The Abdication of the HTML Standard

GMGruman writes "The end of numbering for HTML versions beyond HTML5 hides two painful realities, argues Neil McAllister. One is that the HTML standards process has failed, becoming a seemingly never-ending bureaucratic maze that has encouraged the proliferation of draft implementations. That's not great, but as all the wireless draft standards have shown, it can be managed. But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process."

Comments

Those Who Ship Win

[eldavojohn]

But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process.

This reminds me of something that was promoted in a book I reviewed:

those who ship win

It's that simple. If this armchair talking head who wrote this article chastising the standards process were to magically code up a browser that better empowered me, a software developer, to deploy code to users that ran to my satisfaction then his standards would be realized first. And I might be tempted to use it and ask my users to use it so we can get good functionality.

Duh.

Back when the standards were still in flux (and still are) I was using Google Chrome to enjoy an Arcade Fire experiment that used many HTML5 elements. And guess what? I started using Chrome and the implementation of their perspective of the standards gained just a planck constant more marketshare.

This guy can sit around and complain all he wants but for better or for worse: those who ship win.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Saint Stephen]

Gee, that sounds like - a De Facto standard. Like MS Word .doc format! Guess evil is in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

While I hate eldavojohn as much as anyone, I don't see anything in his post that was saying this fact is 'good' or 'evil', just that it's a fact. And honestly, he's right. If you design by independent committee, that committee needs to move at the pace of development or it will be ignored. If software companies are putting out releases faster than the committee is putting out standards, then the committee is worthless. This is ultimately the reasoning behind the move to non numbered releases, as it at least gives the standard a chance in hell at succeeding. You can't expect companies to slow development to wait for some voluntary, independent group to tell them what they can and can't code, you need to speed up the group to match the developers.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[bberens]

It sounds to me like we've finally gotten around to admitting the truth about how the system works instead of wasting a bunch of time and money with the standards process. It's not as if a particular browser saying it was HTML# compliant was really meaningful. You still had to test every feature and work around the bugs on a per-browser basis. IMO nothing really has changed except the illusion.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[rjstanford]

Yes, yes it is.

The difference being that the group behind the de facto standard sees high value in being consistent, predictable, and having that pseudo-standard very well documented, because without those facts nobody can create content for them to consume.

With the .doc format, there's high value to Microsoft in obfuscating the "standard" documentation as much as possible since they both create and consume the documents.

Big difference.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

>If software companies are putting out releases faster than the committee is putting out standards, then the committee is worthless.
No. This is completely and utterly backwards thinking. The STANDARD is there for a reason, for releases to have a target to hit for making their core technology usable. Further releases should enhance the technology *surrounding* that standard, not try to "improve" upon that standard until they and others can agree on a new version of that standard to go forward.

Having browser makers defining the "standard" is the mess we needed to get out of in the first place. What, do we want to return to browser makers making up things as they go along, like goddamn IE?

How has backwards thinking like this become so prevalent in modern technology? I don't get it.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[eldavojohn]

Yeah that would be the "for better or for worse" that I said in my original post.

While I hate eldavojohn as much as anyone ...

Seriously, why do I even bother with this site?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

ODT is as much of a de facto standard. If you give me an ODT file that conforms to the standard but triggers bugs in OpenOffice.org, what good is it? I'm not going to spend days setting up an OOo build environment, learning whatever awful framework they use, and bisecting this bug in order to read your few paragraphs.

The problem with .doc is not that it's a de facto standard -- all standards that are worth anything must be de facto at least as much as they are de jure -- but that it's a bad one, because it's hard for any program that doesn't share MS Word's internal data structures and algorithms to implement (because a .doc is, to first order, a memory dump of Word's data). HTML doesn't work like that, and it's hard to make it work like that if you tried.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[scamper_22]

Exactly. I'm not even sure if I'd agree with author's goal in an idea world.

What does he want, some independent body of academics, bureaucrats, public input, commercial bodies... setting up the HTML spec without any idea of how it will be implemented, used...

Oh no... as far as I'm concerned, you want to determine the fate of HTML, you build a browser (or some connected product) and join the committee. Fight it out.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[theaveng]

>>>HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

Sounds like a lot of FUD to me. It used to be:
- 1999 and earlier: No HTML standard existed and Mozilla Netscape just willy-nilly added new features (blink tag for example).
- 1999 and later: Ditto Microsoft once their IE became dominant. IE5 and 6 were browsers that complied with nothing, and even today still cause problems for web designers.

Better to have four companies talking to one another and hashing-out HTML5 and HTML6, rather than the old (a) chaos of Netscape producing non-compliant features or (b) Monopoly of MS-IE. We don't want to have another Format war like HD-DVD v. Bluray on the internet. We want consensus first, even if that slows progress a little.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[drinkypoo]

Seriously, why do I even bother with this site?

Because you know that the majority are both more temperate and less vocal than the baseline stupid douche?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[morgauxo]

So, if I made a browser that used a flavor of html which made your job easier you would automatically begin coding your html for it? Really? And who would your customer be?

The sad thing for web developers is that it doesn't matter whose html standard is techically better or which one better enables development. It's which one/ones are being used by your target audience that matter. Otherwise you are coding a site just for yourself! It really comes down to a browser marketing issue, not an html standards one. Whoever markets their browser better gets to set the standard.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[unwesen]

Nothing wrong with de-facto standards, if they're fully open.

Look at e.g. the Python programming language. The CPython implementation is the de-facto standard implementation, and the language specs actually refer (or used to) to the implementation saying if in doubt, that implementation wins.

Yet there are other, mostly compatible Python implementations out there, and nothing - not patents, nor secrets - stops you from starting a new one.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you know that the majority are both more temperate and less vocal than the baseline stupid douche?

That's the problem, the rest of the message was pretty informative so whoever made it might have been a douche but didn't exhibit any stupidity.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[gig]

It's nothing like Word get a grip.

Apple created canvas, submitted to W3C, Mozilla submitted changes, canvas was standardized, then Apple invested significant engineerig resources into changing their canvas implementation to match the standard.

If you want an academic standard with no real world use, XHTML 2 is available for your masturbatory needs. The Web needs a practical HTML standard that documents how you DO write HTML, not how you theoretically SHOULD write HTML.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[gig]

It's not 4 companies, that is BS:

1) in this context, Apple is the WebKit open source project

2) dozens of vendors use WebKit, including Google, and there are many contributors

3) Mozilla is a foundation

4) Microsoft and Adobe are also part of W3C, although they sometimes had to be dragged kicking and screaming, but that just shows that standardization works

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Nadaka]

evil? no. Beauty? Death? Petrification? Anti-magic? sure. Evil is in the alignment of a Beholder.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[delinear]

The problem is that the people responsible for the standards are failing. Too long phases between the key gateways, huge periods where the standard is effectively finalised but nor formalised, while the people developing browsers have to implement something or they get accused of not supporting the standards. IE gave the standards committee the perfect platform to sort this mess out but they have dropped the ball - I agree it's still the right way to do it but maybe they're not the right people.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Tim C]

What, in this context, is the difference between a company and a foundation?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Word isn't obfuscated. They published the entire standard publicly. It was just originally designed before XML and when the ability to run on very low powered hardware was at a premium. It was also made a decade before the internet and cross compatibility became a consideration.

Read this about it:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/02/19.html

Comparing Word 97-2003 to HTML is apples and oranges. A better comparision maybe IE6 and its defacto standards and what it did to web design for the next decade or so and it is something I fear may come out of the big four who may all start adding in features for their browsers.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[sorak]

I am curious if the attempt to strive toward HTML# compliance didn't result in more uniformity among them, however. I am trying not to fall into the trap of assuming that everything will become proprietary, but without an independent body saying "here's the standard, and here's where you are", then won't the compatibility problems get worse?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[kabdib]

Standards committees that didn't have to ship anything were responsible for a ton of late 80s to mid 90s disasters, like X.500, X.509 (certificates), and the whole of the ISO networking stack. There are borderline disasters such as SNMP. There are smoking radioactive holes where you don't want /ever/ want to go (SOAP is my favorite example here).

The proper path: Write working code, get users and customers, re-design and re-write a few times, THEN you can have a standard.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[sg_oneill]

You madea good post. Don't get trolled brother.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Smallpond]

>If software companies are putting out releases faster than the committee is putting out standards, then the committee is worthless.
No. This is completely and utterly backwards thinking. The STANDARD is there for a reason, for releases to have a target to hit for making their core technology usable. Further releases should enhance the technology *surrounding* that standard, not try to "improve" upon that standard until they and others can agree on a new version of that standard to go forward.

Having browser makers defining the "standard" is the mess we needed to get out of in the first place. What, do we want to return to browser makers making up things as they go along, like goddamn IE?

How has backwards thinking like this become so prevalent in modern technology? I don't get it.

Wrong. The standard is there to allow competition so that one company doesn't control the technology. HTML has always been made up by the browsers and has always been open so that web developers can use it. There's nothing wrong with that.

I just need to know what to put in my web page header to tell a browser how to parse the output. If I want to use bleeding features supported by a subset of browsers, that's my problem. But if I want to reach the widest possible audience, I need to know what features are supported by (almost) all browsers.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[jc42]

Having browser makers defining the "standard" is the mess we needed to get out of in the first place. What, do we want to return to browser makers making up things as they go along, like goddamn IE?

There's a long history to this that explains it fairly well. The concept of a "standard" was invented to handle the problem that vendors have always cheated customers by having their own definitions for units of measurement. Thus, food seller have always tried sell a "pound" (or whatever the local weight term was) of produce that was short weight.

Governments finally blocked this by making legal definitions of such units of measurement, and prosecuting vendors who used a unit that was different from the standard. This is, historically, the only thing that has ever worked. Anywhere in the world, if you sell, say, 200 grams of meat or rice, and it only weighs 180 grams, you will be found guilty of consumer fraud. If you try to say that you use your own definition of a gram, that statement would be used in court to show that your fraud was intentional. (There are occasionally parts of the world where such things aren't enforced, and the result is always the same: Vendors start cheating their customers.)

The real problem here is that HTML is not actually a "standard". That is, it has no force of law behind it. Any vendor can violate it at will, call their product "HTML", and have no fear that the government standards body will prosecute them for consumer fraud.

The phrase "de-facto standard" is in fact a statement of knowingly committing consumer fraud. It should lead to prosecution. But it doesn't. That's the real reason that we have such problems. If we had an actual HTML standard, enforceable in court, we wouldn't have such problems. (Actually, we'd still have them, but they'd lead to prosecution. ;-)

How has backwards thinking like this become so prevalent in modern technology? I don't get it.

It's because "When a computer is involved, all precedent is forgotten, and everything has to be relearned." I've forgotten who said that, but it applies here. The computer industry uses the term "standard" for things that aren't standardized at all. Vendors can freely claim their products "standard" when they don't follow any actual standard, without fear of prosecution for fraud. We have "industry standards" bodies like W3C that have no enforcement power, and thus aren't actually defining standards. They are merely defining pseudo-standards, marketing terms that vendors are free to violate at will without fear of any legal consequences.

The entire history of commerce tells us how vendors will behave in such a situation. They'll define their own "standards", using the same terms as the published pseudo-standards such as HTML. They'll do this knowingly, to persuade the public to buy. Without any legal enforcement, they know they can get away with it.

If we want an actual standard for HTML, it has to have legal import. Without this, vendors will continue to behave as they've always behaved. But there is no sign this is being considered, here in the US or in any other country.

So any HTML "standard" is just a pseudo-standard, a marketing term that vendors can violate at will. We can discuss it all we like, but this will have no effect on the vendors. The only way this can change is if government get involved by having their standards bodies declare actual legal standards that are enforced. We have millennia of experience showing that this is the only approach that actually gives us a useful standard. Computers haven't changed this fact; they only led us to ignore it and then complain that vendors are violating a "standard". Of course they are; they're vendors who are trying to sell us something, without any legal constraints on their use of terminology.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of us appreciate your posts, don't leave /.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

As a practical matter, the fact that there were things you could do with IE4/5, but couldn't do with other browsers, was less a case of Microsoft having a monopoly than a case of the Linux browser market just plain being a mess at the time, and using IE4/5's association with Microsoft as an excuse for everything that was wrong with the world.

