Slashdot Mirror
Problems at the W3C
dustin writes "Public outcry against the workings of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is growing. On Sunday, Björn Höhrmann announced his departure in a lengthy critique of problems at the W3C. Web standards champion Zeldman adds his comments as well: 'Beholden to its corporate paymasters who alone can afford membership, the W3C seems increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers.'"
Maybe a non-profit organization of independent web developers could be formed (perhaps already exists?) that could obtain membership on their behalf?
That sounds great in theory, but what would probably happen in reality is that Microsoft would end up writing the standard, and adding proprietary, patented extensions onto it in order to ensure permanent dominance for Internet Explorer.
I would much rather have a somewhat supported open standard, rather than having a closed standard perfectly supported by one company.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
How disappointing to hear this. We area at a time right now when we need standards more than anything. Between the onslaught of AJAX apps, the preponderance of Flash web apps, and the attempt by Microsoft to convert web apps to an extension of Windows with Sparkle and Avalon, we wholeheartedly need strong standards.
The summary mis-represents the bulk of Bjoern's critique, which less about the lack of non-corporate participation and more about the fact that the organization just doesn't work.
I wonder how the bulk of slashdotters, for whom a W3C standard seems to be a sacred cow, will react to the message that these standards are all-too-often ambiguous, bone-headed, poorly supported, slow-moving, and lacking important features.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are grassroots efforts out there. If you care to look, you can find them
I'm not fat, just big boned...
That's not Microsoft's history with standards bodies. They come up with some ideas that rely heavily on their own technology. (Did you know that the first version of XSL used Visual Basic as a transform language?!) When the other participants fail to react with total enthusiasm, they decide that standards are overrated.
To be fair, Netscape in its heyday was just as bad as Microsoft when it came to ignoring standards. But I've long thought that both Microsoft and Netscape would have been more standards compliant if W3C had done something to encourage standards compliance. Like trying to issue standards on a timely basis, instead of just assuming that implementers would sit on their hands until standards were ready. Or like creating standards tests instead of waiting for third parties to do it.
But no, they just shrug their shoulders and keep creating standards that nobody will ever implement. W3C has not been effective for a very long time.
As long as clients ask for shiny spinning mouseover widgets and marquee scrollers on their crappy company homepages, and as long as us designers need their money, standards will continue to be meaningless. If Client X clicks on his little blue 'e' and sees what he wants to see, Designer Y gets to eat that week. I can suggest that their choices are bad, but the customer is always right (and I must quit bitching before he takes the project to his nephew who'll do it for free)...
Truly, I'd LOVE to be able to tell a guy, "No, sir, we can't do that. It's not supported by any of the current browsers." And then deliver a clean, stylish Zeldman wet dream.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Actually, there already exists such an organization: the WHATWG. It was created by browser developers including Opera, Mozilla and the makers of Safari. They have released several specifications, some of which have already been implemented into the browsers. For instance, the canvas element, and SessionStorage, which is included in the upcoming Firefox 2.
Quite frankly I prefer the idea of a single standards organization, in this case the W3C. It's more sensible to find ways to make this organization more flexible and open than to start having competing standards and the unavoidable incompatibilities. But sometimes there is no alternative than radical change. I hope it doesn't come down to this.
Favorite quote: "
That's one hell of a grievance note. Well-written, well thought out, and it makes its points well. That time I stuck a note to the convenience store owner's door raising certain questions regarding his personal pedigree as a result of his mother's alleged affection for certain types of sea otter before setting my uniform shirt on fire in the parking lot and never going back, sort of pales in comparison.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
You're exactly the kind of person I love to hate. "Oh, I can't use that, so I'll use this, which is just as bad if not worse."
First, Flash is as closed as closed can be. Second, it's completely proprietary. Third, Macrodobe only really support Mac and Windows for the Flash Player. Still no version 8 for Linux (and they themselves have announced that there never will be an 8 for Linux), while 9 is betaing for OSX and Windows.
I'd rather use the standards which have been "piecemealed together by a bunch of wacky nerds" rather than using something which limits people to using X with Y on Z running P which Q made you pay for because R told them to.
