Ask HN: Why can't Microsoft make a better browser? | Hacker News Reader

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

5 pointsmwill2 comments

Basically I want to know why IE, mainly the rendering engine, seems so fundamentally broken compared to the competition.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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