Circa 2000, Netscape 4 sucked. Period. It was the worst, steaming pile of excrement to have ever sullied a hard drive. Konqueror was a huge improvement, but it was really the Linux equivalent of IE3. Mozilla was slowly rumbling forward, but ideology got in the way of practicality, and lots of good features from IE ended up getting snubbed just because they were created by Microsoft (like the tabular data control, or the simple HTML editor that IE5 let you treat like a textarea on steroids before Microsoft mangled & screwed it up with IE6). Remember, one of the original driving motives behind Firefox as a spin-off from Mozilla was its creators' frustration with having ivory-tower ideology get in the way of Making Things Work. Look at AJAX. The names might have changed, but you can *almost* take IE5 DHTML and port it to canonical AJAX with little more than name changes (at least, if you aren't terribly concerned with aesthetics; the biggest area of divergence between them involved CSS. Fixing up the appearance is a bit more work than just making ugly gadgets work).

In a real sense, the Decade of IE6 Stagnation occurred partly BECAUSE Microsoft quit adding radical, earth-shaking new features to IE that it passionately cared about promoting.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, that was a poke in the eye for sure. As the others have commented, you aren't universally hated here. That's the first reference to their being a group of people not liking you.

You're good people, don't let the AC's getcha down.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[shentino]

Actually, part of the second applies to the first, since if you have a dominant market share it's entirely in your interest to advance obfuscation as fast as web developers can keep up, since it keeps things broken enough not to work with browsers that respect open standards. It causes lock-in.

Bonus points for breaking stuff that PHBs don't like anyway, such as facebook and youtube. In many cases, being broken is a feature.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like your gang is recruiting.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it is.

The difference being that the group behind the de facto standard sees high value in being consistent, predictable, and having that pseudo-standard very well documented, because without those facts nobody can create content for them to consume.

With the .doc format, there's high value to Microsoft in obfuscating the "standard" documentation as much as possible since they both create and consume the documents.

Big difference.

<advocate form="devil">

Like when Microsoft hacked apart Javascript and HTML for their own uses for IE? They were making the very same type of product that's being discussed now (web browsers) and they saw absolutely and ultimately no value in being consistent, predictable, or documenting their standard very well, because without those facts nobody besides them could create something to consume the content.

</advocate>

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[samuraiz]

Profit motive.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[theaveng]

3) Mozilla is a foundation

Mozilla is a Corporation. Look it up. There's the non-profit foundation, and then there's the corporation that does the actual work of making the Gecko engine for Netscape, Firefox, and Seamonkey browsers. So to recount:

1 - Apple/Google's Webkit
2 - Mozilla Corporation (gecko)
3 - Microsoft Corporation (trident)
4 - Opera (presto)
5 - random other engines I've overlooked like Amiga's WebBrowse, Lynx, and so on

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Nadaka]

Waterdeep thieves guild fo eva yo.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[AmberBlackCat]

This guy can sit around and complain all he wants but for better or for worse: those who ship win.

Maybe that's another reason they like patent law so much. Even if you have a better product and yours is ready first, they can keep you from shipping it.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[guruevi]

Foundation is not for profit, company is for profit. As you may have noticed from recent history, if a company for profit makes a 'standard' it will only be possible to get implemented either by said company or with the blessings (patent licenses) of said company (DOC, ActiveX, MSOffice Open XML, Silverlight, Flash, DECNet, Skype...). When a foundation makes a standard it will be possible to get different implementations without any restrictions (OpenDocument, HTML, WebM/VP8, Ethernet, ...)

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

(blink tag for example)

<blink>These were the days. Yeah. You make me quite lost in reverie and sentiment. Thank you.</blink>

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[rjstanford]

Word isn't obfuscated. They published the entire standard publicly. It was just originally designed before XML and when the ability to run on very low powered hardware was at a premium. It was also made a decade before the internet and cross compatibility became a consideration.

Actually that's not correct. Large portions of .doc are publicly documented, but there are still quite a lot of cases where the documentation is inconsistent or references items that do not exist - or where no version of Word correctly generates and consumes the documented standard. Its similar to the trials that the SAMBA folk had when writing connections to Windows filesharing, where the hard part was in being "bug for bug" compatible with the actual software rather than the public standard.

So I'll clarify - when I said ".doc" I was referring to the files with that extension that are created and consumable by Word - which is what matters, when it comes to interoperability. Those differences may be accidental, or they may be intentional, and there's no way for us to tell which is correct.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[xTantrum]

Wow, all my mod points to you. Very insightful. I would like to take it a step further along the same vein if i may...

The only way this can change is if government get involved by having their standards bodies declare actual legal standards that are enforced. We have millennia of experience showing that this is the only approach that actually gives us a useful standard.

This shouldn't just apply to HTML and web standards but to the internet and its accesibility as a whole. With the the Wiki Leaks saga, recent uprising in Tunisia and now in Egypt and the latter cutting off internet access to the country. Its time the goverment designates a Web body that not only is responsible and part of an international group that promotes and sets standards, but gurantees access, freedom of expression and the inherent right to be allowed access to this medium. The internet is proving too valuable and something must be done. I'm thinking a department more in the vein of the EFF and not some bureaucratic quagmire. Idk, maybe it's just wishful thinking right now....

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't need legal force. The C Standard has no legal force -- sure, there are some who try to extend it, but it's still a standard and almost everyone attempts to write to it best they can -- and it does pretty well keeping C together just fine despite tons of implementations across lots of companies.

It just needs to be a standard and have enough smart people surrounding it to laugh at others who try to subvert and/or significantly change it for their own use.

I think those who are complaining about how "standards are bad" have never really thought things through and/or been brainwashed by corporations that seem to hate being locked down by "standardization" and arrogantly think "my way or the highway" need to gain a better perspective on standards and why they are important to the world at large, whether or not they are enforced in any real way or not.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[chargersfan420]

There are a lot of us who are happy to have you here. I can't count the number of times I've been halfway through a very insightful post, only to think, "Was this written by... Yeah, sure enough. eldavojohn!"

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[bberens]

My understanding is they were going to standardize on a feature-by-feature basis and not lump the feature groups into a larger "version x.o" umbrella. So for each feature they'll write up a spec, but won't be "versioning" HTML anymore. Best of both worlds imo.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Culture20]

Or every browser's version of HTML in the 90's

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Gilmoure]

Hatred keeps you warm?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Adobe care about HTML standards?

They use PDF and SWF.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, why do I even bother with this site?

Because you are trying (and apparently failing?) to become an editor here?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Nadaka]

A standard that says how things are done is not a standard. It is merely documentation.

A standard sets a standard, an expectation of behavior. If you do not meet that expectation, you are not compliant with the standard. Period.

You can not have a standard that contradicts itself because then, nothing could ever actually implement it. This is one problem with the HTML5 standard, it is unimplementable due to self contradiction. This problem is made worse because now even theoretically compliant browsers will eventually loose compatibility over time as the standard drifts.

XHTML2 not perfect, but it was far superior. I put a lot of effort in preparing for it. Sunk hundreds and possibly thousands of hours developing tools for working with it. and it all came crashing down in the end when W3C made the mistake of abandoning it.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Jane Q. Public]

Come on, man, stop complaining! We know how it really works: fear and hatred just give you more power.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[sholsinger]

Because they bought Macromedia which published Dreamweaver which is an HTML WYSIQYG(sorta) editor. That, and the fact that HTML can be used in Flash and Flash is used primarily in HTML. You can't think of Adobe as just "The PDF" company.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[nine-times]

1) in this context, Apple is the WebKit open source project

To me, this is key to the issue. Yes, a handful of companies have basically taken a lot of the responsibility for the HTML standard. Really, though, this isn't strange since it's the same handful of companies produce all the major web standards, and so are the companies responsible for implementing those standards in some kind of HTML rendering engine. Even so, the standard itself is open, and most of the rendering engines are open source.

It doesn't really sound like a problem to me. Now if you had a consensus among web developers that some feature should be implemented, and Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft banded together and refused, that'd be a bit scary. I haven't heard of anything like that. If it did happen, it wouldn't be too hard to fork gecko/webkit and add whatever features people wanted. It seems that the reason nobody is bothering with major forks to these engines/browsers is that these developers are doing a pretty good job. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the current state of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. Even IE 9 really isn't bad, as far as I can tell (though honestly I haven't done any web development in years).

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

a De Facto standard hashed together by four companies is better than what we used to have. A de Facto standard which was whatever worked on IE.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[mwvdlee]

Why don't they just divide the HTML standard in some smaller parts with individual codes and numbers.
The list of codes and numbers may become a bit more difficult, but changes can be standardized and implemented in smaller increments and you may actually be able to enforce a trademarked standards name. So whereas a browser may support shiney new feature X and weird custom tag Y, atleast I know it conforms to the "HTML5-div" standard, so I can safely use div's and whatever is defined about them in the standard.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[jonbryce]

Sure. The browser vendors can code to the latest beta release of HMTL 6 if them want, but as a web developer, I want to be able to pick on an HTML version and code to it. There's nothing to stop them having a new point release every other week if they want, I just want to be able to define where I stand.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anc]

Perhaps you should take your own advice and look it up? Mozilla is a public benefit foundation first. Mozilla Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation, and as such it must work for the Foundation's mission.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments cannot guarantee access, freedom of expression, or access to the Internet when they are themselves working against these goals.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[yuhong]

IE5 and 6 were browsers that complied with nothing, and even today still cause problems for web designers.

Actually, after reading about it and thinking about it for a while, I think the full story with CSS was something like this: IE3 rushed to implement parts of CSS1. IE4 rushed to implement parts of CSS2. Note that both was released before the corresponding CSS level became a recommendation at W3C, and the final recommendation ended up being different from what IE implemented (for example, the box model). For IE 5.x, MS decided to force on adding proprietary features, not on increasing compliance, and WaSP complained about it. IE 6 introduced DOCTYPE switching, and achieved full compliance of CSS1 in the standard mode. Then IE stagnated for 5 years, and in the meantime people tried to use CSS2 and found the bugs introduced when IE4 rushed to implement CSS2 (and some other bugs) and IE6 was despised as not "standard-compliant". IE7 tried to fix some of the bugs in it's "standard modes", but by then some sites were depending on the CSS bugs in IE6. IE8 had to introduce another "standards" mode, and X-UA-Compatible and "Compatiblity View" to switch between the "standards modes".

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[mikael]

It's like the argument between the 3D API's, OpenGL ARB extensions vs OpenGL vendor extensions vs. Direct3D all over again ...
OpenGL ARB extensions were for all the new features that everyone could agree on. Vendor extensions were for custom features that individual vendors provided. Direct3D adds new features on a per-monthly basis with users having to compile their applications with static libraries. The argument was that the other two systems were too slow.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[yuhong]

Circa 2000, Netscape 4 sucked. Period. It was the worst, steaming pile of excrement to have ever sullied a hard drive

Yea, the fiasco with Netscape 4 and CSS/JSSS when Netscape submitted JSSS to the W3C and implemented it in Netscape 4, then it got rejected by the W3C in favor of CSS. As a result, Netscape has to rush a CSS to JSSS translator resulting in poor support.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[yuhong]

- 1999 and earlier: No HTML standard existed and Mozilla Netscape just willy-nilly added new features (blink tag for example).

Yep, how many know that CSS dates back to 1994:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html/msg/358f05eb3e9a79b5

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[commodore6502]

The original claim was "Mozilla is not a company because Mozilla does not make profit." This claim is demonstrably false, because while the foundation is non-profit, the Mozilla corporation most definitely IS for profit.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[doom]

The problem is that the people responsible for the standards are failing.

Nope: the problem is a public that values bright shiny toys over a robust information architecture, and doesn't know enough to say no to these things.

We, on the other hand, should know better, and should be telling people that they're being short-sighted.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anc]

The point was not whether they make profit but whether their decisions are motivated by profit - they aren't. Mozilla Corporation must not put financial profit above the mission stated in the Foundation's statute.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

It doesn't need legal force. The C Standard has no legal force ...

I think those who are complaining about how "standards are bad" have never really thought things through and/or been brainwashed by corporations that seem to hate being locked down by "standardization" and arrogantly think "my way or the highway" need to gain a better perspective on standards and why they are important to the world at large, whether or not they are enforced in any real way or not.

Wait a sec - wasn't the C standard written by 2 guys working for AT&T?

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[KiwiSurfer]

The Web needs a practical HTML standard that documents how you DO write HTML, not how you theoretically SHOULD write HTML.

That's a nice idea of standardizing based on how people do write HTML. However if we go down that train of thought, whose method of writing HTML should we standardize? Should we have a standard that adpots how Microsoft does HTML, or how Mozilla does HTML, or how Apple does HTML, or, worse, a hybrid/combination of these?

