Would it be possible for web browsers to automatically update rendering engines?

Question

As a way to prevent the major annoyances of browser segmentation and older versions. This way the code would only need to be done for the latest version of the browser, but users could still have the functionality of the older version and not be forced to do major updates?

I am sure there will be some major flaws in this, and I would like you to tell me what they are!

• Obviously, people may not want this as often auto-updating is frowned upon; however, Chrome does it (or at least, they used to):

  Without a manual check, Chrome will update itself automatically, Google said. "Google Chrome will automatically checks for updates approximately every five hours. If an update is available, it will be downloaded and applied at the next browser restart," Google said.

• There is still the problem of getting users from the really old ones onto the any new browsers that have this functionality.

• To prevent exploits in terms of updates, maybe they could have a 7 day opt-in period before being pushed out to everyone?

Answer 1

Yes, it would be possible. However, it would not be desirable, unless you can turn it off.

Many corporate intranets were built using the quirks of IE 6. Lots of testing and changes were necessary for companies to migrate to IE 7.

Lots of Javascripts that were written for IE 6 no longer work for IE 7.

Now, you can make the case that Microsoft should have made their brower standards compliant. But they didn't, and we all have to live with the results.

Answer 2

I like when a browser updates itself - in fact, I'm using a dev channel Chrome on one of my PCs because I like to check where we are going actually.

I don't think that we should stop the major updates from coming. I'm talking about the mentality. Developers must push major milestones in an area like web development, because it clearly states that they're alive as the rest of the Web.

I know, forcing users to change versions is quite bad. Telling a friend to change from X browser to Y (another software or version) is okay, but I can imagine how unmanageable it would be on corporate level, especially if they use code targeted to specific browsers. Anyway, they should update as much as possible because of the possible security issues etc. In fact, they can lose money if they don't use the more current alternatives. To make this transition easier, the version change should be as transparent as possible.

If we have a browser that updates itself quite regularly, then we can have a clear view of the standard compliance of that browser in the current state - which is really good. This way we can rest assured that the software we use - and the software we target with our code! - is tested really well and we know about the actual problems.