The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2015/02/26/a-break-from-the-past-the-birth-of-microsoft-s-new-web-rendering-engine.aspx

by aaronbrethorst • 11 years ago

361 234 11 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

FreakyT• 11 years ago

I'm glad to see that Microsoft is finally ripping out all the weird legacy modes -- IE11 essentially ships with 6 different rendering engines! [1]

* IE5 (quirks mode)

* IE7 (compatibility view)

* IE8, IE9, and IE10 (available from the x-ua-compatible meta tag)

* IE11's actual rendering engine

As an aside, the hilariously long user-agent string is perhaps the best evidence that string-based browser detection is something that web devs should avoid at all costs. It manages to include "Safari", "Chrome", "AppleWebKit", "KHTML", "Mozilla", and "Gecko".

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn321432.aspx

leeoniya5• 11 years ago

if you're not detecting on the client (via javascript), then you have to rely on headers. well, maybe via IE conditional comments + cookie setting on transparent pixel request

stephenr2• 11 years ago

the point is you should be doing feature tests, not browser tests.

spain• 11 years ago

As an aside, the hilariously long user-agent string is perhaps the best evidence that string-based browser detection is something that web devs should avoid at all costs. It manages to include "Safari", "Chrome", "AppleWebKit", "KHTML", "Mozilla", and "Gecko".

Further reading:

http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

hughes• 11 years ago

For the lazy, the new UA string is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.71 Safari/537.36 Edge/12.0

Glad I don't deal in server-side analytics!

bzbarsky• 11 years ago

It's basically the Chrome 39 UA string with "Edge/12.0" added to the end so people who really care can tell it's not really Chrome....

eyeareque• 11 years ago

I'm sure the reasoning behind those modes is because they had big (paying) customers who needed them there to help their "never ever getting an update" mission critical system webpages continue to work properly.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

I feel like the "A new Web rendering engine is born" section covers quite honestly why they have chosen to fork IE. It seems, to me, to be pretty frank and doesn't contain much "doublespeak."

PS - This was originally a reply to a comment which got removed.

michaelpinto2• 11 years ago

The amount of that article which was focused on legacy was very depressing. When it started to go about how it would break some Little League site that was IE specific that got me very unexcited. Microsoft today needs to learn the lesson of Apple in the very late 90s and just say "no".

untog• 11 years ago

They can't. All of the success MS has is based on enterprise - Apple are lucky in not having that restriction. At this point, if MS decided to say F everyone it would come back to bite them very hard.

I have a lot of respect to these IE devs for not just quitting and doing something easier, to be honest.

scholia3• 11 years ago

Apple didn't have a huge market to lose. Or to sustain through several decades of compatibility.

Also, Microsoft makes the vast bulk of its income (90-95%) from partners. It can't just decide to change everything, it has to move thousands of partners along.

nakedrobot2• 11 years ago

Is there anything wrong with the ones that already exist, which developers already cater to? What are they accomplishing here, exactly?

freehunter2• 11 years ago

Is there anything wrong with IE? That's the question you're asking?

thebouv4• 11 years ago

Accomplishing? Competition.

As devs we don't necessarily want a single browser to be dominant even though we might jokingly pray for such a thing during testing phases. We just want them to be standards compliant, right?

Don't get me wrong: there is a certain freeing joy when you work on a project where you know the target browser is the only one you need to think about (like say if you build kiosk apps or apps on a strict intranet).

But at the same time, if one player is too dominant or we only have a single voice about "this is what a browser should be" we get the crap we have lately with Apple's voice being too strong on what is or is not accepted into the HTML standard; or when IE had the 90%+ share it used to have.

cwyers2• 11 years ago

Well, let's flip the question around -- why are there three major open-source rendering engines in the world right now already? Why did Google fork Blink from WebKit?

The answer seems to be, major browser vendors have a hard time cooperating at the engine level. Apple and Google had different opinions over WebKit, which eventually led to it being forked. Microsoft has no real reason to think that it could partner with Apple or Google any more successfully than they partnered with each other in developing a rendering engine.

tmzt3• 11 years ago

Partly due to the different sandboxing implementation, Chrome had their own already and Apple was pursuing something called WebCore2 IIRC.

leeoniya5• 11 years ago

"Fixing patterns instead of sites"

I don't understand this statement

Igglyboo• 11 years ago

They aren't targeting specific sites that are broken they are targeting more general patterns that seem to cause problems.

leeoniya5• 11 years ago

I understand the language. I don't understand what they mean by "patterns". Common edge cases where js/css/html is broken in specific ways?

If you write html/css in a relatively compliant way, things will not be so broken that a browser vendor needs to account for them in a "long tail". If your js is broken, well tough luck.

