> My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with
Yes, KHTML. Ooops.
> with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around
Chrome is a new UI and JS engine tacked to webkit, they didn't create a new rendering engine.
> Instead they gave us yet another OS to support.
What?
> Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit?
Web developers complain all the time about supporting shitty browsers, not multiple browsers. Since ~Safari 3, webkit-based browsers have been very, very good browsers, often superior to Gecko in terms of rendering quality and JS quality (and perfs). Furthermore, it got very fine dev tools by now, more than on-par with Firebug's in most arenas, to the point where a number of developers have switched to webkit as their main development platform and relegated Firefox to "also checked".
Not to mention, webkit-based browsers are the one offering the most new and interesting features for Making Cool Shit Easily (multiple backgrounds for instance). That's something web developers tend to dig.
> Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive).
You are doing it very, very wrong. This simply isn't something I observe. Quite the opposite in fact.
A year ago I got into a codebase which had been developed solely on and for Firefox for more than a year (crappers gonna crap), getting it into a useable form for Webkit took a few days, it's still barely useable for IE8 and entirely broken for IE7.
> So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional.
It's not.
> I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.
Yes, KHTML. Ooops.
> with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around
Chrome is a new UI and JS engine tacked to webkit, they didn't create a new rendering engine.
> Instead they gave us yet another OS to support.
What?
> Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit?
Web developers complain all the time about supporting shitty browsers, not multiple browsers. Since ~Safari 3, webkit-based browsers have been very, very good browsers, often superior to Gecko in terms of rendering quality and JS quality (and perfs). Furthermore, it got very fine dev tools by now, more than on-par with Firebug's in most arenas, to the point where a number of developers have switched to webkit as their main development platform and relegated Firefox to "also checked".
Not to mention, webkit-based browsers are the one offering the most new and interesting features for Making Cool Shit Easily (multiple backgrounds for instance). That's something web developers tend to dig.
> Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive).
You are doing it very, very wrong. This simply isn't something I observe. Quite the opposite in fact.
A year ago I got into a codebase which had been developed solely on and for Firefox for more than a year (crappers gonna crap), getting it into a useable form for Webkit took a few days, it's still barely useable for IE8 and entirely broken for IE7.
> So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional.
It's not.
> I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.
Whatever.