extensions and opposed to standards compliance. I guess it's easier than having to defend Microsoft.

Webkit is the standard. For both desktop and mobile. End of.

And btw, if Microsoft wants what's best for developers it should, as I said, dump their IE engine completely, join Webkit movement and create IE based on webkit and then contribute to the webkit based along with Apple, Google to improve it, so we can have finally one HTML rendering engine standard. Mozilla, btw, should do the same.

They can still make their own JS engine (like Google does with V8 and Apple does with Nitro) if they want to to compete on speed or add unique features to their IE browsers (actual browser features not how it renders content) and we can finally build developer tools and all kinds of design support and fancy effects when we have all major browsers on a single, universal rendering engine.

This would truly move the web forward in ways unseen before. Actually it would give us a terrific web platform that would be similar to Flash (and I mean from the compatibility standpoint) and we could finally build stuff that's creative and pushing the envelope instead of polluting our code with 15 different hacks just to render content properly on IE browsers.

Given that Webkit is an open source rendering engine, The argument about proprietary bits is stupid. Either open the source to Trident, or examine Webkit and build better support for those features into IE. Sounds like Microsoft are pulling an Apple here and blaming someone else for their lazy coding.

IE needs to die completely.. end of..

What a load of rubbish.

IE10 is a superb browser and Firefox, Chrome et al need to take a few lessons from it.

Standard compliance all the way, Opera and Webkit are the new destroyers of the internet. and i say that as a Chrome user.

  • Like 1

I'm all for standards - BUT there come's a point that we need to realise that there can never be a standard that everyone is willing to adopt. It's human instinct to think "I'm better than you".

If Microsoft based IE on webkit, then we might have a chance of MAKING webkit the new "standard". I, personally, think it's our best bet. And from a developer's point of view - what do you prefer coding for? Webkit? or Trident. I know which it is for me - i've never had to put conditional comments into code for various versions of webkit like I have to on a regular basis for IE6/IE7/IE8/IE9 and no doubt, at some point, IE10.

Given that Webkit is an open source rendering engine, The argument about proprietary bits is stupid. Either open the source to Trident, or examine Webkit and build better support for those features into IE. Sounds like Microsoft are pulling an Apple here and blaming someone else for their lazy coding.

"Lazy coding"? This is about websites using proprietary WebKit CSS properties over CSS standard properties, it's in no way Microsoft's fault.

Hell, Mozilla and Opera have the same concerns, Opera now even tries to parse the proprietary WebKit rules (In case the author actually wrote the value according to the standard)

It would also help if the W3C moved a little quicker on finalizing standards. Take border radius CSS for example. The gap between the non standard prefix versions and the standards compliant version was far far to long.

What a load of rubbish.

IE10 is a superb browser and Firefox, Chrome et al need to take a few lessons from it.

Standard compliance all the way, Opera and Webkit are the new destroyers of the internet. and i say that as a Chrome user.

html5.jpg

Sorry to be the spanner in the works but Chrome still has superior HTML5 support

So what's the deal with IE6? What was so special about it? I don't understand.

It's special because it won't go away. It came out in 2001 and people still use it to this day. IE basically owned the market back then and Microsoft just sat back and let it stagnate. They didn't release IE7 until years later and only because they suddenly had competition from Firefox. Their pure laziness and greed stuck the world with a proprietary outdated browser with terrible standards compliance for nearly a decade. IE is only now becoming a good browser again, but its reputation is so badly tarnished that it may be too late to save it.

I remember when people claimed that about IE, and it was just as wrong then too.

Yeah, the only difference is that Webkit is open while IE was and still is proprietary. It's a night and day difference. Not to mention that browsers who use Webkit (Safari, Chrome) are updated transparently to the user making the very latest version immediately adopted at 90% marketshare.

It's not even beginning to compare to IE6 and never will.

IE10 will continue to linger just like everything microsoft and IE long after IE 11 is out and this fragmentation is the worst thing that has caused the web the biggest damage in progressing forward.

Sorry to be the spanner in the works but Chrome still has superior HTML5 support

That is indeed true but with every developer release the Chrome browser slowly becomes more and more bloated and far from what a browser should be while IE10 appears to be moving in a better direction. Of course these things are always in flux and hopefully all this healthy competition will leave us end consumes (and us developers) with a win win situation.

That is indeed true but with every developer release the Chrome browser slowly becomes more and more bloated and far from what a browser should be while IE10 appears to be moving in a better direction. Of course these things are always in flux and hopefully all this healthy competition will leave us end consumes (and us developers) with a win win situation.

That's an odd assertion because Chrome still burns through benchmarks like Peacekeeper with a score twice as high as that as IE attains, it still starts up faster, and the installation package is still nearly the same size for me (between 2010 and 2012 the download size increased by about 10 MB and that can be pretty much wholly accounted for by the inclusion of Flash and the HTML5 video decoder plugins), the binary and DLL's are pretty much the same size as ever before. The installation file for IE10 however was something like 48 MB, about 12 MB more than the Chrome installer.