Are they just talking about how to implicitly handle commonly malformed HTML, as all browsers do?

higherpurpose3• 11 years ago

The main thing I would want from a Microsoft browser is actually keeping up to date with the latest in security protocols and crypto algorithms. IE has always been several years behind everyone else in this area, which just meant developers had to keep their websites less secure just to be able to serve IE users as well. That needs to end.

I don't necessarily want Microsoft to be a leader in this area (not sure I'd trust Microsoft with any new security protocols anyway), but at the very least it should be a fast-follower. Looking forward to Microsoft adopting ChaCha20-Poly1305 or at least helping to speed up the standardization at IETF and then adopt that standard if their excuse right now is that they can't adopt "non-finalized standards".

AlyssaRowan• 11 years ago

The agl draft is actually an out-of-date, expired first draft, but it did the job to get it kickstarted! https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-agl-tls-chacha20poly1...

AEAD_CHACHA20_POLY1305 is however about to be an RFC (via CFRG) - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-irtf-cfrg-chacha20-po... - , and the proper TLS WG draft will essentially just link to that: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mavrogiannopoulos-cha...

lawnchair_larry• 11 years ago

Based on the team pics, it looks like they got rid of individual offices over there. That's too bad.

jajaBinks• 11 years ago

I'm a developer with Azure. Most of the developers still have individual offices (a few folks are also 'doubled up' in individual offices because of space constraints). Only some teams have moved to an open-space office layout.

hirsin• 11 years ago

Nope, just the IE PMs - the IE devs on the floor above still have offices :)

pdknsk2• 11 years ago

It doesn't matter unless they make it open-source or at the very least cross-platform. I'm not downloading a 4GB VM from http://modern.ie to try it.

thebouv4• 11 years ago

Honestly, with as much OSS as they've been putting out there recently, I wouldn't be surprised to see this browser go that route too.

Maybe.

mishoo3• 11 years ago

They can't. They said in a court of law that IE can't be separated from Windows.

freehunter2• 11 years ago

I think the point is that you shouldn't need to try it. If you write standard code, it should work.

tomjen3• 11 years ago

That would be a first.

It is always write once, debug everywhere and always will be.

pjmlp4• 11 years ago

And I am not buying a Mac to try out Safari.

pdknsk2• 11 years ago

To try WebKit you don't need to. It builds a very basic browser, either GTK+ or Qt based.

jonathansampson9• 11 years ago

We created http://remote.modern.ie so you can stream Internet Explorer to your Mac. Even to your iOS device :)

joshstrange• 11 years ago

Please, let's not pretend remote.modern.ie OR the VM's are ANYTHING close to running the browser locally. They are, at best, a band-aid. Yes, pjmlp, safari is OS X-only now but just because I'm a Mac user does not mean I support that decision, I don't. Also you know how many times in the past 10 years I've heard someone say "Well it works in Chrome/FF/IE but not in Safari?" Never. That's not to say it never happens but I've spent many agonising hours trying to make IE behave when it works PERFECTLY in Chrome/FF/Safari. I've had a handful of "It works in FF but not Chrome" and "It works in Chrome but not FF" but I've got a landfill full of "It doesn't work in IE".

Things I need before I'm going to pretend IE isn't a steaming pile of shit, hell I'd settle for just 1-2:

* Evergreen browser (I'm sick of dealing with 7/8/9, I don't look forward to playing the same song and dance with 10/11/12/etc)

* Cross-platform (Testing on Linux or a Mac is painful)

* Open source (IE is the ONLY major browser that is not OS, and yes I know Chromium != Chrome but I'd be fine with IE doing the same sort of thing)

jaredmcateer• 11 years ago

What about to my Mint pc?

EdSharkey4• 11 years ago

YES! 1-2-3-4, I declare a browser war!

Finally. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting for! No more rolling over and no defeatist talk of adopting WebKit or whatever. Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser.

We need more competition, and we need the default browser in Windows to be just as good as Chrome and Firefox.

Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin', ring-0 kernel hookin', micro-optimizatin', site-specific D3D driver tweakin' trick in the book as you reach for parity. This is going to be so fun to watch.

melling4• 11 years ago

We have a already have lot of competition. In fact, it's never been better: Chrome, Firefox, WebKit, Chromium, Opera. You can even get the source code for Firefox and Chrome and contribute. I'm glad Microsoft is making a better go at it, but honestly, Microsoft could have built a more compliant browser any time they wanted too.

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

infogulch• 11 years ago

Microsoft could have built a more compliant browser any time they wanted too.

That time is now, can we not be excited for it? Have you heard the parable of the prodigal son?