At the end of the day the only practical way to develop a useful standard is to get everyone together to agree on a standard and have commitment from everyone involved to actually implement the standard as specified.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nothing like Word get a grip.

Apple created canvas, submitted to W3C, Mozilla submitted changes, canvas was standardized, then Apple invested significant engineerig resources into changing their canvas implementation to match the standard.

If you want an academic standard with no real world use, XHTML 2 is available for your masturbatory needs. The Web needs a practical HTML standard that documents how you DO write HTML, not how you theoretically SHOULD write HTML.

Oh I see... you mean one that matches IE6's behaviour :-)

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Arterion]

That's only true if there's a monopoly in the browser market. There isn't anymore, and we largely have Mozilla to thank for that.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the W3C has given up on the HTML5 name. This article is referencing the WHATWG (which unofficialy stands for "What Working Group?" http://www.whatwg.org/) which is made up of individuals from those four companies. They think the W3C moves too slowly and are trying to push forward on their own.

HTML has not been abandoned by the W3C and every web company agrees (even Apple, Google, Opera and Mozilla) that the W3C is the official source of standards.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[mjwx]

Seriously, why do I even bother with this site?

You're one of the more level headed posters, AC is just a troll.

I dont agree with everything you say but I too predicted the utter fail that HTML 5 would become. You've got Microsoft, Google and Apple each pursuing their own implementation of a supposed "standard" hoping to become (or maintain) de-facto control over the way the web is rendered.

This is also why Flash isn't going anywhere. HTML 5 is a mess, Flash "just works" unless you're on a device that "just works unless you want to do something with it". A person who makes a website wants it to be usable to the widest audience possible, under HTML5 this means maintaining 3 + different versions of the same site, which is OK for just text and pictures but when you get into multimedia you're going to have some very expensive headaches. Headaches which Flash, for all it's many, many, oh so very many flaws avoids. Until HTML 5 can do the same, Flash will remain the better option.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[mjwx]

Come on, man, stop complaining! We know how it really works: fear and hatred just give you more power.

No no no,

When we strike him down, he becomes more powerful then we could even imagine.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[TheoMurpse]

ODT is as much of a de facto standard [as Microsoft Word formats]

What the hell planet do you live on? Or, more likely, do you not know what "de facto" means?

Outside of the tech industry, there is no one who uses any program that defaults to ODT. I have literally never encountered an ODT in my professional career. I do not know a single person who is not a techie who even knows what ODT is.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[badkarmadayaccount]

XHTML wouldn't be an issue if only a certain small and soft company would be arsed to support the damn MIME type.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of tosh, HTML practical? You're obviously not a professional web application developer if you believe that for a second.

HTML5 is a complete fucking mess that goes against just about every principle of good practice software development in the book. The problem is most developers in the world are actually shit, and whilst most standards promote good practice as the default (e.g. XML) and let bad developers fuck up if they want to, HTML5 makes shit development practice standard, and makes it hard for even good developers to write good code, or to lead teams of less capable developers to write good code thereby reducing the average standard of web software overall.

There were a lot of things I didn't like about XHTML2 but at least it's a spec that consistent, well designed, and thoroughly thought through- at least it pushed good practice as standard.

I know most developers in the world are shit, but that doesn't mean we have to go designing standards around them to make shit the expected standard. That's just fucking dumb.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[Wovel]

Or of course your on a device Adobe chooses not to support. Or on an OS Adobe chooses not to support, or doing anything at all that Adobe chooses not to support...

Flash just sucks in all of its Android implementations btw. Perhaps you have never actually tried it. Come to think of it, flash just sucks.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[morgauxo]

Not really. The problem is still the same, if you code the perfect browser using the best possible standard today it is still meaningless until you get enough people using it. The difference is now you have to pull users away from 3 or 4 different browsers instead of just going up against one. I suppose if you are a browser coder and the IT head of a some large corp that uses their own internal web apps then maybe your browser can see some use there. That's it. Website coders put in a lot of work building sites now so that people will see them now. If they code for your browser and end up with something that doesn't work in the others then no one sees their content/ads/whatever until your browser gets a market share. And... if it doesn't then their work is wasted forever.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[juasko]

Still he forgets the fact that, Microsoft is into it now too, and may even do better than the former that where mentioned.

If just Google would either quit the WebM thing, or file it for standardization. But while it has the course it's having now, they are really to blame for slow progress.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[juasko]

I agree, iOS break flash and that is a feature. But failing following standards is a BUG.

Re:Those Who Ship Win

[juasko]

When a company makes a standard they file it to a standardization organization, or create such organization with other vendors.

I familiar with Apple so here are some examples of standards they created.

IEEE1394, Apples trademark is FireWire. It became standardized in 1995. Apple brought their product for standardization to an "independent" organization. In this case IEEE.

OpenCL, Apple holds the trademark of OpenCL they filed it to the standardization organization Khronos Group.

hah

[BenphemeR]

W3C is a joke.

Re:hah

[TheLink]

Yeah, no great loss.

I proposed something to the W3C many years ago that would have improved web security (and if implemented would have stopped the myspace and other XSS worms). But the W3C are just interested in more and more "Go" buttons and they didn't even want a single "Stop" button.

Anyway, Mozilla has finally proposed something in concept (more encompassing but also more complex) CSP which might help: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/CSP.

Re:hah

[BenphemeR]

I'd be into anything Mozilla is behind. Thanks for the link

The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standards

[salesgeek]

The W3C has never really had complete control of HTML. Those who write the browser effectively can extend or cripple HTML features at will. Netscape added many new features and everyone simply had to live with the results. IE did some nasty things to CSS and we all had to live with that, too.

HTML *was* simple

[drumcat]

Remember when it was ok to use a "b" tag, and no one scoffed? How about table layouts? It's funny, the new standards aren't always better. This is why a format "of the people" isn't going anywhere. I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago. Now, not so much. Is that better? I'd argue, no. It's not that editing is hard; it's not. The problem is that we're turning the browser into an application-level container. HTML should be more focused on making layouts easier, and faster. It should not be focused on animation. This is where MS Word has fallen off a cliff. If you want more adoption, focus HTML on what actually is important - layout that's understandable to the masses.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

It was never OK to use a b tag for anything that didn't explicitly need to be BOLD, rather than emphasised or standing out strongly. Table layouts were never OK either. The move to CSS and that whole separation of content from layout was a great move.

You can't teach your parents to edit HTML now that it's entirely about putting in content and logical headings? If not, you're teaching the wrong thing. You grandparents should NOT be trying to learn how to make fancy websites before they know how to make websites.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Any HTML your grandparents wrote 10 years ago still works fine today, so what are you complaining about?

If anything, HTML5 represents a shift back towards the 'vernacular' - for example, the B tag is officially a-ok for bolded text.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[VGPowerlord]

It was never OK to use a b tag for anything that didn't explicitly need to be BOLD, rather than emphasised or standing out strongly. Table layouts were never OK either. The move to CSS and that whole separation of content from layout was a great move.

Sure it was... before those tags were added.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[msauve]

Or, in a /. comment, where not even an i tag seems to work anymore, while b still does.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

By every quantifiable way having a standard for web development is vastly superior to having whatever the browsers come up with at the time. So you might argue no, and your grandparents would be happy. Everyone who matters to the industry wouldnt though so youd basically be categorically wrong.

Likewise your opinion on what it should be focused on is totally irrelevant. The web _is_ growing in to animation and multimedia, thats also a measurable fact with the growth of youtube and dynamic web pages practically everywhere.

This isnt insight, this is a rose tinted luddite fantasy.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Rui Lopes]

Remember when it was ok to use a "b" tag, and no one scoffed? How about table layouts? It's funny, the new standards aren't always better.

1. 1) Download the NVDA screenreader
2. 2) Learn about the problems induced with your comment
3. 3) Spread the word!

If you still think it's actually not better, sorry, but you should have 10 blind persons hit you with their canes...

Re:HTML *was* simple

[MightyYar]

What in the world are you smoking? Granny's web site does not need to be ADA compliant, and she's not likely to "refactor" the layout. Tabled layouts are fine for Granny. Hell, some of the "solutions" to common css problems involve once again mixing layout and content. At that point, who cares if Granny encloses something in a DIV or a TABLE?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[lisany]

Heh, sorry, tables were never okay to use tables for layout.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[bcrowell]

Remember when it was ok to use a "b" tag, and no one scoffed? How about table layouts? [...] I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago. Now, not so much

Huh? The "b" tags still works. Here you go: bold. Tables still work too. If you want to use them, use them.

If you want more adoption, focus HTML on what actually is important - layout that's understandable to the masses.

Most people use GUI apps to create web pages. They couldn't care less whether the code produced by their GUI is done according to one standard or another. And suppose they did care. Are you claiming that a wave of popular support would then cause WHATWG to be successful, MS to support web standards, and patent holders to release their codecs under royalty-free terms?

HTML should be more focused on making layouts easier, and faster. It should not be focused on animation.

Well, first off, html 5 isn't just about frivolous stuff like making cartoons jump around on a web page. For example, it includes support for mathml; that's not exactly frivolous for a blind physics student who can't read equations that are rendered as bitmaps for compatibility with IE. And in any case "the masses" you refer to want animation. They want farmville, etc. The question is whether we're going to have a web where the only way to accomplish that is through proprietary browsers and proprietary plugins.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Protoslo]

It took /. D3 to finally get me using the <em> tag...

Re:HTML *was* simple

[acklenx]

tables were never okay to use tables for layout

But they were easy. Search for "3 column layout" and look at the infinite variety of wildly more, and more complicated solutions. Complexity depends of course on how closely you want to approximate a ridiculously trivial table layout that can have same size columns with or without background colors or images, fixed or fluid sized columns (or a mix!!), and whitespace, with a header pinned to the top and a footer at the bottom regardless of scroll height. Tables made it easy even cross browser without script of any sort. It's considerably trickier with just to meet some arbitrary standard that "tables shouldn't be used for layout". Tables were drop dead easy (until they started _removing_ table support from browsers).

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Hatta]

Remember when it was OK to use an "i" tag, and it worked on Slashdot?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

Remember when it was ok to use a "b" tag, and no one scoffed? How about table layouts? It's funny, the new standards aren't always better. This is why a format "of the people" isn't going anywhere. I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago. Now, not so much. Is that better? I'd argue, no.

yeah, and 25 years ago i could teach my mother how to manually mark blocks and insert formating codes on text edited in an 8-bit computer. technology evolves, things get more complicated, then new tools apear to ease the process. so what if you can't create a good looking site using vi or notepad anymore ? use a goddamn authoring tool.

HTML should be more focused on making layouts easier, and faster. It should not be focused on animation. This is where MS Word has fallen off a cliff. If you want more adoption, focus HTML on what actually is important - layout that's understandable to the masses.

oh, and let animation be the focus of adobe flash ? video to real networks, microsoft or apple ? remember the same 10 years ago, we needed 3 different plugins installed so we could watch video, because you never knew if the site was using real video, ms avi or quicktime ?

people actually _want_ pages with animations, video and sound. people like superfluous eye candy. if not, why even bother with flashy GUIs like those on vista, leopard or kde ? so if eye candy it's gonna make it to the web, better that it's an open standard than another proprietary plugin that'll only be available on mac and windows.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never seen a really strong reason why they shouldn't be. Conceptually, any need to divide a layout into columns and rows could use a table. There's no fundamental difference in HTML between text and numbers, and grid-based structures encompass more than simple tabular display of numbers.

It wouldn't have mattered if CSS had offered a simple replacement for the html table tags, but all the alternatives are overly complex.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[TaoPhoenix]

I'll reply to you, including your sig.

I haven't yet seen the principle that for a true groundswell of a phenomenon, you need a huge swath of "low end users" Just Doing Stuff. Then the experts could float on top pushing the edge.

I saw layout as a necessary evil to get a structure for information. I'm no Developer, so I only need to be a 1-trick guy if it "the consensus" says it works. Count me in the class of people who want to Just Do Stuff.

Taking the long view, we're just about to see the Decline and Fall of Flash. So I'm glad I never bothered with it. I hope my 1-trick for the next decade is to learn simple HTML 5 (in whatever state it ends up middle of the road).

Re:HTML *was* simple

[njvack]

Remember when it was ok to use a "b" tag, and no one scoffed? How about table layouts? It's funny, the new standards aren't always better. This is why a format "of the people" isn't going anywhere. I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

What do you mean? The "b" tag hasn't stopped working, and table layouts still render just fine. Hell, the "font" tag still does what it used to -- just make sure you use an old DOCTYPE. Hell, leave it out altogether, and the browsers will be even more likely to render your grandparents' pages in quirks mode.

