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Comment by err4nt | Hacker News Reader

W3C does not publish all web standards, notably it doesn't publish the three biggest technologies used in web browsers:

- HTML is worked on by WHATWG

- CSS is worked on by CSSWG

- JavaScript is worked on by TC39

And IE wasn't killed by features moving too fast, Microsoft made Edge browser and still does. Mozilla hasn't been killed by Google or competition, it's been kept alive in large part by Google (I think in some years as much as 90% or more of its total income coming from Google) so they get hundreds of millions—the problem at Mozilla is bad management for the last decade.

I'm not sure how well this vision represents reality as it already is today.

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> - CSS is worked on by CSSWG

The CSS WG is a W3C WG, and they're very much published as W3C specifications.

I just don't get the impression OP is even aware there are groups in existence working on web standards apart from W3C.

Generally I think seeing W3C as "a group" is not a great (but common) perspective. While it provides some process framework, which certainly impacts how things happen, and not just in a good way, in the end it comes down to the working groups doing the actual work, and the people and companies active there.

>And IE wasn't killed by features moving too fast, Microsoft made Edge browser and still does.

No, they don't. Edge nowadays is just a Blink shell.

And there we have another loop. From IE Shell to Blink/Chrome Shell. Who knows which dominating engine we will have in another 20 years.

Microsoft makes a browser but the point people are typically making here is that Edge is just a reskin of Chromium.

Between IE and the current Chromium-based Edge browser, was born, lived, and died another browser engine named EdgeHTML.

IE was 2 browser families ago from Microsoft.

I thought EdgeHTML was just Trident with some legacy code ripped out.

Edit: admittedly, "just" is probably underselling it a bit, but it's still a far cry from a completely new engine.

It was very much a fork of Trident, yes. I believe there was significant refactoring done after the legacy code was ripped out.

Yes, but that was killed because Chrome moves too fast, and maintaining EdgeHTML wasn't easy for MS.

Parent said: IE wasn't killed because the web moves too fast -- and used the presence of Edge (or EdgeHTML) as the argument.

But both IE and EdgeHTML were killed because Chrome moved too fast for MS to be worth it to maintain its own engine...

>the problem at Mozilla is bad management for the last decade.

It sure is a problem but I'd say Google's market dominance not being an issue is false. Remember when H264 became the standard just because Google decided it after what must've felt like a fakeout to mozilla. Then had to start working on a non proprietary implementation of what google already had ready. This was back when people consistently complained bout firefox having fallen behind because a single youtube tab could make the entire browser lag and when chrom(ium) wasn't as dominant as it is today.

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