Mithaldu• 11 years ago

Chrome and friends aren't webkit anymore, but only by way of forking. Otherwise Chrome, Chromium and Opera 15+ are the same engine. The family tree kind of looks like this:

    -- Internet Explorer
    
    -- Firefox
    
    -- Safari
      \
       -- Chrome, Chromium, Opera 15+

    -- Opera 12 (abandoned)

I'm a little unclear on how differentiated Webkit and Blink are in practice, but sadly we have only 3.5 major engines competing at this point.

drzaiusapelord• 11 years ago

Haven't they? Since IE7, every new version is more and more compliant. IE11 gives a good experience and seems easy to work with (at least with the web dev I do). It just seems that they got sick of the baby steps approach and needed to start from scratch. They figured out yet another way to handle legacy code and want a new engine, and by new I mean, a Trident-based engine without some/most of the fluff IE has for legacy sites. Especially the active-x fluff that has no place in non-enterprise browsers.

I really don't see this as some big move. They've been doing this stuff for years. I think the consumer oriented Spartan browser is a clever move, but MS was getting there anyway. Seems like they're being clever and using Spartan and web-standards as a way to sell Win10. We're not getting these toys on 7 or 8. Want the new fancy browser? Get Win10.

wnevets2• 11 years ago

Opera, Chrome and Chromium are based off the same engine which is a fork of WebKit. If anything competition has gone down the last couple of years with WebKit based browsers becoming the standard despite its bugs & non-standard behavior. It reminds me of IE6 in its heyday.

EdSharkey4• 11 years ago

We got the Gecko family of browsers, the Trident family of browsers, and the WebKit family of browsers. Sure, there are varying JS engines, and Blink and Servo are on the way, but WebKit is the 900lbs gorilla. It is a monoculture in a lot of ways. I use and promote Firefox because I want to check the other vendors.

Microsoft makes, hm, how can I be positive here ... patchy software. There are always lots of rough patches reflecting pointy-haired boss decision making process, and there's cruft that builds up. But, very often you'll see these weird, beautiful bits just sticking out all over the place in Microsoft code. The weirdo geniuses at MSFT are allowed to do their thang and leave their mark. And the seminal releases of their software are always the best. Like, there are parts of IE6 that make me go, "how the HELL did Microsoft pull this tech off in 2000?" IE6 was this crumbly tower of awesome. If IE6 were a game, I won that game.

Anyhow, if development on Spartan goes RIGHT, then this browser will be the 2015 version of IE6. It will be the completest vision of kickassitude. There will be weird, crazy bits, and it'll take Microsoft and the rest of us a decade to untangle the proprietary parts. I can feel my blood pressure rising already!! The rage and the triumph and the glory!

akrymski• 11 years ago

Yes and no - our lives would be much easier if we could just assume that every user runs a WebKit fork. From testing to development, it would be enable devs to push apps to the limit without testing across multiple platforms. And I'm sure adding those vendor-specific extensions to a WebKit fork is also do-able. Since WebKit is open-source, I'd prefer to see companies put in more effort in enhancing its performance instead of developing new proprietary rendering engines (unless they are 10x better of course).

masklinn• 11 years ago

Yes and no - our lives would be much easier if we could just assume that every user runs a WebKit fork.

Just as our life "was easier" when we could just assumer every user ran MSIE.

It was easier for a short while, then the rot set in. I'm not interested in having Google control the web in the same way, that's a road we've taken, we know where it leads and it's a terrible place.

dblohm7• 11 years ago

You weren't around for the first browser war, were you?

Retra• 11 years ago

HTML was the "universal standard", and what happened to that?

bsimpson3• 11 years ago

Why the fuck did anyone ever think vendor prefixes are a good idea? If you want to prefix, prefix with versions.

I should be able to type `-beta-mask-image: url()` and any browser that implements that version of the spec can pick it up. There's no good reason to have to type the same exact thing 3 times to target each browser engine.

joshuacc• 11 years ago

Because the vendors sometimes proposed incompatible variants of the same feature before it was standardized. And they would implement it behind their individual prefixes so that you could experiment with both the IE and FF variants, for example.

beejiu• 11 years ago

It's better than typing one thing and it doing 3 different things in 3 different browsers.

gtjrossi2• 11 years ago

It was most often not the case that (a) vendor prefixed APIs matched a particular "version" of a spec nor (b) were interoperable across browsers at any point (e.g. -moz-foo didn't necessarily have the same behavior as -webkit-foo).

The issue isn't vendor versus version prefixes. The issue is sites using early versions of an API, relying on them, and then never removing/upgrading that code.

-webkit-border-radius for example doesn't necessarily match a particular version of a spec. Unprefixed, standard border-radius has been in all the browsers for several years [1]. Yet over 60% of page views (according to Chrome data [2]) still requires this property. So other browsers are forced to support the webkit version of this property for compatibility, which may not have a particular version of a spec for those browsers to reference when implementing support.

