I have mixed emotions as someone who had to support IE6 for years. It’s great that we no longer have to support whatever IE quirks still exist, but super sad that we’re down to what? 3 browser engines now?
I don't understand the concern over lack of browser engines.
There's only one Linux kernel and that seems to be working out just fine for all the distros using it and all the cloud operations running those distros. You could say that their are more Unixes than just Linux too, but among browser engines there are also Gecko, Servo and others [0].
WebKit and Blink are both open source too and with less restrictions than the Linux kernel since they're LGPL and not GPL.
This is an interesting counter take, and it’s clear that it’s not all doom and gloom.
On the other hand, as someone on macOS there are plenty of esoteric projects on github that work great, but are written specifically for Linux. Sometimes it’s just a matter of replacing Linux-specific headers to get them to build, but most of the time changing otherwise unrelated OS specificities is a real pain for the ultimate goal of getting on with whatever project I’m working on.
My fear is that standards development will become dictated by Google, leading to sites built to Google standards only— like the web becoming centered around AMP, for example.
There's only one Linux kernel that is primarily driven by volunteers, headed up by a non-profit, and does not define and interpret a shared resource (HTML/Javascript)
A monoculture of browser engines gives a lot of control to the parent organizations of those engines. Google gets to define the future of HTML and Javascript because theirs is the #1 engine by a wide margin, which in my opinion, they got to in part due to anticompetitive practices.
Licensing doesn't mean anything in terms of the monoculture because, let's be honest, there's only 1 Blink. You can fork, but you're still forking Google's spec of HTML.
I know this does not mean companies will stop USING these old systems but...
Thank god, finally!
So many companies have old school software that still runs in legacy modes that this will probably exist until 2040, but thankfully the commonly held web standards can progress without ever getting a customer complaint that some date picker doesn’t work in IE...
IE11 wasn't actually that bad. I had less problems than it with Safari (although that was a while ago and I presume development has slowed). Even better you could download test VMs so unlike Safari I could fix bugs without spending over $1k on hardware.
I agree that IE was awful for web developers for quite a while, but I think that has passed. At this point I think shifting more control to Google is not worth the "pain" of having another decent browser around.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 35.4 ms ] threadThere's only one Linux kernel and that seems to be working out just fine for all the distros using it and all the cloud operations running those distros. You could say that their are more Unixes than just Linux too, but among browser engines there are also Gecko, Servo and others [0].
WebKit and Blink are both open source too and with less restrictions than the Linux kernel since they're LGPL and not GPL.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_browser_engines#...
On the other hand, as someone on macOS there are plenty of esoteric projects on github that work great, but are written specifically for Linux. Sometimes it’s just a matter of replacing Linux-specific headers to get them to build, but most of the time changing otherwise unrelated OS specificities is a real pain for the ultimate goal of getting on with whatever project I’m working on.
My fear is that standards development will become dictated by Google, leading to sites built to Google standards only— like the web becoming centered around AMP, for example.
A monoculture of browser engines gives a lot of control to the parent organizations of those engines. Google gets to define the future of HTML and Javascript because theirs is the #1 engine by a wide margin, which in my opinion, they got to in part due to anticompetitive practices.
Licensing doesn't mean anything in terms of the monoculture because, let's be honest, there's only 1 Blink. You can fork, but you're still forking Google's spec of HTML.
Thank god, finally!
So many companies have old school software that still runs in legacy modes that this will probably exist until 2040, but thankfully the commonly held web standards can progress without ever getting a customer complaint that some date picker doesn’t work in IE...
[0] https://www.gethalfmoon.com
I agree that IE was awful for web developers for quite a while, but I think that has passed. At this point I think shifting more control to Google is not worth the "pain" of having another decent browser around.