Need For Uniform Browser Engine

Question

Hello There,

Of course, we have been witnessing a lot of browsers differences in rendering elements, in displaying those, the support for CSS, the support for html/xhtml standards and more importantly different layout engines such as Trident, Tasman, Gecko, KHTML, WebKit and Presto which is mainly why there are differences.

I just wonder why there isn't a uniform/agreed upon or centralized layout engine so that browsers differences are put to an end or probably to keep them as minimum as possible.

Why we, the developers, are messing around with differences like idiots, correcting things for each browsers?

Until what we will remain to like like idiots in the eyes of engine makers?

Are there any future of plans of those ^joints^ to do some centralized stuff?

Here are some of the details of what I am talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers#Gecko-based_browsers

Thanks guys.

Answer 1

From a business viewpoint it doesn't make sense to have shared property, otherwise you don't have an edge on the competition.

Edit: The solution to your question would be an ideal open source world, but that cannot be the case, even in the current open source world. Somebody thinks they can do something better and they fork instead of contribute. It also comes down to things like ownership, human nature, interpersonal relationships, competitiveness, none of which are bad, but those things always throw monkey wrenches into an ideal world.

Answer 2

While I cannot fault you for wanting to see this come about (I too would love to see a standard rendering engine across the board) you should really consider the magnitude of effort that would be involved to create a cooperative effort to accomplish this.

The web browser market has always been (and will remain) a competitive one. As such there is little to no incentive to standardize.

For more information I would recommend that you read about the history of the web browser to understand the deep lines that would prevent such a cooperative venture.