If you're interested, I gave a talk with other browsers at Mozilla HQ last week about some new ideas for how we can further improve the strategy for experimental APIs going forward. Check it out and give me feedback if you'd like (@jacobrossi on twitter).

https://air.mozilla.org/web-compatibility-summit-talks/ (Starts around 31 minutes into the video)

[1] http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-gradients [2] https://www.chromestatus.com/metrics/css/timeline/popularity...

engendered• 11 years ago

Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser.

Isn't this the line with each and every release of IE? Why is this different? Each prior version of IE was proclaimed some revolution of some sort.

EDIT: Downvotes? Really? I see the front page is starting to get curiously Microsoft heavy again.

We've heard the "this time it's different" argument with IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, and now IE11. Each time some shill would declare "finally! This changes everything! Microsoft has the resources and know-how to beat everyone" And the world moved on.

EdSharkey4• 11 years ago

Do you or I really care abouts boasts from the marketdroids? Cut The Rope doth not a great browser make!

You and I know the truth. There are seminal, world-beating versions of software that Microsoft has released in the past.

And then, after dominance is attained, they touch up the pig's hair and makeup a bit in the subsequent releases. IE7-11 has been hair and makeup and some botox.

I don't know how Microsoft works internally, I only know history. And, reading their statements, Spartan might be a world-beater at least in quality, features, or developer interest. When Microsoft feels threatened, that's when the sparks fly.

I do not EVER underestimate Microsoft. How quickly did they turn that billion dollar Mojang acquisition around, 2 days?

klenwell• 11 years ago

I upvoted this for sarcasm. But upon reflection I think maybe I missed the point.

I guess a lot of it hinges on your interpretation of the words "competitive" and "parity".

I'm hoping that it means the expression "IE issue" gradually becomes the exception rather than the norm.

Navarr• 11 years ago

These days most of my bugs are Firefox acting differently than I expect it to (though perhaps compliant to standards).

I haven't really had to say "IE Issue" unless I was dealing with 8 and lower.

spacemanmatt• 11 years ago

I'm glad I looked up rule 34 real quick; I don't expect there's porn of this.

What's actually involved here is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Encosia7• 11 years ago

To second what Navarr said, I don't really see IE issues these days unless it's on a site that needs to support versions prior to IE9. As often as not, issues in modern IE are due to developers writing code that targets only a single vendor-prefixed version of an API instead of supporting standards, which makes IE look deficient (instead of that sloppy developer) even when it has good support for the APIs that a site uses.

Throwaway902832• 11 years ago

I'd like to see some competition as well, but in my perspective, they're taking the wrong approach.

This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process. I don't believe everyone is using Firefox and Chrome because they have better compatibility than IE.

I think they should focus on cutting the fat, and making the lightest weight, fastest and standards compliant browser possible, with some popular third-party add-ons available, such as ad block. Or, leave IE11 as the default now for compatibility, and spin off a new browser called IE Lightning.

If people start to switch over, then more sites will be developed to work in IE Lightning.

In short, create a faster browser with a smaller memory footprint and ad block, get users, watch compatibility fix itself, then make this ship as the default browser in 5 years.

pjbrunet• 11 years ago

"If people start to switch over, then more sites will be developed to work in IE Lightning."

Based on this sentence, I get the feeling you don't appreciate the value of web standards? If Microsoft wants to be taken seriously ever again (they had 10+ years to make that effort with IE before they lost the browser war) all they need to do is render pages correctly, not in their own special way. That also means not inventing special-to-Microsoft codes.

Microsoft has a long record of screwing the greater community for their own self-interest. For example, sabotaging Java.

gcb04• 11 years ago

i think that is what they are going against...

Encosia7• 11 years ago

Have you used IE in the past few years? IE is (by far) already the fastest browser on my two Windows 10 machines right now. That was also the case when they were running Windows 8 and 8.1 in the past. The latest versions of IE make Chrome feel like Netscape Communicator 4, and they're noticeably faster than Firefox too.

If it had a nice LastPass extension, Ghostery, Buffer, and a few others, I'd probably be using IE as my default browser right now.

gtjrossi2• 11 years ago

Actually, our approach is effectively yielding the results you're looking for.

Removal of old IE legacy cruft is slimming Spartan's disk and memory footprint when compared with IE. Advances in the Chakra engine are pushing performance ahead. We're rearchitecting our DOM, which is yielding perf and security wins too. We're planning an extension platform also, with top add-ons like ad block being a clear target.

There's a bit of a catch 22 with "get users" and "watch compatibility fix itself" as broken compatibility is often cited as a top reason for users to switch browsers. It's hard to grow users without investing in compatibility.

So what we're doing is defining our "blend" of investments. Right now we have a heavy amount of interop investments in our blend as we think that's important for users. Over time (months, not years) the major interop gaps will disappear and I expect we'll see a shift in that blend to increase investments in other areas.

