I'd like to respond to this as someone with experience developing programs with all 3 major browser engines (IE, WebKit and Gecko) embedded:
2009/6/4 Carl <[email protected]>: > If you have ever done any windows programming, it is very easy to add in > an IE window into your programs. Valve can also rely on every windows > client having a IE browser available to use, along with all the benefits > of having IE (integrated media player, etc.). Alot of people forget the > problems associated with open source software such as FF because most > people are on the using side of the browser, not the programming side. I'd say WebKit is the best (but the hardest to implement, at least in .NET), Gecko is a close second (but much easier to use and with many wrappers already published), and IE is the easiest but generally the worst (since you can't control which version is installed or how it behaves). MS do their best to maintain compatability but there's no guarantee something that works right now will work when IE8 or 9 is installed, and from a testing perspective you'd have to maintain separate Windows installs with each version of IE (which is a total nightmare for QA). As for the "built in media player" part, if you use WebKit or Gecko it has whatever plugins you bundle in with the engine, so again, you have much more control over its capabilities and how it behaves. Since it's open-source you can also choose what new capabilities you want to include when the engine is updated (or stick to purely security updates if you want consistent behaviour). For Valve I can see control over plugins being desirable so they can control what shows up in server MOTDs - if it turns out there's some security flaw in Flash (or whatever else) when running in low-security IE (which is what the game uses, since IE7/8's secure mode doesn't apply to the WebBrowser control) there's nothing to stop people including that in an MOTD and hitting anyone who joins that server with malware. > With IE8, the standards compliance has really gone up and I am very > impressed with the new version. I dont think the linux wine users are > reason enough to port the whole browsing window. There's no guarantee users will have IE8, though. Someone could be using Steam and have an IE6 portal, and that's definitely subpar compared to the alternatives. > People bash IE, but its not a terrible program. FF has numerous flaws > which people conveniently forget when bashing IE. IE is good enough for > me as a user and web developer. FF has flaws, but its rendering engine is solid. WebKit is excellent. IE is worse than both from a programming perspective if you're willing to put in the time to fully incorporate something by hand rather than dropping in the MS standard WebBrowser control. -Dave _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlds_linux