No one is forcing anyone to adopt the new standards. For a lot of people, however, the new standards are a big win.

For example, you could make your grandparents a stylesheet that'd let them use much simpler markup when editing their pages.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[colinrichardday]

NVDA? Microsoft Windows only.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago.

You still can, and you can give them the exact same lesson today, or they can use what they learned 10 years ago. Oldschool HTML is just fine for writing web pages. It's only when you get into web apps or other professional endeavors where someone is telling you over your shoulder "no, I don't just want you to show this this, I want you to show it like this..." that you have to get bogged down with complexity. But if your grandparents merely have something to say in the form of a web page, nothing has changed at all, and HTML isn't "focused on animation" because it's actually very easy to make a web page without animation. Adding animation to your grandparents' page is, if anything, extra work (just like it was 10 years ago).

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Dynedain]

I could teach my grandparents how to edit HTML 10 years ago. Now, not so much. Is that better? I'd argue, no.

You still can. Not that much has changed. In fact, HTML+CSS now is easier IMHO than 10 years ago and I've been doing this since '95. The real issue you're getting to is that people want much more out of their websites than they did 10 years ago and that requires more skillsets. A Geocities page just doesn't cut it anymore since now people are more familiar with what's possible and have raised their expectations.

What you couldn't do 10 years ago, and can do today, is teach your grandparents how to rollout a Wordpress site and change the theme to whatever they'd like. They'd be up and posting with something that looks nice and is legible, showing off the latest video of your cousins in less time than it would have taken you to explain <head> vs. <body> and how to find and fix a code typo 10 years ago.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[colinrichardday]

For example, it includes support for mathml; that's not exactly frivolous for a blind physics student who can't read equations that are rendered as bitmaps for compatibility with IE

Rendering equations as bitmaps is hardly great for sighted people, either. Changing the font size upsets inline math.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Well HTML is simple. Always was. I don't see whats so different now than 10 years ago. Sure CSS came along and somewhat complicated things (for the better) but people can and still code using and and use 's for their layouts and without CSS. It doesn't mean that their code won't display in a browser, it does mean that their HTML might not be displayed uniformly on all browsers.

I really don't feel like HTML5 is focused on animation. The , and tags have been included in HTML5 to simplify things and put more control in the hands of the W3C instead of relying on other vendors like Flash. , , and are there to improve the semantic richness. If and when it's adopted, wouldn't it be easier to tell your grandparents that the site navigation goes in and that more than likely it will be in the and that the right side holds a picture of their grandkids?

Standards are good in my opinion and I do get the point of the #Soulskill is trying to make about 4 or 5 companies deciding the fate of HTML but that's kind of how it's been since the beginning right? At least since the point Microsoft got involved. And doesn't the W3C usually do what their 322 members tell them to do rather than just Apple Google etc? Of course Apple/Google/Mozilla etc could coerce some of these members to see it from their side but to a certain extent I'm fine with that.

Not to get down on you #drumcat, I do respect your opinion but I would say that HTML is way better than it was a decade ago. Or maybe I'm just way better at using it than I was 10 years ago. Either way I feel HTML has to adapt and evolve and if the W3C isn't going to do it who is?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[jc42]

It was never OK to use a b tag for anything that didn't explicitly need to be BOLD, rather than emphasised or standing out strongly.

How so? I've never seen the b tag described as meaning anything other than "bold", and the main use of bold fonts has always been to make that text stand out. People have always read bold text as emphasis.

Is there a standard (heh;-) somewhere that defines the b tag differently? Does anyone have a link to such a definition?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

i went to that page, still dont know what problems are induced with the comment.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[KlomDark]

CSS Media Types

Re:HTML *was* simple

[KlomDark]

> Taking the long view, we're just about to see the Decline and Fall of Flash. So I'm glad I never bothered with it. I hope my 1-trick for the next decade is to learn simple HTML 5 (in whatever state it ends up middle of the road).

This!

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Quirkz]

I've got an entire game laid out using primarily HTML I learned back in the mid-90's: tables, b tags, i tags. Heck, I even use frames (ick, I know). I've got quite a few visually impaired players who have thanked me on a frequent basis for having such a playable game. The funny thing is I've done almost nothing to go out of my way to make it playable (other than adding alt tags to images) but screen readers work just fine with it.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[m50d]

Here's what I don't understand: How TF can the screenreader understand a tag but not understand a tag? How hard would it be for the screenreader to preprocess its html and replace with ? Heck, I'll write a couple of lines of perl to do it if you like.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[tixxit]

Don't confuse good programming/best practices with standards. The HTML standard will definitely let you use B tags and TABLE layouts. What you're talking about is years of people learning the right way of doing things; regardless if this is for accessibility, maintainability, cost, etc.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[maxume]

It still shows up in the html. The italics are being suppressed by css to the effect of

* {font-style: inherit;}

Which is quite fashionable, it tells the browser to to discard all default styles, so that the designer can build them from the ground up. It also leads to the rather interesting

em { font-style: italic;}

later on.

The mind does boggle.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Hatta]

* {font-style: inherit;}

Which is quite fashionable, it tells the browser to to discard all default styles, so that the designer can build them from the ground up.

Now that's just fucked up.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[mac.man25]

NVDA? Microsoft Windows only.

Of course it is, it's a SCREEN READER. It only has to interface with the seedy belly of whatever windowing system it happens to be on. And Mac OS X and Linux do it completely differently.

http://live.gnome.org/LSR For linux. And after Leopard, screen reading is built into Mac OS.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[MightyYar]

Granny... don't... care.

Seriously, does granny care if you have to pinch and zoom?

And opera mini handles tabled pages by "unwinding" them.

And beyond all of that, you can still use tabled layout AND css. Hide the side-column tables in the mobile and print views.

I'm not defending the old-school for pros - hell, I'm not a "pro", but I have designed commercial websites using only validated xhtml and css (and a little cheatin' javascript for ie6). But someone shouldn't feel bad for laying out a simple site with tables. Hell, someone shouldn't feel bad for using iWeb or Frontpage! It's like duct tape for the web... I won't begrudge a man for using duct tape to hold his bumper on, but I'd be pissed if the dealer did it!

Re:HTML *was* simple

[BitZtream]

We replaced B with STRONG and I with EM which are effectively the exact some thing. If you think its different, sorry you're confused.

Tell me why exactly we needed to change tags?

Explain to me how change the name of a tag from B to STRONG actually made it so your screen reader worked better. I'm pretty sure if it knew the difference between B and STRONG it could do whatever it want with text and wouldn't care if the tag was B or STRONG.

Some douche's in a commitee sat down and decided the B was a display thing and STRONG was a speech thing and they are different and should be handled as such ... except ... they are used for the exact same thing. Same with EM and I.

An intelligent solution would have been much simpler ... 'when people use B they mean to make that part strong and stand out, lets treat it as such.' instead of 'hey, lets create a new tag, that is visually identical to B out of the box, but has a different name, so that way we can identify it ... unlike bold where we have no way to identify it at all!'

EM and STRONG are shining example of retarded changes to a protocol because some people involved in the discussion don't have a clue.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I fail to see what the problem is with "b" tags for screenreaders. Don't they just ignore it? If not, why not? They'd also use a "span style="font-weight: bold"", which is what "b" is really an abbreviation for.

Tables used for formatting I will give you; those are bad, yes. But the problem is that they're easy and intuitive to learn and quick and easy to use. Do you think someone who's not a (semi-)professional web designer with a good understanding of CSS could do without tables what they could do with them? The answer is no, of course. CSS is general enough to be able to replace tables for layout, of course, but it's too low-level.

If CSS offered a better way to replicate this sort of layout (which, again, is NATURAL for people), people wouldn't use tables anymore.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Translating "strong" to "in a bold font" in the visual realm is fine, but translating "b" to "loudly" in audio is unacceptable? Why? Isn't "strong" ambiguous in a visual medium (does it mean bolder, larger, or in a darker font, say when most of the text is grey?) and yet _all_ web browsers manage to deal with it. Yeesh.

P.S. Deal with my underscores, heathen! :P

Re:HTML *was* simple

[thetoadwarrior]

While I agree some aspects have definitely gotten more complicated and I think HTML5 and its video / audio aspects are a complete cock-up, there are some problems with the old way of doing whatever you want and doing layouts with tables.

It does cause problems for people who use things like screen readers. I do believe screen reader developers need to pick up their effort too but you can't really expect them to guess what you're doing when you have tables in tables in tables.

That said it annoys me when standards freaks do shit like make tables out of divs. Tables have their place and are part of semantic html and I think it's ok to bend some rules. For instance I still use the odd table for form layout. I think fuck it. It's ten times easier and works consistently.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[thetoadwarrior]

To be fair the HTML 3.2 spec did say its intention was to be used for tabular data or layout. It did state that it will cause problems with speech and text agents. Mind you the specs are dull as hell and I'm sure most people never read them but it does sound like someone did imply they could be used for that which I think was dumb even if they noted that it was bad for non-visual browsers.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[thetoadwarrior]

It's only hard when you're starting out, imo. Once you get the hang of it and more importantly if you use a stylesheet to blank out all of the browsers built in styles which vary then it gets easier.

A lot of the problems are that MS may think a heading should have a 3px margin and Mozilla thinks it should have 5px and that sort of crap will happen for most if not all tags.

The problem with a lot of web technologies is there was never one awesome way for people to learn everything correctly. They picked up things as they needed them so they'll miss out on things like that and they'll probably make the mistake of learning programming with PHP and think it's acceptable to make something ugly as sin and inconsistent because that's how PHP does it.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[thetoadwarrior]

In regards to the bold tag I think what he means is that bold and italics are interpreted differently from strong and emphasis by screen readers even if they look the same visually. I prefer b and i over strong and em and tbh in that instance I think screen readers should treat b/strong and i/em the same as well.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[nine-times]

EM and STRONG are shining example of retarded changes to a protocol because some people involved in the discussion don't have a clue.

I think that's going a bit far. What was really going on is that CSS had gained prominence, and lots of people wanted to be thorough in separating the semantic information (HTML) from the styling information (CSS). Telling the browser to render text as "bold" or "italic" is display information, and so those specific controls got thrown into CSS. Instead you got semantic tags for "strong" and "emphatic" which then get styled by default to be bold and italic, respectively, but can sensibly be restyled as something else in CSS.

And it kind of makes sense, in a manner of thinking. CSS allows me to easily take all the text tagged as "b" and make it non-bold, which means that having an HTML tag for "bold" is arguably going to be inaccurate and confusing. You might still disagree with the decision, but I don't think it's retarded or that the people making the decision didn't "have a clue".

Re:HTML *was* simple

[21mhz]

Funny how everybody fall over each other to defend the B tag, but nobody admits that abuse of tables is indeed bad for accessibility.
I think the GP comment meant primarily problems with using tables for pretty placement.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[BitZtream]

Okay, so not having a clue was clearly an exaggeration, and I got that the idea was to separate the two to provide more functionality for special cases ...

Someone forgot to notice however from a practical perspective.

Show me a real world example of where the two are not used interchangeably.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Tacvek]

Thanks. So now my Slashdot user stylesheet has been updated to fix that bug. It currently removes the gray border, makes the header and sidebar stay where they belong, makes they gray outlines around a comment thicker (more like they used to be with D2), and fixes the italics bug. Now all I need to do is add code to restore the friend/fan/foe/freak/... icons, and Slashdot will be relatively usable again.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document domain("slashdot.org") {

body {
padding: 0 !important;
}

i { font-style: italic; !important}

div.col_1
{
position: absolute !important;
padding-top: 40px !important;
}

header.h
{
position: absolute !important;
margin-top: 0px !important;
padding-top: 0 !important;
}

header.h hgroup
{
border-radius: 0 0 0 0 !important;
margin:0 !important;
}

div.col_2
{
padding-top: 40px !important;
}

li.comment
{
border: 2px solid #C8C8C8 !important;
}
}

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Hatta]

The problem is, if you want to use italics you have to make sure everyone has that stylesheet. /. won't be usable until they fix this bug on their end.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me a real world example of where the two are not used interchangeably.

There were plenty. You seem to believe that the W3C fell to earth from the moon around 2000 and that they weren't around before that.
The most interesting part is that W3C didn't want those tags in HTML to begin with; Netscape wasn't willing to wait for CSS to be completed so they invented FONT, B, I as transitional tags instead. The W3C wanted all formatting in CSS but was taking too long to get CSS1 out the door.