(Jacob Rossi, Spartan platform engineering team)

Ajedi323• 11 years ago

This entire project seems to be about improving compatibility with older websites, by adding more algorithms and layers to the rendering process.

Uh... isn't that exactly the opposite of what they're actually doing here? Did you read the article? They're creating a new rendering engine that has all the backwards compatibility crap stripped out, so that they don't accidentally break compatibility while making changes to the layout engine they're using for legacy sites. (I.E. They're removing layers from the rendering process, not adding them.)

Or, leave IE11 as the default now for compatibility, and spin off a new browser called IE Lightning.

Uh... they kind of did. It's called Spartan.

madaxe_again2• 11 years ago

Yes! Because trident wasn't different to WebKit and they definitely worked hard to make it superior!

Wait, no, this is Microsoft we're talking about, and they'll use their monopoly to force everyone to have the "new IE", and they'll break the web, again.

Honestly, I don't know why you think they'd do anything different. They've managed one release of IE that was actually innovative and good for its time - IE4.

I have little faith that they won't just produce some xslt spewing horror show that only works with drm monitors and complains if the backend isn't .net.

easytiger• 11 years ago

Microsoft, I hope you pull every -ms- vendor flaggin', ring-0 kernel hookin', micro-optimizatin', site-specific D3D driver tweakin' trick in the book as you reach for parity. This is going to be so fun to watch.

Well that's great, but if I'm on Linux and OSX this is just a pain in the ass for devs to support YAWB

andhof-mt• 11 years ago

Browser war? Sure.

But regardless of the improvements MS makes, they still have years worth of a bad reputation they have built up to get over.

It will take leaps and bounds for them to ever build up the respect that Mozilla and Google have for building web technology.

thebouv4• 11 years ago

For Devs to use their browser, sure.

But if it is pre-installed on my mom's Windows machine, she'll be using it. They still have that as a huge advantage.

So kudos to them for at least trying to correct mistakes legitimately this time.

heleph• 11 years ago

Their problem is more that it's not installed on Mum's phone or tablet. :)

EdSharkey4• 11 years ago

If you think of the Browser-as-Operating-System, then building a legacy-free IE makes a lot of sense. That kind of OS development is right in Microsoft's wheelhouse and they need to do it to stay competitive if they want to continue to be a client-side application host.

If this Spartan team does a good job, then they'll brain drain the rest of Microsoft the way XBox did. Building a web browser from the ground-up in 2015 would be a pretty sweet project to work on. I'm nerd-salivating.

Varcht• 11 years ago

Currently as a user base we jump back and forth mostly on one criteria, resource usage. If IE can compete there, I think users will come.

bwy• 11 years ago

I don't quite follow your reasoning here. It's got a really bad reputation with devs and people "in the know," but for the average user turning on the computer, it's perfectly fine, and that has to count for something.

Mahn2• 11 years ago

Exactly, this is the thing people keep forgetting. IE has a market for people who don't change the default browser from their computers, and it's a good thing they are getting a better, modern browser (not that IE11 is bad, mind you).

mark-r• 11 years ago

That's the part I find interesting - despite being good enough for all the major sites on the internet, they kept bumping up against cases where it didn't work. But I don't understand why they needed a new browser to fix that; the article implies that all it required was a change in focus.

billyhoffman• 11 years ago

This. Disbanding the IE team after "winning" the first browser war was a terrible mistake. IE fell behind technically, but they caught up again in recent years. However their reputation among web developers and even end users hasn't really recovered.

As an aside, a great way to anger an IE engineer is to remind them that the entire reason their team exists is because of Mozilla and Firefox. I truly believe that had Firefox not come out, the web browser winter would have continued until the rise of smart phones.

scholia3• 11 years ago

See roghummal's comment above, granddad ;-)

hyperbovine• 11 years ago

Finally. This is the Microsoft I've been waiting for! ... Microsoft is going to use its muscle and position to make a truly competitive browser.

Oh-ho man, what I wouldn't give to teleport this comment back to 1997 or so...

72deluxe• 11 years ago

Haha very true. It reminds me of the time Apple announced that Internet Explorer was going to be the browser for classic Mac OS, with Bill Gates calling in, to shouts of NO!!! NO!!!!! NO!!!!

It makes me chuckle. It always boggles the mind that the web is mostly just rendering of documents and flinging backwards and forwards of requests, yet the passion it invokes with browser wars and web developers. A browser is essentially a HTML Help File viewer yet you get followings and wars! It doesn't make sense.

Even less sense is made when they reinvent all application features in a web browser to make web pages behave like desktop applications. Kind of useful, but an incessant broken/fix/reimplement cycle

q2• 11 years ago

>> This is an ambitious goal given that the Web consists of over 44 billion Web sites

This is not the number of "web sites" but number of "web pages" [1].