It's special because it won't go away. It came out in 2001 and people still use it to this day. IE basically owned the market back then and Microsoft just sat back and let it stagnate. They didn't release IE7 until years later and only because they suddenly had competition from Firefox. Their pure laziness and greed stuck the world with a proprietary outdated browser with terrible standards compliance for nearly a decade. IE is only now becoming a good browser again, but its reputation is so badly tarnished that it may be too late to save it.

No matter how good IE 10 is and it's compliance with W3C it is plagued by the same problem. Microsoft. As long as the browser is proprietary it shouldn't be taken seriously and will continue to do damage to the web.

As noted, Microsoft should join Webkit and be done with it. Then, they can contribute to the webkit base, agree on new features with Apple and Google and everyone supports same things in the future. It would mean they would also make transparent updating to IE so it's never stagnant and have users run a different version but the latest. At that point they wouldn't even have an issue with monopoly because their browser base would be open source and would be on the same playing field with Google and Apple.

In other words they could improve it and make the web truly unified and also make developers' lives much easier.

That is indeed true but with every developer release the Chrome browser slowly becomes more and more bloated and far from what a browser should be while IE10 appears to be moving in a better direction. Of course these things are always in flux and hopefully all this healthy competition will leave us end consumes (and us developers) with a win win situation.
more and more bloated? It still feels good and I don't mind the few MB increase in the installation file.
That's an odd assertion because Chrome still burns through benchmarks like Peacekeeper with a score twice as high as that as IE attains, it still starts up faster, and the installation package is still nearly the same size for me (between 2010 and 2012 the download size increased by about 10 MB and that can be pretty much wholly accounted for by the inclusion of Flash and the HTML5 video decoder plugins), the binary and DLL's are pretty much the same size as ever before. The installation file for IE10 however was something like 48 MB, about 12 MB more than the Chrome installer.

Perhaps meaning bloated in the sense of resource usage. On my particular hardware anyway using the current official releases with a similar set of addons, Chromium typically uses 3-4 times as much memory as Firefox (at least, seen it even higher) and starts up a bit slower. Pretty much the only place where Chromium seems faster is on benchmark sites.. day to day usage, I find Firefox to be overall faster and smoother, I rarely use it but IE overall seems faster (and significantly lighter) as well on the day to day stuff.

Webkit is the standard. For both desktop and mobile. End of.

That's ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that webkit has a tiny share of the desktop market and the mobile market isn't big enough yet to matter, what you're advocating is no different to the situation that existed when IE6 owned the market. The only standards that matter are the ones agreed by W3C and other bodies and it's up to browsers to maintain compatibility.

Given that Webkit is an open source rendering engine, The argument about proprietary bits is stupid. Either open the source to Trident, or examine Webkit and build better support for those features into IE. Sounds like Microsoft are pulling an Apple here and blaming someone else for their lazy coding.

Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.

  • Like 3

Perhaps meaning bloated in the sense of resource usage. On my particular hardware anyway using the current official releases with a similar set of addons, Chromium typically uses 3-4 times as much memory as Firefox (at least, seen it even higher) and starts up a bit slower. Pretty much the only place where Chromium seems faster is on benchmark sites.. day to day usage, I find Firefox to be overall faster and smoother.

All browsers with tab process isolation consume more memory than those that lack it. I'm happy to sacrifice a bit of memory usage for the knowledge that a tab crash won't completely torpedo every browser window I have open. And unlike Firefox, Chrome hasn't been plagued by memory leaks since it's inception.

That's ridiculous. Ignoring the fact that webkit has a tiny share of the desktop market and the mobile market isn't big enough yet to matter, what you're advocating is no different to the situation that existed when IE6 owned the market. The only standards that matter are the ones agreed by W3C and other bodies and it's up to browsers to maintain compatibility.

Chrome is the world's #1 web browser on the desktop. I'm not sure that qualifies as a "tiny share" ;) Sorry, who doesn't know what they're talking about? :laugh:

http://techland.time...nless-it-didnt/

more and more bloated? It still feels good and I don't mind the few MB increase in the installation file.

Don't get me wrong, i'm a Chrome user and it still p***** on the competition. Maybe it's in my head but it just doesn't seem as smooth as it used to.

