[numair]

I know everyone talks about fragmentation concerns, and WebKit as the new IE6, but does this argument really make any sense? Internet Explorer was a poorly updated, closed source product that only worked on a single platform; WebKit is open source, maintained by two separate companies (that are basically locked in a cold war), and is available on all major platforms. If anything, why isn't the notion of a single rendering engine to which we can all write a GOOD thing? I know there's lots of idealism around standards, etc, but let's get real here -- most people building a webpage simply want it to render properly and universally, and would like to take advantage of cutting-edge technologies. Agreeing on a single rendering engine seems to be the easiest way of accomplishing this goal.

I've probably missed some killer feature of a multi-engine standards-based ecosystem, but really -- is that the pace at which we want to move the web forward?

[mcpoulet]

A monopoly leads to a lack of innovation. A lack of innovation leads to proprietary solutions. Proprietary solutions lead to a lack of innovation.

This is what happened with Microsoft and IE6. IE6 launched in 2001. Microsoft didn't care updating it for the next 6 years. This lead to a rise of Flash in websites, which at the time seemed like a good solution to fill the lack of support of CSS. But then it also lead to a lack of innovation in Flash, and Adobe never cared about its plugin optimization or security.

[SquareWheel]

  Adobe never cared about its plugin optimization or security

I don't think that's fair. Adobe released frequent updates for security, and less-frequent but still consistent updates for optimizations/new features.

[batista]

>A monopoly leads to a lack of innovation. A lack of innovation leads to proprietary solutions. Proprietary solutions lead to a lack of innovation. This is what happened with Microsoft and IE6.

But why should we blame monopoly? MS had no competitor in the desktop space (even now, OS X has like 10% and Linux around 1%), and still they improved Windows continuously from 3.1 to 8. Same for Office. After the demise of WordPerfect, it never had any serious competitor --even today the vast majority of people choose it over the free OpenOffice, whereas Google Docs have insignificant user share (from what I've read). Still, MS continuously added things to do. Same for Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. They did not have any competitor, especially with Macromedia acquired (Corel's software is not used by the majority of graphic designers, and almost nobody uses Gimp outside of Linux), and yet, Photoshop just received it's most substantial update to date.

So, monopoly != necessary stagnation.

[MatthewPhillips]

WebKit is not controlled by 2 companies and WebKit is not a single rendering engine. WebKit is a single upstream project, the downstream browsers differ from each other just as much as they differ from gecko or presto based browsers.

[alexchamberlain]

Not sure that is fair; Google push updates to Webkit all the time, but naturally they develop them on their fork.

[MatthewPhillips]

The other vendors choose when/if they merge Google's commits. The grandparent's comment made WebKit sound like a single entity when it's actually several competing companies with overlapping but also differing views on things. They just happen to be working from a common code base.

[alexchamberlain]

Some of Google's engineers have Webkit priveleges. Webkit is a single rendering engine - this should not be confused. It is used by several browsers, who of course, use slightly different compilation configurations, but I doubt that the web designer ever needs to concern themselves with that!

[MatthewPhillips]

No Alex, not all WebKit browsers have feature parity with each other.

[alexchamberlain]

Example please.

[othermaciej]

Chrome and Safari do differ from each other. But "as they differ from gecko or presto based browsers"? No. Nearly all engine-related bug reports we get apply to all WebKit ports. Gecko and WebKit only rarely have bugs in common.

[batista]

The "as much" part is BS. Webkit browsers are FAR more alike rendering-wise than they are with any third party engine.

[MatthewPhillips]

Any difference in rendering between Gecko and WebKit is a bug.

[Dylan16807]

And all software has tons.

[batista]

No, the two browser have also different levels of implementation compliance with CSS3/CSS4 and other technologies.

So, some of those are not bugs, are differences in features.