[1] http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/

hrremmer• 11 years ago

Hahaha. Microsoft and Internet are fundamentally incompatible. All you need to do is go to their homepage to see they don't get the Internet. Never have, never will.

jongalloway2• 11 years ago

Some interesting information to the contrary:

http://rainypixels.com/words/the-story-of-the-new-microsoft-...

http://paravelinc.com/work/microsoft.php

bobbles• 11 years ago

Hey at least they removed the hopeless full-page-blocking "would you like to fill in a survey" that was on their HOMEPAGE.. its a start

ulfw• 11 years ago

Too bad there won't be a OS X Version.

pjmlp4• 11 years ago

What about that Windows version of Safari?

thejake• 11 years ago

Your point? That is also too bad.

kibwen• 11 years ago

  > the new engine began as a fork of MSHTML.dll but has 
  > since diverged very quickly

Curiously, this means that Spartan will still be able to trace its lineage back to 1992's NCSA Mosiac (in contrast to Mozilla's Servo, which is a greenfield project). I expect that it will be fascinating to compare the two projects as each matures.

ethomson2• 11 years ago

To be pedantic: even if there is code from MSHTML.dll in Spartan, there's no code from NCSA Mosaic in MSHTML.dll. Internet Explorer originally licensed Spyglass Mosaic, which licensed the name (and the code) from NCSA, but did not actually use any of the code. Though I suspect that there's not actually any Spyglass Mosaic code left in IE these days.

(Edited, I said that there's no MSHTML.dll code in Spartan. That I do believe exists.)

(Source: http://ericsink.com/Browser_Wars.html)

0x02• 11 years ago

Internet Explorer 1.0's "About" box claims it is "Based on NCSA Mosaic": http://utilu.com/IECollection/img/iecollection_ie100_win40nt...

(Curiously, Internet Explorer 1.0 showed a version number of "4.40" in the about box.)

frik• 11 years ago

Up to IE6, the about dialog mentioned Mosaic licensed code. There are UI related glitches (mouse pointer and scroll related code) in IE8 that were never fixed since Mosaic. There is still a lot of UI code and API related stuff from IE3 in IE11.

BarkMore• 11 years ago

IE's HTML rendering code was completely replaced with the Trident rendering engine in IE 4. Trident did not use or derive from Mosaic code.

sandstrom2• 11 years ago

Even though little or no code remain, it's a reminder of how much has happened.

Here is post where Marc Andreessen releases the beta (1993):

http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q1/0099.ht...

That's only ~20 years ago.

joeblau• 11 years ago

Does anyone have metrics on how much of the traffic on the internet is HTTP/S vs everything else?

WalterBright2• 11 years ago

I hope those 9,000 sites include github. IE hangs when confronted with a github display of a PR that has more than 1000 lines of diff's.

jonathansampson9• 11 years ago

Do you have one that we can use to check future builds of IE against?

joshschreuder• 11 years ago

Try this: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/b986f3e3b54499e63903405c...

To be fair, it's extraordinarily slow even in Chrome, but IE11 rendering on this page is pretty bad.

WalterBright2• 11 years ago

Here's one:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4381/file...

It's not even that big, and it's nearly impossible to scroll it.

joosters• 11 years ago

Will there be any useful privacy options in this new browser?

e.g. will the cookie options be something more than a global allow/disallow all cookies?

Will it offer a way to control/block/clear other client-side data, like flash cookies, local storage and so on?

johnkchow• 11 years ago

This interoperability-focused approach brought the obvious question of adopting an existing open-source rendering engine such as WebKit. While there were some advantages, upon further investigation it was not the right path forward for two important reasons. First, the Web is built on the principle of multiple independent, yet interoperable implementations of Web standards and we felt it was important to counter movement towards a monoculture on the Web. Second, given the engineering effort required, we found that we could deliver an interoperability focused engine to customers significantly faster if we started from our own engine (especially if unshackled from legacy compatibility concerns), rather than building up a new browser around an open-source engine. We will continue to look at open source and shared source models where it makes sense and look forward to sharing more details in coming posts.

This is a powerful paragraph from the article. I'm all for competition, and if they actually produce the next great browser, that'll just mean better browsers overall (and probably even better tooling for us devs). I'm a bit skeptical whether they can pull it off, but at least I have a good feeling that they're out to prove us all wrong.

amelius5• 11 years ago

I just wished we could put on top of our HTML something like:

or something along those lines.

munificent• 11 years ago

We just need to implement an HTML renderer (or two or three) in JS and then ship the renderer with your site.

tkubacki2• 11 years ago

I hope it doesn't mean: "we will copy but we will not share"

adrusi• 11 years ago

But it will still be non-free, and probably won't sync history/bookmarks/open tabs with mobile, except perhaps windows phone. And it only works on windows.