Your memory may be short but I remember even "professional" websites that used <b><font size=20>This is a heading</font></b> instead of the H<n> tags.
There were also the blogs (Geocities) that used alternating font, i, b tags to create horrific graphic design disasters.

Someone forgot to notice however from a practical perspective.

By "practical", you mean "undisciplined", right? Sure, it is lazily easy to just throw formatting into your HTML as tags, it saves you from the mental exertion of creating a coherent design [an annoying problem with word processed documents for the same reason].

Re:HTML *was* simple

[VortexCortex]

It still shows up in the html. The italics are being suppressed by css to the effect of

* {font-style: inherit;}

Which is quite fashionable, it tells the browser to to discard all default styles, so that the designer can build them from the ground up. It also leads to the rather interesting

em { font-style: italic;}

later on.

The mind does boggle.

Yeah, but this just means we should start emphasising text by placing it between <em> and </em> tags; The <strong> and </strong> tags should be used to denote words with increased impact.

These tags work. I realise that having to switch the tags is stupid, but that's what the W3C says to do, so that's what I'll do. I'm not going to complain about it -- that takes longer to do than adopting the new recommendation... (It's nice to see Slashdot adopting recommendations, even if they are crappy ones.)

Re:HTML *was* simple

[mjwx]

Taking the long view, we're just about to see the Decline and Fall of Flash

Depends how long of a view, Certainly not in the next 5 years and certainly not from HTML 5 because HTML 5 is a complete mess.

Right now, for HTML 5 I have to maintain different sites for Firefox, Safari and Chrome. Lets forget IE who has 40% of the market in my country but does not support HTML 5 at all. Plus all the people using older versions of a browser.

Now for a simple multimedia experience for my audience I need to either code 4 websites for 4 different browsers or code it once in flash. Flash has many, many flaws but HTML 5 has one big one that makes it inferior to Flash, Flash is write once, run anywhere, HTML 5 is write 4 times and hope people have an up to date browser.

I'm sorry for having to point this out to the HTML 5 fanboys but Flash isn't going anywhere because a single bit of HTML5 code cant run everywhere.

I hope my 1-trick for the next decade is to learn simple HTML 5

Why not just learn HTML. HTML 5 offers no advantage over simple HTML, the only advantage in HTML 5 was supposedly the simplification of multimedia, but thanks to Apple and Microsoft trying to "guide" the standard into what they want (vendor lock in and proprietary codecs) that isn't going to happen.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[maxume]

The problem is that the even the w3c has backed off that recommendation, and this feels as much like a mistake as it does Slashdot trying to adopt a recommendation...

Re:HTML *was* simple

[nine-times]

Show me a real world example of where the two are not used interchangeably.

It's not on the public internet, but I've made a site where instead of making "strong" tags bold, they were made all uppercase (and a different color) instead. It was the design I wanted, semantically correct, and it was appropriate to have the page fall back to making the text bold if CSS was not loaded. However, for the design I was using tagging that text as "bold" wouldn't ultimately make a lot of sense.

In light of that, I think what's really going on is just that you're not used to using those tags. It's not less practical or less sensible or less correct to ask people to use "strong" instead of "b", but it's just the convention that you're used to.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[LordVader717]

Using the strong tag requires CSS to make sure it's rendered properly, so in the real world the b tag is superior as far as getting what you want.

And tables were necessary, first to get any complex layout done at all, and then to get around the inadequacies and general unpredictability of early browsers CSS implementations.

Sure, the new way is cleaner and more powerful, but how does that make the past "not okay"?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[the-matt-mobile]

So you say the stylistic HTML is broken, and I say the way NVDA works is broken. You so toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-tow. And round and round it goes.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you "get" HTML. Pretty much your only even remotely valid complaint is this B->strong, I->em change that you keep going on about. All the other changes are essentially extensions to the language to make it easier to work with, not harder.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[drumcat]

We replaced B with STRONG and I with EM which are effectively the exact some thing. If you think its different, sorry you're confused.

Tell me why exactly we needed to change tags?

Explain to me how change the name of a tag from B to STRONG actually made it so your screen reader worked better. I'm pretty sure if it knew the difference between B and STRONG it could do whatever it want with text and wouldn't care if the tag was B or STRONG.

Some douche's in a commitee sat down and decided the B was a display thing and STRONG was a speech thing and they are different and should be handled as such ... except ... they are used for the exact same thing. Same with EM and I.

An intelligent solution would have been much simpler ... 'when people use B they mean to make that part strong and stand out, lets treat it as such.' instead of 'hey, lets create a new tag, that is visually identical to B out of the box, but has a different name, so that way we can identify it ... unlike bold where we have no way to identify it at all!'

EM and STRONG are shining example of retarded changes to a protocol because some people involved in the discussion don't have a clue.

This is what I was trying to say. You, sir, nailed it.

Re:HTML *was* simple

[drumcat]

And this is exactly the point. Why is it that we have to give up ease to have an application? Why can't we have both? Or, at least, why can't we have a set of "you can do this" that doesn't change for at least 5 years?

Re:HTML *was* simple

[Dynedain]

You missed my point. If you want to do the same thing with your sites that you taught your grandparents to do 10 years ago, you still can. The rest of the world, including your grandparents, have moved on.

Websites aren't novelties anymore, they're everyday things. You don't gain any tech prestige or bragging rights by simply having or building one. Because of this commoditization, people expect substantially MORE from sites than they did 10 years ago. People want to be able to make (and manage) comments, easily share, block spam, embed shared videos from YouTube, automate syndication from RSS feeds. These are not simple tasks, and were all but impossible 10 years ago with the skills you taught your grandparents.

If you want the same quality and functionality of sites from 10 years ago, go ahead. The rest of the world wants more, and they want it easier.

If you want more adoption, focus HTML on what actually is important - layout that's understandable to the masses.

I'm pretty confident that HTML is the most widely adopted layout language ever judging by the proliferation of applications and devices that can parse and generate it. Needing "more adoption" is not a problem for it.

"not a truly independent standards process"

[Asic Eng]

Isn't that par for the course? It seems a lot of standards are driven by a few big players who have a strong interest in it.

Re:"not a truly independent standards process"

[Waffle Iron]

Isn't that par for the course? It seems a lot of standards are driven by a few big players who have a strong interest in it.

True. When I read the summary, I thought that four players seemed better than the early days of the web, when HTML was driven by just the pair of Netscape and Microsoft.

Re:"not a truly independent standards process"

[trout007]

That is the whole purpose of an industry standard. They are not written by some outside independent "expert". They are written by people that are direct competitors in order to promote their industry. I am a mechanical engineer. We have drafting standards from the ASME. This isn't some independent group. The members of the committee included people from Boeing, GM, Caterpillar, Raytheon, Thiokol, Ford, Lockeed, ect. All people that had a vested interest in coming up with a standard way to interpret drawings. The reason for the standard is so that drawings can be sent to subcontractors and they can be interpreted unambiguously. It didn't serve the industry well to have all different types of drawing standards. Also the standard only applies to the important things required to make hardware from drawings. It allows enough flexibility for companies to craft the standard to fit their way of working. This also helps the CAD software makers who can create software by giving them a start for a requirements document for the software. All of this helps the industry as a whole and isn't done to benefit one company over another.

W3C should retire

[Gadget_Guy]

I can't remember if W3C has ever really successfully moved the HTML language ahead. Much of the early improvements were due to Netscape and Microsoft throwing new features around willy-nilly. A bunch of those features would be chosen to be part of the standard, while the rest (layers, blink, marquee) would fade away into disuse. As soon as the major players focused more on following the standards rather than setting them, then everything seemed to just grind to a halt. It wasn't until browser makers started to come up with their own ideas again (WHATWG) that W3C seem to once again bebin to wake up.

The answer to good, standards-based improvements in the web is not massive versions of HTML and CSS that never get finished, and it is not a living standard that never gets finished. It is small, targetted minor versions. We should get a roadmap of what each minor version of HTML 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 etc will address. For example, 5.1 could focus on the local storage, 5.2 could be better form elements, and 5.3 could reintroduce the blink tag (maybe not). CSS 3.1 might concentrate on better print support (let's give TeX a run for its money), 3.2 might do columns, and 3.3 could give us a style for blinking (oh wait, it already has it).

The best type of standards body is a small, nimble group of interested people (like we have with Apple, Google, Opera and Mozilla). Sure they might get caught up with difficult decisions like the video tag, but W3C seem to have that dilema with EVERYTHING, even the non-controversial tags.

Re:W3C should retire

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the W3C was crucial to preventing MSFT from just turning IE into a Frontpage renderer.

Re:W3C should retire

[conspirator57]

Actually, the W3C was crucial to preventing MSFT from just turning IE into a Frontpage renderer.

and then where would we be? many of us cornered into having to use Sharepoint? That's terrible.

oh, wait.

Re:W3C should retire

[Anonymous Coward]

W3C did a great job with XHTML1->2, the results were excellent but a little too tricky for most webdesigners.

WHATWG preferred to help the illiterates and staged a coup against W3C by pushing a conservative successor of HTML4.

We lost 10 years of W3C work thanks to WHATWG and their html5 junk.

Re:W3C should retire

[Rockoon]

Companies like Google are primarily a content delivery company with many services.. so they get to play some serious hardball like screwing over [pick a browser] users (*) every few months with browser sniffing bullshit. They are also playing games with the video tag, as if users were pawns to be thrown at the competition. It wasn't that long ago that Google was more than happy to support both Theora and H.264, professing loudly the fact that playing both was a strong selling point for its browser. Now they have their own format and have changed to what is essentially a "fuck everyone" stand that has this seemingly sweet-smelling bullshit spin attached by an army of drones.

In fact, I would dare say that Google is well into the conflict-of-interests territory. Its got near-monopoly services, a browser, setting up its own ISP, multiple rapidly growing OS's, producing multiple plugins for other browsers to make them behave "the google way", the primary financial backer of another top W3C member, and this could go on (tracking services, advertising, etc,,) I would not be surprised if a few years from now that we find out that Google completely dominates all decisions at the W3C.

(*) if it works when I identify as Firefox.. why does it not work when I identify as Opera? Why is that, Google? Got an explanation that isnt evil? Didn't think so.

Re:W3C should retire

[Gadget_Guy]

Actually, the W3C was crucial to preventing MSFT from just turning IE into a Frontpage renderer.

It was a pity that it didn't stop Netscape from becoming the pile of steaming crud that it ended up being (prior to Mozilla). What Microsoft did was no different to what Netscape did. If Netscape had won the war, then we would be complaining how much Netscape Navigator and Netscape One were tied together.

All Microsoft needed was a competitor to force it to maintain some sort of compatibilty. With Netscape out of action for so long, that role went to W3C. But it was during this period that development of the web pretty much stopped. Java and Flash "improved" some things, but it wasn't until Mozilla came back - specifically with the (at the time) less bloated Firefox - that things started moving again.

But the thing that really gave the web a kick start was the proprietary extension XMLHTTP that Microsoft made to create AJAX. In typical fashion, W3C jumped on this and standardised it 7 years later.

Re:W3C should retire

[Gadget_Guy]

We lost 10 years of W3C work thanks to WHATWG and their html5 junk

Well, that was the problem. If it hadn't taken 10 years to go from version 1 to version 2 then perhaps another group would not have had time to come in and steal their thunder.

Re:W3C should retire

[Sloppy]

Now they have their own format and have changed to what is essentially a "fuck everyone" stand

Yes, but it's "fuck everyone" in the sense of "hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!" Google doesn't have their own video format; the world finally has a video format, one that unlike H.264, everyone is allowed to use.

(Not disagreeing with your other Google flames, just your bitching about the video tag and VP8/WebM codec, since those happen to easily be the most positive things to have ever happened so far in the history of video-on-the-web. Finally video is going to have the chance to "grow up" like the situation we now take for granted with static images.)

Re:W3C should retire

[colinrichardday]

CSS 3.1 might concentrate on better print support (let's give TeX a run for its money) Perhaps, but TeX will still be easier to type than MathML.

Re:W3C should retire

[Rockoon]

Yes, but it's "fuck everyone" in the sense of "hey everybody, we're all gonna get laid!" right after you buy new hardware that doesnt even exist yet

Fixed that for you, fanboy.

Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

And Microsoft is where?

