Trouble Brewing at the W3C?

An anonymous reader writes "A breakaway faction of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) called WHAT-WG, or the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group--which includes Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera--is threatening to revolt over electronic forms standards. WHAT-WG has announced its intention to submit the draft to the W3C, posing the potentially awkward possibility of the consortium advocating two conflicting avenues for Web forms. The fate of a standard could also determine whether the order form could be accessed in any standards-compliant Web browser, or if it would be available only to users of a particular operating system--an outcome that has browser makers and others worried about the role of Microsoft."

Comments

You know the saying -

[Black Parrot]

"The best thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from."

BROWSER WARS IV - A New Hope

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a period of civil war.
Mozilla spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Microsoft Empire.

During the battle, Mozilla
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, INTERNET
EXPLORER 7, an armored web
browser with enough power to
destroy an entire website.

Pursued by the Empire's
sinister agents, WHAT-WG
races home aboard its
browser, custodian of the
form standards that can save
their people and restore
freedom to the galaxy....

Re: BROWSER WARS IV - A New Hope

[flargleblarg]

May the Source be with you.

Re:BROWSER WARS IV - A New Hope

[Anonymous Coward]

In order to read this comment properly, I needed to tilt my screen way back.

All-powerful forms

[flargleblarg]

Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful form that controls everything.

Blasphemy!

[Otter]

A breakaway faction of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) called WHAT-WG, or the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group...

Sorry, I'm holding out for the WHAT-WJD!

Priorities.

[Asprin]

Mozilla, Opera and Apple are allied? I don't even have to know what it's about to know which side I'm on.

Re:Wow...

[earthbound kid]

Oh yeah, read your Plato. The Forms are awesome. First of all, there's the Form of the Good, which is a lot like the sun. And everyone else is like a slave in cave. (Basically, it's just a rip-off of the Matrix. Still, it's kind of interesting.)

So, if I understand this story correctly, Microsoft feels that Forms are just properties of webpages that already exist, but the others feel that Forms are timeless, ideal webpages that we can remember experiencing before our birth. You know, like the Englebart hypertext computer.

If the standards committee is really torn between these two ways of understand the Forms, it may come down to someone like Hegel, showing that the Forms are a historically evolving entity, moving towards an inevitable conclusion.

Or, Microsoft will do whatever the hell they want in IE7 and everyone will just have to complain about it.

Either way, it's good to see more public philosophy.

Task Force

[AlexeiMachine]

The WHAT-WG is more than a working group now. I fact, they're an actual task force!

Let's hear it for the WHAT-TF

Third base

[Sajma]

Q: What's the name of your working group?
A: Right.
Q: "Right" is the name of your working group?
A: No, WHAT is.
Q: What is what?
A: WHAT is the name of my working group.
Q: That's what I just aksed you.
A: No, that's what I just told you.
Q: No, no -- just tell me the name of your working group!
A: WHAT.
Q: I said, tell me the name of your working group.
A: WHAT.
Q: WHAT'S THE NAME OF YOUR WORKING GROUP, DAMMIT!?
A: Right! But my name's not Dammit...
(strangling noises)