I don't see what would entice users to switch from Firefox or chromium or opera (or midori, konqueror, etc) to a new Microsoft browser.

Its probably still worth telling users not to use internet explorer, just in case they ever end up buying a Mac or Linux PC, and out of principle to support free software.

Its good to see competition, but I theorize that this will hurt Mozilla and benefit Google and Microsoft. The quality of chrome has been stagnating recently due to its large market share, while Firefox has been steadily advancing (because Mozilla's primary agenda is to move the web forward). Users have started a slow migration back to Firefox, which I love. A good internet explorer, paired with effective marketing, could threaten chrome and force google to get their act together, ending the Firefox rennaissance.

But realistically I don't see Microsoft marketing this effectively, and internet explorers reputation as a piece of crap will haunt it for years to come.

tarblog• 11 years ago

Users have started a slow migration back to Firefox

Do you have a source for this? I haven't looked at trends in a while.

JTon• 11 years ago

Probably just anecdotal based on discussions here at HN [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9045305

Veedrac• 11 years ago

It sounds like your primary concern is that it might be good...

GhotiFish• 11 years ago

Personally for me? I am deeply concerned that internet explorer becomes not terrible.

People would be stupid enough to then use it.

Then microsoft would have more clout.

They would immediately use that clout to cause enormous industry problems, push bad standards, fail to comply with open ones, push windows specific extensions, ect ect ect.

I am 100% concerned that internet explorer might not suck. If that happened, the internet would be in a much worse place.

hmottestad• 11 years ago

So fun thing to do in these kinds of videos is to look for women.

FYI. This video has 1 woman, at the end. She doesn't say anything, she just stands there, and she's only visible for a few seconds.

Summing up. Microsoft's new engine, still fighting to gain traction with 50% of the population ;)

anjc• 11 years ago

Ridiculous comment.

10098• 11 years ago

What the hell does that have to do with anything?!

0x02• 11 years ago

http://xkcd.com/927/

Ajedi323• 11 years ago

This isn't a new standard. This is a new rendering engine which implements existing standards.

jonathansampson9• 11 years ago

@IEDevChat on twitter is now (and for the next two hours) answering questions regarding Internet Explorer and Project Spartan. Just ask your question(s) with the hashtag #AskIE.

amelius5• 11 years ago

Here's an idea for an architecture that doesn't suffer from compatibility problems ever:

- Every web site refers to the bytecode for its required render engine

- This engine is loaded in an intelligent/cached way, and run in a sandboxed environment whenever the website is visited

- Since the website picks its own render engine (or provides its own), the developers of the website know for sure that it will render the website correctly

- Besides the render engine, also the scripting language could be referenced/provided in the same way.

An architecture like this could boost the proliferation of open-source render engines and in-browser languages.

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

so, Java, then

the problem with bytecode is you lose virtually all the benefits of the web

it's also not novel: you can do this today with JS, and your users will hate you because it can't be indexed and you can't select text

amelius5• 11 years ago

This approach doesn't need to depend on Java. It would preferably use a minimal, non-garbage-collected VM, or something along the lines of NativeClient (or simply asm.js initially).

"It can't be indexed" happens to hold for a lot of websites that are basically single-page web-apps and which build their contents from within javascript. Fortunately, Google and others are using AI techniques to index pages. No need for special markup, or special structure.

Text-selection can be built into the render-engine of choice. Granted, this is not a guarantee that it will work for all websites, but even today you can turn off text-selection for a website, so you don't have that guarantee now either. Also, AI or OCR could help here. As an added benefit, it would allow one to even select text in an image.

Also note that this doesn't work so well in JS, because JS is not a multi-threaded language and it typically suffers from garbage-collection pauses. This is not good enough for UI work, unfortunately. And also not good enough as the target of compilers.

But, granted, to get this started, JS (or the asm.js subset) could be used initially (and be replaced later).

amelius5• 11 years ago

I'm just amazed that they had to figure out that the "long tail" matters. It seems so obvious. It is almost like the owner of a hardware store coming to the conclusion that his customers want more than just a swiss army tool.

doppel• 11 years ago

I really really hope Microsoft adopts the strategy from competing browsers:

- Make one version of Spartan and keep it AUTO-UPDATED, instead of shipping a new version every couple of years that is, more or less, completely decoupled from the previous version.

- Decouple the browser from the operating system. I don't really care if they make it cross-platform (though it would be nice), but if the browser stops updating unless you upgrade to the next version of Windows you WILL end up with legacy sites again and again that cater to a specific version, and then we can start over and just replace every rant against IE 6-7-8 with Spartan 1-2-3.

thecatspaw• 11 years ago

cross-platform would be awesome. Would make it so much easier to develop for Microsoft's browser while not using Windows.