Their Internet Explorer is used by most Internet users today ( http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 )

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly what I was wondering. I know Microsoft is the company everyone around here loves to hate, but they are still very relevant. Much more so than Opera IMO.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering how much Opera does disregarding it in standard making is wrong.

Re:Eh?

[johnnysaucepn]

Microsoft haven't been active in developing the latest version of HTML5, while the others have. That's all they mean - it's no reflection of the size of the company or their reach to customers, but in their work on the standard.

Re:Eh?

[teh kurisu]

Microsoft is, I think, implementing the standard (slowly) rather than defining it. And I'd argue that the same is true of Mozilla and Opera to some extent.

It seems to me that it's Webkit that's pushing the standard, with Apple and Google as the major contributors but with a whole load of other companies along for the ride. The Webkit project is becoming a de-facto standards body with a members list that includes every smartphone platform builder except Microsoft.

Re:Eh?

[KingMotley]

They are still there. The article just fails to mention them. Microsoft has contributed a LOT to the HTML 5 specification process. A very large number of test cases were submitted by them, and they contribute during the discussions as well. It's just the author obviously has a very anti-microsoft bias. And for the purposes of the article, the lack of any one company doesn't really matter the principle remains the same.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Microsoft is where?

On the internet, they're still involved, but only as a veto power. And every time they use their veto (i.e. decide against implementing what every other browser has) each website developer then looks at remaining MSIE share and decides whether to write them off or join in the veto. Some go one way, some go the other, but it's never 100%/0% or 0%/100%. So the veto power, strong as it is, is constantly weakening.

On the intranet, they're still incredibly dangerous and remain a significantly destructive drain on the economy with no mitigating factors. Microsoft has disappeared from the public eye, but that's actually a very bad thing. Their salesmen are still out there, getting your government to waste your tax dollars and sapping the efficiency of the private sector. The cancer is hidden, not cured.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

And Microsoft is where?

Playing catchup.

They'd been sitting around for years basically ignoring the thing and complaining that they couldn't implement anything because it wasn't "done". Then when they finally somehow got competent developers to work on IE, they're two or three generations behind, just counting the stuff all the other browser vendors have already agreed upon and implemented.

They haven't much hold with web developers either, except perhaps for the most hardcore MS bubble children, with everyone sitting around waiting for IE6 to die so they can finally use 10 year old features.

Even assuming they finally want to participate, they're not in much position to lead anywhere until they stop being that kid in math class who holds up the class for the entire lesson while he's stuck on the first exercise.

Thank you for XMLHttpRequest, Microsoft! Too bad about those 15 years of crippled DOM and CSS workarounds, maybe we could have been friends.

Re:Eh?

[jc42]

Yeah, Opera is one of the few browsers that run on everything that I have, and also follows the published standards pretty well, so it's one of my main tools for testing web pages.

Actually, I've been finding that I use Safari mostly for my initial testing, but for a completely non-standards-related reason. Many of my clients want use of buttons (<input type=submit ...>), rather than links. Safari is the only browser that will respond to a button push by opening the page in a new tab or window. This makes it easy to compare the "before" and "after" pages.

Opera, Firefox, etc. all insist on opening a button's page in the same window/tab as the preceding page, making it difficult to compare see the two at the same time. So during initial testing, Safari noticeably speeds up the work, while the others interfere with debugging by their button behavior.

Of course, I could be wrong, and there might be settings for other browsers that produce this useful behavior. But I've looked for it, and haven't found it. So I start testing with a browser that's developer-friendly in this regard, and then test against the other browsers when the basic page behavior seems pretty close to what I'm looking for.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can only conclude that "Opera" was a typo for "Microsoft."

Re:Eh?

[IpalindromeI]

Years ago when I used Opera, it had this ability, which it called Linked Tabs. Looks like they've changed the name.

Right-click a tab and choose "Create Follower Tab". Links you click in the current tab are opened in the follower tab. Back then it also worked for form button submissions, so it probably still does.

Re:Eh?

[coolsnowmen]

how do they get their statistics?

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Microsoft works on HTML5 through the official W3C working groups and not the WHATWG (http://www.whatwg.org/) formed by Apple, Google, Opera and Mozilla.

same situation

[Anonymous Coward]

This was the same situation with IE6. When IE6 ruled it was the standard; At least this time there are more players in the ballgame..players who care about users. The W3C HTML Standards group have never decided the fate of HTML...or at least for a long long time. Get over it!

finally

[FuckingNickName]

Finally, people are starting to realise (and argue) that today's HTML is no more "open" than Flash. It's just a cartel between a few major tech companies to promote particular implementations of particular technologies in their medium term interest. Apple's canvas is the most obvious culprit. Rather than freeing people from Flash, it gives such a seductive but incomplete alternative (to an already subpar platform) that developers are encouraged to write native Cocoa apps. It's msjvm deja vu all over again.

Re:finally

[BHearsum]

Regardless of who is setting the standard, it *is* an open standard, implementable by anyone who reads the spec. Flash is not. Big difference.

Re:finally

[Henriok]

There's a WORLD of difference between a dictating singularity making a "standard" and then hardly documenting it after the fact (you can include Google and WebM here too) and a small committe comprising four of the world's five implementors doing an openly documented iterative evolutionary development, while doing at least three different implementations in parallel.

Re:finally

[Piata]

I can't right click and view source with Flash. With HTML, it takes about 2 seconds. Are you seriously comparing a pre-compiled, all encompassing file format to tags in the HTML spec?

Re:finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Having the source to a minified Javascript library is of little use, but disregarding that, the reason you don't have that feature is because the Flash plugin you're using doesn't provide a 'right-click to view decompiled source'-feature. Have you contributed code to an Open Source Flash implementation that does provide such a feature recently?

Re:finally

[FuckingNickName]

Four dictators could form an alliance and release forests of overcomplicated documentation on their conquering of the world. At the end of the day, you're even worse off than with a single dictator: the chance that they'll all fall out and fight to the death is much less than the opportunity for relief when the single dictator expires or is otherwise put in his place.

Generalising, the heroic notion of large, competing corporations is a myth.

Re:finally

[LordVader717]

Regardless of who is setting the standard, it *is* an open standard, implementable by anyone who reads the spec. Flash is not. Big difference.

Bzzzz. Wrong. Flash has a spec which can be read and implemented by anyone. The only problem is that no-one makes flash-players to compete with Adobe. Kind of like there were (and still are) no decent PDF readers for Windows apart from Adobe reader.
That doesn't make PDF any less viable as a format though.

Bad Thing?

[ArhcAngel]

Hey! At least a certain monolithic juggernaut ISV that is known for hijacking ALL standards isn't in the top four.

Re:Bad Thing?

[blarkon]

Of course with the four that are seemingly in charge, the mob that's been left out can say "fark it" and go their own way saying that they don't need to kowtow to Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera, (the last of which has such a small audience that they are within the margin of error).

Re:Bad Thing?

[DragonWriter]

Of course with the four that are seemingly in charge, the mob that's been left out can say "fark it" and go their own way saying that they don't need to kowtow to Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera, (the last of which has such a small audience that they are within the margin of error).

There is no "mob that's been left out". WHATWG has been clear that any browser vendor with measurable marketshare has veto power over inclusion of features. (essentially, they want the standard to represent what all browser vendors are willing to commit to work toward.) The only people who are left out are those who choose not to participate.

Could be worse

[Thelasko]

At least the standards aren't determined by Microsoft.

Re:Could be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1970938&cid=35033186

smart ad

[mugurel]

Note the context-aware advertisement on page 1 of TFA...

What's with all the hate?

[graveyhead]

Last I checked, anyone could submit ideas, corrections, feature requests *RIGHT THERE ON THE HTML5 WORKING DRAFT*. "Feedback Comments" right at the top of http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

Now, if they ignore your idea, that's almost certainly because it sucks and is badly written. No really, it does suck. Follow the instructions there *carefully*, really think about this feature or tag or whatever you're requesting, and your ideas will get consideration.

I must be getting old

[Errol backfiring]

I am from before the first browser war.

Re:I must be getting old

[synthesizerpatel]

Great. Now we have to listen to grandpa talk about the olden days having to push http headers up-hill, both ways, in a packet storm.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing wrong with XHTML strict. If you are working professionally and can't code to that, I'd say it's you that's the wanker!

Standards are based on who shows up

[mbone]

Standards always tend to be dominated by the people and companies that show up.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[conspirator57]

PS the only code validator should check for the "blink" tag.

and remove it.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Shikaku]

But I love the blink tag! :(

Welcome to corporate feudalism

[gestalt_n_pepper]

What's happening with this issue is a microcosm of what's happening in the world. Democracy and the rule of law wither, while wealth, in the form of organizations or a few super-rich individuals control outcomes.

patents, MS

[bcrowell]

It seems to me that everybody is moaning and groaning about what a bad job WHATWG is doing, when in fact WHATWG is just doing the best it can in an extremely difficult environment created by patents and Microsoft.

The confusion with respect to audio and video codecs only exists because of patents. A certain patent-encumbered codec shows up that's good enough, so it gets widely adopted, and then it's impossible to displace it because of network effects. This is not WHATWG's fault.

The html 5 feature that I really care about is mathml, and here it's very, very clear that MS is the bad guy and W3C and WHATWG have just been trying, unsuccessfully, to work around MS. Mathml worked fine in xhtml years ago, but MS never bothered to support xhtml in IE, which would have been technically trivial to do. They stated that their policy was to have independent vendors supply support for mathml rendering via plugins, and Design Science did their best to do that, but MS made it impossible for them to do that in a standard way, because the standard depended on xhtml, which IE didn't support. So xhtml died in the crib, and WHATWG decided to pour the svg and mathml namespaces into the flat html 5 namespace. Kind of an ugly solution, but they had no other choice. Now for the first time it is theoretically possible to write a web page coded in a standard way that has mathml in it and that might render properly in some future version of IE. But meanwhile big institutions are still sticking to IE 6 because they need compatibility with all its bugs, and preview versions of IE 9 have broken mathml support.

The big problem is that commercial entities have interests that oppose the interests of their customers and internet users at large. MS wants users to be locked into their browser through proprietary plugins and bug-compatibility, and they don't stand to profit by supporting features like mathml, which are only used by a relatively small proportion of their users. (Never mind that blind people can access mathml but not bitmapped renderings of equations. Blind people aren't economically important to MS.) Owners of patents on codecs want to harvest licensing fees, and they don't care if that screws everybody else up and makes a mess out of audio and video on the web.

McAllister complains that WHATWG is dominated by a clique consisting of Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera. But that clique is basically a list of all the browser vendors, and doesn't that kind of make sense? These are the people who acually need to implement the standard, so of course they should be the ones with the most influence. The only browser vendor missing from the list is MS, which is only interested in subverting standards.

Re:patents, MS

[GreatBunzinni]

McAllister complains that WHATWG is dominated by a clique consisting of Google, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera. But that clique is basically a list of all the browser vendors, and doesn't that kind of make sense?

It makes sense to include them in the standardization process. It doesn't make sense to let the standardization* process be dictated by them, with no one else having a say on it, whether they are competing companies (MS included) or, ghasp, any of the thousands of people that make a living developing and maintaining the WWW.

* this isn't a standardization process per se. Once the WHATWG decided to abandon versioning numbers they effectively abandoned any attempt to define a basic set of features which any involved party should implement and/or expect to be supported by any implementation: in short, they aren't defining a standard. What they are doing is informally agreeing on a loosely defined set of features that any of those parties happened to implement in their product, which is something that only serves their own interests.

These are the people who actually need to implement the standard, so of course they should be the ones with the most influence. The only browser vendor missing from the list is MS, which is only interested in subverting standards.

You are forgetting about the countless people who invest their time and effort dealing first-hand with the result of these so called standards. The cumulative effort that goes into building sites is greater than ever effort that goes into developing any browser, and the responsibility to make sites work is also greater in the web developer's side than in the browser side.

Moreover, standards are defined so that anyone can independently develop their own implementation that provides and supports at least a basic set of features which guarantees interoperability. So, it's irrelevant if a set of browser companies is behind this sham of a standardization process. What is relevant is that no one else can be an active part of it. That means that the entire WWW is being held hostage by 4 corporations. And somehow you (and others) are ok with it.

Re:patents, MS

[Tim C]

but MS never bothered to support xhtml in IE

In what sense? The site I'm working on is XHTML 1.0 strict compliant and renders properly in IE 6, 7 and 8. No, we don't use MathML, but to say simply "IE doesn't support XHTML" seems somewhat disingenuous.

