72circles

webkitbits:

Article on Drawar:

Imagine the headaches Microsoft would get rid of by using WebKit. No longer could we blame IE for our development headaches. We could test a site in IE, Chrome or Safari and there is a good chance if it works in one that it will work in the other two. That sounds like bliss to me.

There’s one point I’d like to add to this argument: Standardizing on a rendering engine such as WebKit does not mean innovation has to be stifled. Chrome uses WebKit and still has plenty of differentiation with Safari. Its V8 Javascript engine, for one, is entirely custom and known for its remarkable performance. Browsers like IE and Firefox could learn something here — what if IE were to take a build of WebKit, build in Silverlight, and make great use of it in the browser’s default pages?

I realize that WebKit isn’t perfect and there are way too many versions of it out there, but still, as I’ve mentioned before — it’s an open source project working against a standard. It’s used for over 90% of mobile browsing (or will be soon). Browser makers like Microsoft and Mozilla should swallow their pride, take the unique features they’ve each brought to their respective browsers, and start figuring out how to develop them on top of WebKit — it’s the quickest way for web development to move forward as a whole.