Tue, Dec 18, 2007

Web standards didn't kill HTML

by Austin Govella

Web standards never said browser developers couldn't come up with crazy new, proprietary features. The web standards goal was that if browser makers would implement some standard in a standard way, then the web would be a better more accessible, easier to create, and easier to maintain.

Comments

There's some noise floating around about how web standards have destroyed the web. The argument goes like this:

1. We haven't anything new and cool in ages (implementing new features).

2. We haven't even had anything old and cool in ages (finally implementing old specs).

3. This is because of web standards.

This seems pretty silly to me. Web standards never said browser developers couldn't come up with crazy new, proprietary features. And, standards advocates never said browser makers had to implement all of the spec.

The web standards goal was that if browser makers would implement some standard in a standard way, then the web would be a better more accessible, easier to create, and easier to maintain.

And they were right.

If you're pissed you aren't getting enough new markup toys this Christmas, go yell at the toy makers.

Talk About "Web standards didn't kill HTML"

James Bennett said:

Wow, what an incredible job of misrepresenting the argument.

The thing people are complaining about is not “web standards”. No-one is saying “web standards are bad” or “web standards are holding us back”.

What people are complaining about is the specific system and process of developing new standards at the W3C, because that process has stagnated and deadlocked for such a long time. What people are suggesting is that it’s time for a new system and a new process which might not be susceptible to those problems.

This in no way means “let’s throw standards out the window”. This does not mean that anyone is asking for a web that doesn’t work. This means people are saying “hey, there’s useful stuff that could be standardized, and the W3C’s doing a terrible job of following through on that”.

We want standards. We want standards that work. We want standards that evolve in response to the needs of the Web. Right now the W3C is not satisfying that.

Tue, Dec 18, 2007

Piet said:

New standards are coming out all the time, i.e. CSS 2, 3, but we can’t really progress until all browser developers haven’t standardized yet.

Mon, Jan 28, 2008

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