IE layout engine mystery
I was looking into some browser quirks today and came across some interesting but confusing information.
The layout engine used by IE7 to render pages is named Trident. MSHTML or Trident was first introduced with Internet Explorer 4 way back in 1997. Over time Microsoft has been improving it and incrementally adding better standards support but its still old code and an old design.
Mozilla's Gecko and Opera's Presto are FAR superior to IE7 in terms of standards support and CSS compliance and yet MS keeps on flogging a dead horse.
What I found out today is that Internet Explorer 5 for Mac used a new layout engine called Tasman which was hailed for having the BEST support for web standards in its day. This was later embedded in a number of Microsoft apps like MSN Explorer and in the Office 2004 for Mac email client. But IE still keeps on using the same old Trident engine. Moreover Expression Web uses an entirely new rendering engine which MS is declaring to be the most standards compliant on the market. Plus, Office apps like Word etc. use their own HTML rendering engines (which suck).
WHY didn't Tasman replace Trident in IE7 is beyond me and I wont try to contemplate what Microsoft plans for IE8, but these guys should know that Mozilla will be using Cairo in Firefox 3.0 which promises a number of improvements over Gecko. Opera already passes the Acid2 test with flying colors.
MS needs to consolidate its efforts on ONE rendering platform and at least try to catch up to Firefox in terms of usability and features. IE7 was a sloppy job. I had hoped SO much that with the whole Vista momentum they'd finally fix IE7 but it turned out to be a big disappointment. And I'd like to clarify I'm no Microsoft hater, my workstation runs Windows XP, I code in C# and love Visual Studio. What hurts me is that my entire tool set consists of Microsoft products but when I need to browse, I simply cannot imagine using IE7. Its Firefox all the way !
As for IE8, I don't expect it to rock ... I'm just hoping it does suck as bad as IE7.