Re:patents, MS

[bcrowell]

In what sense? The site I'm working on is XHTML 1.0 strict compliant and renders properly in IE 6, 7 and 8. No, we don't use MathML, but to say simply "IE doesn't support XHTML" seems somewhat disingenuous.

You're mistaken. Xhtml only works in IE if you serve it as text/html. If you have xhtml+mathml content, you're supposed to deliver it as application/xhtml+xml, but then IE won't display it. This makes it impossible to make a single, static xhtml web page that uses xhtml features (such as mathml) and renders in both IE and other browsers.

Re:patents, MS

[man_of_mr_e]

It's not like supporting xhtml content type is a requirement for supporting xhtml syntax, or mathml syntax for that matter. xhtml content type support is not trivial, because it requires an entirely different xml based parsing engine rather than an html based one.

Also, it's not like ie is the only browser to not support mathml. Konqueror doesn't, nor does KHTML which is the basis for many other browsers. Webkit nightlies support it, but this is a rather recent occurance. Gecko supports it, but again, this has only been a relatively recent occurance. (since Gecko 1.8, which is a little less than 2 years old).

Re:patents, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like that's all this is, isn't it? The browser venders determine the fate of the browser's scripting language and features.

But it isn't. Go grep through the HTML5 spec for the the phrase "willful violation". It occurs a *lot*. There are willful violations of the URI spec, of the HTTP spec, and a fair few others. If you actually read it (which is damn, damn hard because it was written to subsume every spec a browser writer would need), you realize it will force everyone to ship two libraries of core protocol elements used all over. The one that's used by everyone else, and the one used by HTML5 engines. Ian Hickson is, bluntly, trying to put his name on something that is the only reference, rather than actually using as designed the systems that have been built and deployed over the last 17 years.

The W3C flunked this one, badly. And the IETF looks to be flunking it too, given what I'm seeing out of HyBi and friends.

Forking is bad for network-effect based systems. Like the Internet. Like the Web. This is a fork, plain and simple. And mobile devices and other vendors are paying for the WhatWG's hubris with bloat. So don't expect those of us who are paying attention to be happy with the situation. We're paying the price already and soon enough, so will you.

Re:patents, MS

[bcrowell]

It's not like supporting xhtml content type is a requirement for supporting xhtml syntax[...]

Yes, it is a requirement. When you serve xhtml with content type text/html, you're simply exploiting a bug in browsers that makes them ignore xhtml constructs that aren't legal html. More info here: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=393445#q8

[...] or mathml syntax for that matter.

Mathml is not a separate syntax. It's simply an xml namespace. If a browser is going to support xhtml properly, then it will have to support xml, and supporting xml means you already have automatic support for parsing mathml. Rendering mathml correctly is another matter. It's correct for a browser to ignore tags that it doesn't understand, and in the case of mathml, this actually results in a pretty reasonable fallback (looks OK on the screen, has some chance of being usable by blind users).

xhtml content type support is not trivial, because it requires an entirely different xml based parsing engine rather than an html based one.

It is trivial, because xml is a stable, well-defined format for which there are a gajillion different free and non-free parsers available. The reason html parsing is so incredibly hard is that real-world browsers all try to incorporate heuristics for recovering from badly formed html; if they didn't do that, they wouldn't be able to render a large percentage of html web pages. Since xhtml isn't allowed to be malformed, parsing it is trivial.

Re:patents, MS

[bcrowell]

It doesn't make sense to let the standardization* process be dictated by them, with no one else having a say on it, whether they are competing companies (MS included)

WHATWG invited Chris Wilson from MS to join. He turned them down for a number of reasons, including a belief that it would be "irresponsible" to break bug-for-bug compatibility with IE6. Considering the destructive, antisocial behavior of MS with java and ooxml, I can't say I'm sorry that they didn't choose to participate -- but it was their choice.

Re:patents, MS

[Boycott BMG]

Also, it's not like ie is the only browser to not support mathml. Konqueror doesn't, nor does KHTML which is the basis for many other browsers. Webkit nightlies support it, but this is a rather recent occurance. Gecko supports it, but again, this has only been a relatively recent occurance. (since Gecko 1.8, which is a little less than 2 years old).

MathML has been in Firefox since forever. I distinctly remember looking at MathML rendering in Mozilla suite before Firefox existed.

Re:patents, MS

[man_of_mr_e]

Yes, it is a requirement. When you serve xhtml with content type text/html, you're simply exploiting a bug in browsers that makes them ignore xhtml constructs that aren't legal html.

Perhaps you should reread what I said. I said it wasn't required for supporting xhtml *syntax*. This is a very important distinction that you completely ignored.

[...] or mathml syntax for that matter.

Mathml is not a separate syntax.

Yes, it is. Note section 2.4 of the MathML specification titled "MathML Syntax and Grammar"

The rest of your comments show even more ignorance of the issues surrounding changing the parsing engine of a browser. I mean, if you can't even get something as simple as MathML having a syntax... there's no hope for you.

Re:patents, MS

[man_of_mr_e]

Not according to Mozilla.

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Accessibility/AT-APIs/Web_Specifications

"MathML is supported in Gecko starting from Gecko 1.8.0 (Firefox 1.5)"

Re:patents, MS

[man_of_mr_e]

Sorry, google search gone wrong. Confused a different Gecko project release date with mozilla gecko 1.8 release date.

Mozilla Gecko 1.8 was released in 2005, so that's been about 6 years. But definitely not pre-firefox.

Re:patents, MS

[Boycott BMG]

Perhaps that was when it was officially supported, but I do remember downloading fonts for MathML in Mozilla that predate Firefox. In fact, here's a page from 2003 about those very fonts. http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/intelligent-book/mathml/

Re:patents, MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part where he said he didn't use MathML?

CSS is horrible for table layouts

[brunes69]

CSS has no sane table layout syntax. The only way to do tables in CSS is to basically DUPLICATE the HTML table syntax using div tags with table properties on them - tell me how that is better in any way shape or form?

There is a difference between content markup, content layout, and content styling. The problem is people get them all confused and try to shoe-horn improper tools in each.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Stooshie]

If you actually want a table of data, then use the table tag. It's not deprecated, just assigned to be used for tables. If you are doing layout use divs or spans with floats and clears.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[bricriu]

If you want to display data in a table, use table tags. That's fine. That's what they're there for. They're NOT there for general block-level content layout.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[eric_brissette]

I'm not sure what you mean by "table layouts"

The table tag is a tool, and its job is to display tabular data. Using it for anything else (design and layout of a page) is where the shoe-horning happens.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Ian-K]

ah... and to your experience that works the same across all browsers???

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Rhaban]

floats are not meant for doing layouts.
using floats for even fairly simple layouts almost always results in horrible hacks.
Floats should be used for 2 cases:
  - you want to illustrate some text with an image (or a box, block, table...), and you want the text to fill the space on the side of it, then resume to full available width under it.
  - you have several boxes (or images or whatever) that you want to place side by side, filling the available horizontal space, then continue on a new line when there's no space available.

the only proper way to build layouts is css tables. but it doesn't work on IE. I guess it's not possible to do web design without horrible hacks.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Tim C]

In the sense that it can be made to work in all the major browsers, yes.

The GP is right - tables are for tables of data, not for laying out content that is not actually tabular. You wouldn't write a document in a spreadsheet just because that would mean not having to worry about tabstops, would you?

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Anonymous Psychopath]

In the sense that it can be made to work in all the major browsers, yes.

The GP is right - tables are for tables of data, not for laying out content that is not actually tabular. You wouldn't write a document in a spreadsheet just because that would mean not having to worry about tabstops, would you?

I would if it took less time and the desired result was the same. I'm no masochist.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Anonymous Psychopath]

If you want to display data in a table, use table tags. That's fine. That's what they're there for. They're NOT there for general block-level content layout.

I hear this all the time, but what I never hear is WHY. Table layouts existed long before CSS and worked just fine.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Stooshie]

Floats can be used for layouts. It also means that the display order doesn't always have to be the same as the order in the HTML (useful for accessibility when you want the menu to be first in the HTML so that readers can see it first, but you want the visual design to have the menu on the right).

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[Anonymous Coward]

What about if you have a relational view of one or more tables, Can you use a table-tag to display that?

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[KlomDark]

While we all strive for perfection, relax about it a bit, enjoy the multi-browser hacks while you can, it's not going to be as much fun once there's just one way left. Making hacks to support your vision being perfect across multiple browsers, especially in the current DHTML -> Javascript -> jQuery -> Web Services focus that's taking over now (it's still in the early/fun stage), if you don't enjoy it, you might want to drop down to middleware programming where you can achieve near-perfection.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[man_of_mr_e]

He means the table CSS selectors, not the table HTML tags. The table oriented CSS selectors are designed to create table-like styling.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[KlomDark]

These days, I fully agree. But several years ago, horrible hacks of tables nested in tables nested in tables were used to get the effect of what CSS does for us today. My reaction upon learning CSS was to fully avoid using tables at all for a while. (Which led to some rather comical adventures in overly complicated divs within divs within divs, trying to duplicate the base functionality of a table. Informative, but time-wasting.)

But nowdays, if I'm going to display truly tabular data, I use a single table (Inside of a containing div, nesting of tables not allowed ever) to lay out the basics of the display. Then use CSS to tune the appearance of some of the table elements. It's faster to develop, and you don't lose the control of CSS.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[surgen]

If you actually want a table of data, then use the table tag

What about when I just want a grid layout? Now that we're forcing html to be "applications", where the hell is the grid container that has been in every other sensible graphics library for ages? Hack it together with css because its bad practice to use a table for that?

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[uglyduckling]

It certainly does (well, all modern browsers anyway). I'm just putting the finishing touches to a site for a photography and graphic design company with complete graphical layout (as would have been done with tables in the past), semi-transparent floating text boxes, slideshow with fade transitions, and all sorts of other bells and whistles. No tables, no Flash, the only text pre-rendered as a jpeg is in the company logo. Looks great in Safari (OSX and iOS), Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and IE 8. IE 7 is OK with some fairly graceful downgrades. IE 6 looks pretty rubbish but I don't really care about that.

Oh, and if you turn off styles you get a fairly decent-looking plaintext page, with all the slideshow images at the bottom, the only uglyness being a collection of graphics used for the borders at the very bottom of the page, and I will probably get around to changing them into DIV backgrounds rather than img tags before it goes live.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[uglyduckling]

Table layouts don't work well across different browser implementations, because they're not actually designed for pixel-level alignment. They break non-visual devices (e.g. screen readers) because often elements that should appear related when the table is rendered visually aren't actually adjacent in the html. To put it more grandly, table layouts break the separation between the actual content, and the description of how it should be laid out on a screen.

Using CSS for layouts allows the designer to lay the text and images out in the html in a way that makes sense as plaintext, then impose the layout over the top to make it pretty. It's also magically quick with CSS to re-factor a site by changing one file, for instance to make a site easier to read on a small smartphone screen. Really, table layouts are 1990s, and frankly they're welcome to them.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[zach_the_lizard]

CSS can be finicky sometimes. I'm working on a personal website (I'm not a web developer by any means), and there are some things that make me go, "Huh?" For whatever reason, the footer for the page overlaps the header, even though it was declared later. Ok, I can deal with that, just set the footer to be at the bottom. bottom: 0px should do that, at least from my understanding (which is admittedly more like that of a novice). What it really does is make it disappear entirely (in all browsers tested). The rest of the layout is fine.

Issues with a footer not sticking at the bottom are apparently something of a common problem. Some of the solutions involve wrapping everything in the body in a div, and then putting a random extraneous div between the rest of the page and the footer. To me, this is sort of a WTF moment.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[thetoadwarrior]

What makes you think that? You're not doing it right if you're having problems styling a table. If you want your headings different from your data then you should be using thead and tbody. If you want different stylings per column then name the columns with a class or id which is ideal to do anyway because you can then drop in JavaScript functionality to manipulate or grab data from any column.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[thetoadwarrior]

A lot of the problems with layouts are that you're not in full control of the CSS. Each browser has its own representation of tags. The ideal thing is to blank out everything with a reset style sheet first. It's small and you can copy one from anyone and put no effort into creating it.

The downside is if you do blank out everything then you may have to write more styles than you originally wanted to but you're getting more control and again you can make snippets for base styles that you generally always want to reuse.

You still might get browser bugs especially for older browsers but resetting all the styles and not allowing to browser to use it's own will make your life easier and most of the work should only be more or less a one off thing then giving you something that will make your life easier in the long run.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[thetoadwarrior]

They existed but the tags weren't meant to be used that way and in the HTML 3.2 spec it states that it could be used for layout but that it will cause problems speech or text agents.