I may like some of the things done with Flash, but I really don't think it's well suited for doing full websites. Intros, sections of navigation, maybe. But it's too much of a resource hog, too bloated, and I hate not being able to navigate using the keyboard.
Goten Xiao
Note that the WHATWG doesn't have membership in the W3C, which is what the grandparent was suggesting.
The main problem here is that everyone who's in the "online biz" views the web as a tool to enhance their own leverage on their market share. MS tries to tie more parts of Windows into web apps so Windows has a leverage against alternative operating systems. Oracle tries to push their "web access enhancing" tools to gain market shares in the online database market. And I wouldn't be surprised if Apple was trying to get iTunes somehow into a webified form so they get a leverage on their online music share.
Nobody cares about the web or compatibility. Actually, everyone is trying its best to create as much incompatibility as possible.
W3C is standing in the way of big enterprises. Its very existance is a nuisance (not enough for a danger, but a nuisance) to the leveraging attempts of the big players.
So they have a really, really hard time. There's as far as I can judge nobody with big pockets on their side, but a lot of cash against them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been highly critical of Tim Berners-Lee leadership on the W3C. He established a structure that sidelined individual, mostly-disinterested members and replaced them by corporations interested in log-jam and difficult implementations that keep the small players away. The W3C was from the get go the antithesis of the IETF.
Tim then jumped into the dubious "semantic web" runaway train, full of inflated promises but bereft of actual results. The "semantic web" is high-risk research best left in the hands of academia. A standards body organization should be focusing on how to make the web better today, by improving on the current protocols, not on day dreaming about HAL-like computers.
Actually Microsoft take part in several working groups, most notably the CSS working group, and seem to do so in good faith. They play by our extension rules, they are making attempts at fixing their standards compliance bugs, etc. I'm not saying they're perfect, but ever since Firefox showed them their market share wasn't guaranteed, they've become active again and have been acting as reasonably as the other major browser vendors.
Internet Explorer 7, which hasn't even been released yet, will not support large sections of the CSS 2 specification, published by the W3C in 1998. If you think the W3C are behind everybody else, then I believe you are only looking at the bits and pieces of their specifications that are actually implemented by the browser developers. With that twisted reasoning, it's logically impossible for them to be ahead.
Rounded corners are in CSS 3. Browsers haven't finished implementing CSS 2 yet. What's the point in the W3C racing even further ahead when the lack of browser support means it won't make any difference for years to come?
CSS 3 is a group of specifications, not a single specification, and some of them are ready to be implemented. So the answer to your question "How long?" is "Already there."
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
CSS2.1 went back to working draft because we got some 100 or so comments on it when we last went to CR. If you read Bjoern's original mail, he pointed out that some W3C groups weren't dealing with comments -- well, the CSS group is one of the few groups that _is_, and that's why it's taking a long time for CSS2.1 to be completed. You can't have it both ways: either we listen to your feedback and fix the spec, or we ignore everyone's feedback and make an irrelevant spec.
Everything you've described is completely unrelated to the grievances that Bjoern listed in his mail which was the impetus for the Slashdot posting. I'm not saying that Microsoft is competent at writing browsers that are compliant (heck, just look at the Acid2 test in IE vs any other browser), but I *am* saying that the problems *at the W3C* have nothing to do with Microsoft, and could be solved, regardless of what Microsoft do.
(BTW, in case you think I might be some sort of Microsoft apologist: I think it's pretty clear from my life over the past few years that I'm not on Microsoft's "side" here.)
Your analogy sucks. It sucks because it is based on the implicit assumption that none of the farmers will attempt to dominate and/or kill off the others.
Fox in the hen-house was quite apt.
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
Promoting other standards besides those from W3C, like microformats, is great. There's no need to be so disingenuous and inflammatory about it, though. Mr. Zeldman has no talkback on his forum for me to refute his claims, so I had to post this here. I think he's becoming increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers. Okay, that was a cheap joke... couldn't help myself.
CSS is a tree decoration language. HTML is a document tree language. Why would they use the same syntax? That's like saying C++ should use the same syntax as XML. Or that PNG images should use the same syntax as e-mails. You use the right syntax for the job.