Compare these answers to the "why not build on webkit" question:
Reinterpreted answer:
"Our marketing team tells us the best way to get cross-browser compatibility is to reinvent the wheel."
Original answer:
"Unfortunately, there are no short cuts to getting to a web with same markup (i.e. write once and renders consistently across browsers). For one perspective around the challenges with various Webkit implementations see this article that recently ran. The way to achieve same markup across various browsers and various implementations of rendering engines is through the W3C with comprehensive standards test. We have a robust engine and platform with IE9 that coupled with our work towards same markup and participation with the W3C is focused on making the life of developers a lot easier."
Sorry, but that's not stripping out the BS. That's inventing BS claiming it was Microsoft's when it's in fact a BS reply of some trolling reddit user to another trolling reddit user's question.
That's because the original answer (despite beginning with “serious answer”) did nothing to answer the question. The tl;dr guy decided to just put snark there instead of guessing at the real answer. Not his fault.
There are probably many reasons they didn’t base IE on Webkit: pride, marketing, control, ease of hooking it in to other operating system services, existing MS developer familiarity with the code base, etc. etc. “[...] our work towards same markup and participation with the W3C is focused on making the life of developers a lot easier” is none of those. Everyone wants markup to work across browsers and a functional W3C process, so this answer is pretty much vacuous. It’s great that MS is engaging now with the HTML WG at the W3C, but all the other browser vendors have been doing that all along.
That's completely disingenious. First, it does answer the question IMO. The idea that competing conforming vendors will accelerate the push to same mark-up seems reasonable to me. I think the problem is that you have preconceived notion of why they aren't using WebKit, so if its not that answer then you don't buy it. If Mozilla or Opera gave that answer, I don't think the snarky summary would have been given.
IMO, the snarky summary, if I were MS, would confirm my suspicion that this group didn't want real answers. They wanted to simply attack. Because the snarky summary wasn't even a clever one that would have caused MS to pause... something like "We want a web with more standards conformance... isn't that obvious? It's what we've always done, and WebKit is all about breaking standards."
Explain how? I wrote down some non-exhaustive list of possibilities (I should have said “there might be” instead of “there probably are”; sorry if you misinterpreted my intent). What is my “preconceived notion”, please? ... Unless you’re suggesting the “tl;dr guy“ was being disingenuous? The original answers were 70%+ marketing fluff. If he was overzealous, well, I can’t much say I blame him.
> First, it does answer the question IMO.
How is “The way to achieve same markup across various browsers and various implementations of rendering engines is through the W3C with comprehensive standards test.” an answer to the question: “why not build on webkit?”
The two are at best tangentially related. (Hint: it’s possible to both work with the W3C and make comprehensive tests and build on Webkit. Look, Apple and Google are both doing it. Ergo they had some other reason not to build on Webkit. Ergo they didn’t answer the original question.) If Mozilla or Opera gave that as an answer, they’d also be dodging the question. If the question is stupid, they should just say “we don’t think that’s a relevant question”, instead of making a non-answer.
That sentence in isolation was not MS's response. Let me break it down:
1) MS thinks same markup and standards compliance is imporant.
2) More than one dominant browser is necessary or you end up with defacto standards, which often leads to problems down the road (as we've seen). They reference a blog post that talks about this problem today with Webkit. And frankly the same problem existed with IE in the past. I recall the same issue with gcc on Unix platforms in the past too ("Is that legal C?", "I don't know, try it in gcc").
3) How do you get same markup and prove it, once you've established you need more than one browser? You probably need comprehensive tests and working with W3C is probably the best group to handle this. That is the reference to the sentence you made.
So you think Microsoft’s real answer which should be read into their statement is:
“Microsoft is using our own rendering engine out of a sense of duty to web browser diversity, because we don’t want the web to suffer the problems of monoculture.”
I'd phrase it slightly differently, if you want a one sentence response. Which is "Standards are important and we believe that multiple browsers and rendering engines are necessary for improved standards compliance across the board."
Reinterpreted answer: "Our marketing team tells us the best way to get cross-browser compatibility is to reinvent the wheel."
Original answer: "Unfortunately, there are no short cuts to getting to a web with same markup (i.e. write once and renders consistently across browsers). For one perspective around the challenges with various Webkit implementations see this article that recently ran. The way to achieve same markup across various browsers and various implementations of rendering engines is through the W3C with comprehensive standards test. We have a robust engine and platform with IE9 that coupled with our work towards same markup and participation with the W3C is focused on making the life of developers a lot easier."
Sorry, but that's not stripping out the BS. That's inventing BS claiming it was Microsoft's when it's in fact a BS reply of some trolling reddit user to another trolling reddit user's question.