[jcsiracusa]

The concept of "WebKit's implementation quirks" implies that WebKit is a single thing when in fact it's (already) a huge diversity of different things.

http://paulirish.com/2013/webkit-for-developers/

WebKit is also constantly changing, so even the current (small) set of "implementation quirks" that really are 100% identical in all products that use WebKit will not stay the same very long.

[pcwalton]

The HTML Hard Disk Filler bug was (and still is) present in all versions of WebKit.

[jcsiracusa]

Let’s check back in a year. I don't share the fear of WebKit bugs that are present in every single implementation of WebKit in use today (I'm not even sure the disk filler qualifies) and that "can't be fixed because they'll break the web." Individual products that incorporate WebKit can and will choose how much bug-for-bug compatibility to maintain with each new version, and I don't think those decisions will all match up.

[fpgeek]

Have you never seen someone comment "Gingerbread is the new IE6"? What do you think that means in terms of bug-for-bug compatibility?

[yareally]

Having spent the mid 2000s to late 2010 doing mostly web development with having to support IE6 and IE7 and presently doing more Android development, I would gladly take Android 2.3 to IE6 or even IE7 any day.

Microsoft provided no compatibility library for IE6/7 or ease of use while Android's makes it really easy to backport along with using third party tools like ActionBar Sherlock and Holo Everywhere. Only thing really missing is going back to 2.2 (with the download api) and that's now < 10% of the market share.

In short, people that claim Gingerbread is the new IE6 are either ignorant of the Android development process or are mostly spreading FUD. I'm not the only developer out there that agrees[1]. Biggest hassle is really various DPIs and resolutions and having to provide resources for 3-4 types[2] (depending on what one supports). Though one has to do that for iOS as well to a point. Nothing under 480x800 though really matters if one is doing 2.2+.

[1] http://getmoai.com/blog/android-fragmentation-maybe-not-such...

[2] http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support...

[discostrings]

I think fpgeek was referring to the Gingerbread browser and making sure web sites are compatible with it, not application development.

[yareally]

I thought about that being what he was alluding to, but that's not just a Gingerbread phenomenon so it had me think he was talking about native apps. Even on Android 4.0, the stock browser remains static unless there's an OS upgrade. It would just be kind of cherry picking to just pick on Android 2.3 in that case when every Android OS version's stock browser (outside of those that come with Chrome), is dependent on the OS version. Just a bad idea that left it dependent on the OS after seeing how that went with IE. If he's referring to Chrome only working on ICS+, that's true, but not every ICS+ device comes with it (very few do), so most people won't bother getting it any more than they would look for an alternative browser on Android 2.3.

I haven't used iOS enough to say for sure, but isn't Mobile Safari also tied to the OS version in a similar way and can't get updates without the OS being updated?