AppleInsider is reporting that Microsoft might consider adopting WebKit for Internet Explorer:

The student put Ballmer on the hot seat by asking, “Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?”

“That’s cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,” Ballmer replied, according to a report by TechWorld. Ballmer explained that Microsoft would need to consider the future of the browser and determine if there is any lack of innovation for the company to capitalize upon with ‘proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.’

“There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service,” Ballmer said, adding, “Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.”

I’m blessed, on this site, in that nearly 50% of my visitors use browsers other than Internet Explorer (specifically, 37% use Firefox and 10% Safari) but I still have to support it in my designs. If anyone doubts the issues with Internet Explorer (which have, thankfully, abated somewhat with IE8 – if you’re still using IE6, UPGRADE!!!) here’s some screenshots from when I was re-designing my company’s website (I highlighted the two from Internet Explorer 6 & 7…):

lKMJAF2HNe88qx93sUbLk1Syo1_500.png

I hope Microsoft do move to WebKit. It’d be brilliant to have all the major browsers uses standards-compliant rendering engines.