Mahn2• 11 years ago

Make one version of Spartan and keep it AUTO-UPDATED, instead of shipping a new version every couple of years that is, more or less, completely decoupled from the previous version.

This is what IE 11 currently does, so I would imagine they will continue doing so with Project Spartan.

jonathansampson9• 11 years ago

We have actually been updating Internet Explorer for some years now. We don't touch machines that have opted out of updates, but for everybody else we've been moving them forward regularly.

Spartan is neat because it's a separate app, built on a different architecture that will not only continue to allow us to update in an evergreen fashion, but it will allow us to do so at a much faster rate.

higherpurpose3• 11 years ago

And yet here we have Project Spartan that will only work on Windows 10+. Who's to say Spartan 3.0 won't required Windows 12+, too?

I think this is what the above commenter was referring to. This is really what causes IE fragmentation - refusing to update it past a certain point.

melling4• 11 years ago

What keyboard is he using @3:10? It curves down? Looks a little like a wing.

wluu4• 11 years ago

That's the Microsoft Ergonomic Sculpt keyboard.

I've got one, and while it's not a mechanic keyboard. It is quite comfortable, and if you want an ergo keyboard I'd highly recommend it.

Here's a review by Marco Arment: http://www.marco.org/2013/08/30/sculpt-ergonomic-keyboard-re...

Gravityloss• 11 years ago

Is it just me or is there some kind of an air of sadness about the video?

I like that they have real developers and not pr people talking about the product, and I don't like fake positivity. I guess it's impossible to please people like me, if you're Microsoft.

somanim• 11 years ago

This is rubish. Bring back the glory days of Opera. Webkit has turned to trash and Chrome/Firefox along with it.

cromwellian• 11 years ago

(general reply to some of the negative comments in this thread)

When someone is taking the right steps, I think they should be praised. Whatever bad feelings about Microsoft people have, they seem to be a newly revitalized company of late, are implementing cultural changes the way they interact with other ecosystems, and are shipping more open source, and seem to be playing well with others.

We should reward good deeds, not punish them.

taf22• 11 years ago

When MS decides to release an open source rendering engine - we can start taking them seriously... until then they're never going to be worth taking seriously.

mtrpcic• 11 years ago

Releasing a rendering engine is what it takes, but releasing the entire .NET core isn't good enough?

mattdesl• 11 years ago

For add-ons and DevTools plugins: it would be cool to have AtomIO style architecture. Easy to install, easy to develop for, easy to publish to npm, and written in pure JavaScript. IMHO it would quickly propel Spartan to the forefront of the developer community and would really help move the web forward.[1]

[1] http://mattdesl.svbtle.com/motion-graphics

Ajedi323• 11 years ago

You mean like Vivaldi?

rebootthesystem• 11 years ago

Our mission to create a Web that “just works”

Errr. Sorry MSFT. The web pretty much does work. So long as you don't use IE.

Seriously, I haven't touched IE in probably four years. OK, here and there when there's no choice for some reason. I could probably count those instances -over four years-- with two hands.

We don't even test on IE any more. It's shit and I have no problem ignoring it. MS needs to understand that standards compliance is important. Don't waste my time and money dealing with your crap just because you were too incompetent or couldn't bother to make your browser standards compliant.

And it is slooooooow.

This coming from someone who's been with MS since day one. They are going to have to walk on water for me (and I am sure others) to give the new browser more than 30 seconds of a chance. That's how much trust they've lost.

Oh, yes, what's up with this business of breaking fonts with a routine OS update. Do any of you folks at MS actually use the operating system you create and maintain? Nobody tested this KB3013455 update? Nobody saw that it is destroying fonts on various systems? And you are going to create a new browser?

Sorry. A bit tired of bullshit. Don't tell me. Show me.

edoloughlin• 11 years ago

we felt it was important to counter movement towards a monoculture on the Web

Am I alone in wishing there was an actual monoculture on the web? Where you could spend time making your app/site more functional instead of more compatible?

touristtam• 11 years ago

Now if they could just force this new web browser onto every single Windows XP and later installation out there, so we could get ride of the horrendous amount of IE version < 11 still in use, I would see this in a positive light. The only way I am using IE at the moment if for corporate website that are engulfed in MSFT technologies.

scholia3• 11 years ago

If Microsoft tried that, it would probably end up back in court. Microsoft actually has very little power over its large customers, or those customers wouldn't still be using XP, launched in 2001.

If Microsoft could wave a magic wand then everybody would be on IE11, but it can't. In fact, it can't even make them patch security holes that were fixed years ago.

runewell• 11 years ago

Auto-update is the main feature I care about. With auto-update we don't have to worry about legacy browsers holding back the entire industry.

The birth of Microsoft's new web rendering engine

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