What If Microsoft Builds IE On Top Of Firefox ?

February 25, 2008  |  , , , ,

ie-heart-firefox

Just done with reading an Interesting Post at PCWorld titled “Dear Microsoft: It’s Time for Internet Explorer, Powered by Firefox”. The headline caught me unawares and the article itself was quite an interesting read.

The article was quite provocative, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I just thought I should present my opinions on this idea as well, so here you go.. If you have any ideas please drop in your opinions in the comments.

For a start lets get it straight on, that IE will never embrace Firefox come what may. So this post is more like dream that is never going to come true. But in case something of this  sort does happen, here is what may happen..

  • For a start it would be the biggest news in the Internet Era, to come a close second only to the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo Merger.
  • Microsoft would immediately become the darling of Open Source Movement. I shudder to think of Microsoft going truly open source.
  • IE will have more developers and will become more secure than it is at the moment.
  • Microsoft would forever loose its monopolistic tag, and become a company that works closely with the Open source crowd.
  • All the pain that Google took to build Firefox as an alternative to IE will go in vain.

All in a all this does sound like a good deal. If IE is built over Firefox it would mean over 95% of the browser market would be Gecko based, which is a win win situation for web developers worldwide simply because they will have to work less harder in coding their web apps.

What do you think on this dream that me and a couple of others have come up with Do you think this will ever happen? What would be your opinion on this as a Web developer ?

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  • u know that pic on top reminds me of the pictionary thing i drew regarding the microsoft and yahoo merger :) and rajath cudnt id it!!
  • Yeah, nothing shameful for a company like Microsoft. Infact, it'll add a lot of respect to them!
  • DS
    By the way Microsoft have handled past open-source projects, I doubt any good would come out of this.

    They pretty much own and control dotnetnuke, and look at what happened to the SubSonic MVC framework. Microsoft hired its maintainer and now the project's dead.
  • WES T.
    Never an open source Vista, never an open sourced Microsoft. I could see the possibility of using the firefox/mozilla code as part of developing IE. Safari's code is built on the open source KDE (KHTML). While Safari itself is not opensource, it uses open source elements, while keeping it's branding and proprietary elements. It would be wise to use a similar open source engine like gecko or khtml or make trident open source for developers to 'fix.' As as web developer, it would be awesome if they chose to go gecko as opposed to anything else. I simply hate how safari renders anything i develop.
  • Dont make me have good dreams for the rest of the month. I can only imagine an Open Source Vista. That'll be the day though.

    Also, in need of a graphics artist by any chance? :D
  • Oh to dream of such a day where Microsoft does the smart thing and makes the job of web developers easier, *sigh*.
  • Ryan
    It could be an amazing deal, Firefox with its powerful browser and Microsoft with its powerful power over the Internet's users.

    But I don't see Microsoft helping the open sources world and if it happens, they'd buy the Mozzila Fundation and take all the great ideas from Firefox and use at IE but it continuous being a monopolist browser.
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