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Problems at the W3C

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the family-feud dept.

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.'"

8 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Possible solution? by QuantumFTL · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe a non-profit organization of independent web developers could be formed (perhaps already exists?) that could obtain membership on their behalf?

  2. How disappointing by billDCat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:I never understood.. by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I figure you get Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera to the table, you'd have some pretty interesting standards developed that the browsers might stick to.

    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.

  4. standards shmandards by The+Queen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Re:All hail Flash. by GotenXiao · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  6. Tim B-L by Alomex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:Planned Obsolescence by hixie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.)

  8. Zeldman is Exaggerating by I'm+Schepers · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Some of the best minds working in web standards have been quietly or loudly abandoning the W3C. Bjoern Hoehrmann is the latest."
    It's interesting that Mr. Zeldman links to an email in which Bjoern explicitly states that he is only leaving the QA Dev team, and is focusing on the W3C CSS and WebAPI Working Groups, where he is still active.

    "Beholden to its corporate paymasters who alone can afford membership, the W3C seems increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers."
    I will note that Bjoern is one of many invited experts in the W3C... you don't have to pay to participate.

    "It remains a closed, a one-way system."
    As for me, I'm an ordinary developer, and my small consulting company ponied up the dough to join the W3C because we thought that it would be worth it to have a hand in leading standards and having a say in how things are developed. My new workplace, 6th Sense Analytics, will also be joining, because they feel the same way. Oh, and we didn't join at the 50K level, we joined at the reasonable 6K level, and I have never felt like we were treated as second-class citizens. If companies care enough about the standards they wish to adhere to, they can easily get involved in the W3C and mkae the changes... the more hands doing work, the better.

    "To be fair, the W3C solicits community feedback before finalizing its recommendations. But asking people to comment on something that is nearly finished is not the same as finding out what they need and soliciting their collaboration from the start."
    This statement is predicated on the idea that there is no way to ask for features and present use cases to the appropriate Working Group, a claim that Mr. Zeldman must know is incorrect. The SVG WG, for example, is basing many of its new features on author and user feedback over the last several years (from both the official W3C SVG list and the Yahoogroups SVG-Developers list), as well as taking into account the needs of its member organizations.

    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.