any way the whole point of this thread is about the rendering engines and use of non standard methods of rendering content which i am all against.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Poll: Grand Theft Auto VI price predictions, cast your vote by Pulasthi Ariyasinghe After years of waiting, Rockstar will be solidifying the launch date of Grand Theft Auto VI with the launch of pre-orders next week. While the studio has confirmed a date for this occasion, it is yet to attach a price to the highly anticipated game. So let's see what our readers think it will cost at launch. The Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders will kick off on June 25 for digital and physical editions. Unless some last-minute changes happen, the release date will be November 19, 2026, across Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5. Unfortunately, there's still no information about a PC version from the developer or the publisher Take-Two. Now the question becomes, how much will Grand Theft Auto VI cost at launch? The game is predicted by some analysts to be the biggest launch of an entertainment product ever. With the amount of hype that has been built behind it and with ballooning development costs, Take-Two may price this Grand Theft Auto entry differently from other AAA titles. The current price of a AAA game is $69.99. That norm almost rose to $79.99 before calming down. But with such a massive release, Grand Theft Auto VI may be the game that pushes the boundary again. It's also possible that Take-Two keeps the price relatively low to increase the number of players that jump in early and keep them hooked on Grand Theft Auto Online to spend on microtransactions for years to come. Keep in mind that the below poll is asking for a prediction of the standard edition price, not a deluxe or any other special edition that Take-Two will introduce for additional benefits. Also, there is also the chance of the company splitting up the campaign and online portions. If you think that will happen, put your vote on what you think will be the total cost of the two. Poll Poll: How much will Grand Theft Auto VI cost? $59.99 $69.99 $79.99 $89.99 $100 or more Submit Vote If you have a very specific prediction in mind, sound off in the comments below.
    • Would you please fix your graphics. They are outdated and don't fit the article.
    • The Light of Life? We actually do glow till our Death, study finds by Sayan Sen Image by Rafael Rendon via Pexels A study by researchers at the University of Calgary has found that living organisms produce an extremely faint light known as ultraweak photon emission, and that this glow appears to drop significantly after death. The research was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry in April 2025 and quickly drew widespread attention, leading to more than 200 news stories about the findings. Ultraweak photon emission (or UPE), sometimes called biophoton emission, refers to tiny amounts of light released by living cells as a result of normal biological activity. A photon is the basic particle of light, and researchers say every living system examined so far, including plants and animals, has been found to emit these photons. The glow is far too faint to be seen by the human eye. “I suppose it has a little to do with people being reminded of auras,” says Dr. Christoph Simon, PhD, one of the authors of the study and a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science. “It is a fact that living beings glow. It’s a very weak glow, but it’s there and visible with very sensitive cameras.” According to the study, the light involved is extremely weak, ranging from 10 to 1,000 photons per square centimetre per second across a spectral range of 200 to 1,000 nanometres. For comparison, a nanometre is one-billionth of a metre and is commonly used to measure wavelengths of light. Detecting emissions at such low levels requires highly specialized equipment. To study the phenomenon, researchers used electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (EMCCD) and charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras. These imaging systems are designed to detect extremely small amounts of light, including individual photons, while minimizing background noise. The technology allowed researchers to capture signals that would otherwise be impossible to observe. The team worked with the Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in Ottawa to examine photon emissions in mice. Researchers took two-hour exposure images of the animals before and after death and compared the results. “We saw that the level of light that they emit – this biophoton glow – is distinctly different between living and dead animals,” says Dr. Daniel Oblak, PhD, an associate professor in Physics and Astronomy and the corresponding author of the study. The images showed a clear decrease in photon emissions after death across the entire body of each mouse. According to the researchers, this provided direct evidence that living and dead tissue produce different levels of ultraweak photon emission. “It’s a very small amount and it’s, of course, very tricky to detect,” Oblak says. The study grew out of discussions between Simon, whose research interests include quantum biology, and Oblak, whose work focuses on detecting light for quantum communication experiments. Quantum biology is a field that explores whether processes described by quantum physics, which studies matter and energy at very small scales, may also play a role in living systems. “Since I work as a quantum physicist on light detection for quantum communication, I thought that experimentally we have a lot of the tools to be able to detect the light,” Oblak explains. The researchers also investigated UPE in plants and found that the light changed in response to stress. When plants were exposed to higher temperatures or physically injured, their photon emissions increased. Chemical treatments also affected the glow. Among the substances tested, the local anesthetic benzocaine produced the strongest emission response when applied to injured plant tissue. These findings suggest that ultraweak photon emission is closely linked to biochemical and metabolic activity inside living organisms. Metabolism refers to the chemical reactions that allow cells and organisms to stay alive and function. Because these reactions change when an organism experiences stress, injury or disease, researchers believe UPE may provide a way to monitor those changes. The researchers stress that the glow is a physical and biological phenomenon, not a metaphysical one. Oblak says more research is needed to understand exactly how the light is produced and what information it may reveal about the condition of living tissue. “We must understand what that is to figure out what’s happening,” he says. “If we can understand how that relates to certain influences on the body – stress, diseases – then that could be used as a diagnostic tool.” The researchers believe the technique could eventually help scientists study health and disease without invasive procedures. Because UPE can be measured without adding dyes, markers or labels, it may offer a way to monitor whether tissue is healthy, damaged or alive. In plants, it could help researchers better understand how organisms respond to injury, heat and other forms of stress. While the work is still in its early stages, the study demonstrates that ultraweak photon emission imaging can provide a non-invasive and label-free way to observe biological activity. Researchers say the approach could become a useful tool for studying vitality, stress responses and other important processes in both animals and plants. Source: University of Calgary, ACS publication This article was generated with some help from AI and reviewed by an editor. Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, this material is used for the purpose of news reporting. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
    • Damn, I loved this show back in the day.  
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      hhgygy earned a badge
      One Year In
    • One Month Later
      AMV earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      AMV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Collaborator
      ryansurfer98 went up a rank
      Collaborator
    • One Month Later
      Eurosoft10 earned a badge
      One Month Later
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      512
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      171
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      82
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      74
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      72
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!