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[uglyduckling]

I don't disagree that it can be tricky, but it's the same learning the ins and outs of any language. My experience with CSS is that once it clicks, it's extremely flexible and consistent across [modern] browsers. The difficulty you're encountering is to do with deciding where the bottom is - I'm guessing it seems logical to you that it would be the bottom of the browser window, but if you're designing a tall scrolling page (like Slashdot) you want bottom:0 to be the very bottom of the page (which I guess is why it disappears).

Re:CSS is horrible for table layouts

[brunes69]

OK, here is an example of what I mean. Standard 3 column layout, with a left nav, right nav, and centered content. Commonly done simply like this.

  left content...
center content...
right content...

Show me how to do that succinctly using CSS2 in a way that properly flows the center content as you resize the browser. You can't. You can ONLY do it by using a big mess of floats and percentages that is anything but simple and results in a pile of markup.

The big problem with CSS2 (and even CSS3) is it is seeminly designed by publishing professionals, all geared up around fixed sizing. It does not work well with reflowing content at all.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[graveyhead]

Hah yeah except for the huge stupid hack you have to use for IE ;-)

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq#ie

Not long ago (within the past year) I've seen people *strongly* recommend targeting HTML 4.01, the most widely set of tags currently supported.

XHTML never really seemed to live up to the hype for me. Sure, it's easier to parse XHTML than HTML. But who cares? You should not be parsing web pages, it's the road to madness ;-) Always look for an API or a feed first.

What's wrong?

[mikeken]

But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla.

Maybe this is true, but so far I am happy with the results.

3 more...

[tthomas48]

That's 3 more than we used to have. And not to put to fine a point on it, but

Re:3 more...

[SuperKendall]

I liked where you were going with that thought, a shame you had to leave.

Re:3 more...

[tthomas48]

I kept typing after I hit the preview button. The preview looked fine, but then it posted that typing (not the preview) when I clicked submit.

I feel like there's something in that about Ajax and web standards...

Re:3 more...

[SuperKendall]

Huh, when I hit preview there's no means to continue typing...

Re:3 more...

[tthomas48]

Yes. It was in between the time when I hit preview and when my page actually showed the preview div. Due to some bizarre networking setups in my house I have a decent amount of lag.

Do I sense bitterness...?

[Ian-K]

...in that MS is not among the companies deciding the future of HTML?

Today MS is harvesting all they have seeded with their utter neglect of standards in the last 10 years: they have now become irrelevant in the market. Maaaaybe they'll play nice with IE9, but they'll always be catching up, not leading the pack.

(much like in the mobile arena with WP7 and tablets running Win7... I'll be surprised if MS makes a dent on those markets in the next 2-3 years).

For all the FUD Mr MCallister is throwing, I can tell him that I've been quite happily coding HTML5 applications for over a year now without any complaints from our users, apart from those still using IE. So, we (developers, and I think I can safely speak for the rest of you) don't mind the "ever-evolving" html5 standards because they mostly and generally WORK!

Re:Do I sense bitterness...?

[David Gerard]

And, of course, Microsoft could have shown up any time to the WHATWG list. They were asked, repeatedly. They didn't want to play. So everyone else got together to implement the future without them.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[CynicTheHedgehog]

It never had complete control, but it did its job. It established a level playing field and and brought parity (more or less) to four different browser engines. Now that there *is* competition, all four vendors are busy as bees trying to add new features and mimic the new features added by the other vendors. So we don't need a standard per se, as long as we have users that have iPhones expecting that a web page will work the same way on their desktops.

So kudos to the W3C for making it viable for other browsers to come to market and compete, and kudos to Mozilla for making that dream a reality. Now it's all about innovation and compatibility.

Reference implementation

[Meneth]

Most standards that actually work have open-source reference implementations. HTML and CSS do not.

Re:Reference implementation

[Have Blue]

WebKit.

Re:Reference implementation

[Rockoon]

WebKit is not a reference implementation. Its certainly an implementation, but it is neither complete nor authoritative.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest factor here is again Microsoft. MS is pushing it's Windows locked SL to secure it's os-monopoly. All MS is doing to HTML is trying to keep it from developing.
"All open standards are poison for monopoly."
Just check what happened to open document formats. ODF was gaining attention, MS forced OOXML as open standard but which is actually closed.
And now again, we do not have real competition in office applications, because everything is sill locked to MS-office.

If there was no monopoly, we would already have HTML5 in place and using browsers without Windows-locks.

just being realistic

[boxwood]

The lack of version numbers is just being realistic. No browser is 100% compliant even with HTML 4.01, which has been around for how long now? And when is HTML 4.02 coming out? Seems to me they've abandoned the versions a long time ago. Everyone just uses HTML 4.01.

They can make a HTML 5.00 standard, and have most of the browsers implement 99% of it and then they release 5.01 and the browser makers will get to work implementing that, but totally abandon implementing that last 1% of the HTML 5.00 spec... because they would be too busy implementing 5.01, 5.02, etc. So a Web developer sets a HTML 5.00 doctype, uses a feature that isn't implemented yet hoping that someday browsers may support it. But there is no guarantee they will. So the web developer will just change the doctype to 5.01, 5.02 (or whatever the latest version of the spec is) every time he makes changes to a web page or CMS.

So they're just being realistic. No matter what standard they come up with, it will never be implemented fully by all browsers. Their standard won't be the law, it will be more of a guideline. Having version numbers is pretty pointless when all browsers aren't going to render a HTML 5.01 document exactly the same. Its easier for the web developer to tell the browser that this is a HTML 5 doc and the browser will use its latest code to render the page.

Re:just being realistic

[Anonymous Coward]

Version numbering isn't actually about ensuring a feature set across all browsers - I don't think anybody who works on the web believes that will ever happen.

It's about ensuring that changes to the spec don't break existing pages or functionality. The problem with the 'living document' sans version numbers is that if I write a page targeted for HTML5.00, test it on all the major browsers and get it working, and they then change something in the standard that breaks the document, I'm screwed. I have no way to say "This document is for HTML5 as it was on 1/21/2010". Since HTML has depreciated elements and changed the way things function in the past, specifying a certain implementation means that you test once and then don't have to worry if the specs change.

A constantly changing spec means not only are you targeting 10 different browsers, you're targeting 10 different versions of 10 different browsers, and the whole thing could change again tomorrow. It goes from being a pushing a boulder up Mount Everest to being Sisyphus.

Re:just being realistic

[boxwood]

ok so you target HTML 5.00 which isn't implemented perfectly. You test it and notice a few problems on a couple of browsers. You do a work around for those browsers.

Then a couple of years from now a developer for one of the glitchy browsers notices a bug in how it renders HTML 5.00. What should he do? if he fixes the bug then your workaround is going make the page be rendered in a way that you didn't intend. A couple of more years later, that browser gets a completely new rewrite of its rendering engine. Now they have to make sure that it will still render HTML 5.00 the same way (the incorrect way) that the old rendering engine did? What if they didn't know that there was a bug that caused HTML 5.00 to be rendered improperly? Thats right, your page isn't going to work right on that browser. You have to go back and make some adjustments.

Thats the thing, no matter what you do, as a web developer you are going to have to make little tweaks to your web pages to make sure they work right on newer versions of all browsers. If the popular browsers do things right you won't have to do this very much. If there is a popular browser that makes big changes to how it renders pages between versions (*cough* IE), then you might have to make a lot of changes with each version. It sucks, but have version numbers on the spec isn't going to change that.

From what I can see the biggest difference between how pages are rendered now is dependent on the browser version, not the HTML version.

And if they do a good job on the spec, they won't have to remove/change how elements get rendered as time goes on. They'll just add new features and keep the existing featureset static. So HTML 5.01 would end up being the same as HTML 5.00, only with a couple of new features added.

Re:just being realistic

[yuhong]

They can make a HTML 5.00 standard, and have most of the browsers implement 99% of it and then they release 5.01 and the browser makers will get to work implementing that, but totally abandon implementing that last 1% of the HTML 5.00 spec...

And it actually happened with CSS 2.0. And people denounce IE6 as "non-compliant".

Wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's (semantically) a table you use a TABLE element. Otherwise, you use DIVs (or whatever). Is that so hard to understand?

Seriously now?

[timw4mail]

Browsers are more consistent than ever in what they support, and that's somehow a bad thing? Clearly the writer of that article isn't a web developer.

Re:Seriously now?

[Lazy Jones]

Browsers are more consistent than ever in what they support,

This may be true for the latest version of every major browser (which is different from just "browsers" because there are many actively developed browsers out there based on icky stuff like MSIE6 or Firefox 2), but it does not help the web developer when he needs to carefully add 4-5 different CSS declarations in a particular order just to add a gradient or round corners... The problem just multiplies with the new features being added to JS (Web Workers etc.)...

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Marquee is where it's at.

Helping you with definition of evil

[SuperKendall]

Gee, that sounds like - a De Facto standard. Like MS Word .doc format! Guess evil is in the eye of the beholder.

Good is when you help other companies ship a product that supports a generally agreed upon standard - like HTML5 extensions. That way you compete in the market based on quality of product.

Evil is when you ship something you promote as a standard that you will not help anyone else ship a competing product for, like .doc.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Stooshie]

Remind me to never hire you for a project. You sound like you are a nightmare to work with. I suspect you have never worked on a real site that needs to be used by a wide range of people across a wide range of circumstances. Blind people, colour blind people and people with upper body problems have to be able to pay online for their council tax, apply for planning permission etc.... Standards are vitally important for that.

That's not what the masses want. Or need.

[SuperKendall]

The problem is that we're turning the browser into an application-level container. HTML should be more focused on making layouts easier, and faster

But that's not what "the masses" want, or even need.

The masses like doing things over the web, so any standards that improve the ability to do more things in the browser help people. The demand is obviously there from the growth of Flash.

The "masses" also NEVER wanted to edit HTML. Not directly. Because most people HATE AND FEAR code. You simply cannot make code in such a way that anyone but coders will want to use it directly, so making it simpler for someone who is not a coder is a fools errand. Instead it's better to add complex features that help enable better tools with better output, which is why we got CSS and a bunch of other things.

You may say HTML should be this or that but the reality is that the people directed HTML right to where they wanted to go.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[jewelises]

I believe that it's just WHATWG that has dropped the version number, not the W3C.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Anonymous Coward]

IE did some nasty things to CSS and we all had to live with that, too.

Quid pro quo ....http://www.exploit-db.com/exploits/15746/ can't blame wc3 if Microsoft can screw up css parsing this bad. They still have it screwed up because of the crap they did in the IE6 engine! Sounds like there will be no fix for IE7 or 8. Good way for them to completely kill off both XP and Vista would be for them not offer IE9 with the advanced html5 css parsing capabilities without the legacy exploit. I really think they are getting super pissed with Google and Mozilla for offering a browser that keeps computers with XP and Vista usable...must be really putting a bone into their sales plans of ditching users and forcing upgrades because the OS that the computer shipped with is a piece of really bad swiss cheese. This also puts the lie to not being able to use Windows without the IE engine! Heck they do not need even need the core engine for ms update. I am almost willing to bet that it is possible to completely remove the flawed IE engine and still have a usable OS if upgrades can be pushed without out it.

Trouble is wc3 still has far too much legacy crap that is just there for the sake of and interest of Microsoft. Html5 can never become a "standard" as long as company based solely on planned software obsolescence has a say in the designs.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Rhaban]

The proper way is to use a span with class="blink" and do the blinking in javascript.

MS Word is not comparable

[Anonymous Coward]

Files in MS Word's proprietary format are both written and read by that one same program. Nobody outside that program's authors are privy to the format.

Defacto HTML standards are different, because the people who wrote your browser are usually not the same people who wrote your website (though we do have an interesting exception happening with Google). Either how it works gets communicated with the world or else whatever makes this HTML variant unique, doesn't get used. Apple can add whatever proprietary twists to HTML they want to with Safari, but for it to really do anything, they need to open it up to the public so that you can read about it and implement it on your website. Except you won't implement it on your website if it causes Firefox to not be able to read your website. The result is that the extensions either need to be added in a back-compatible manner, or else they need to be extremely popular.

Go back to the MS Word thing. If someone saved a document in a newer version of the format and another user couldn't read it, that didn't stop people from saving. It just caused the other users to have to upgrade -- sometimes their whole computer or network; I once saw a case where one user's MS Word upgrade resulted in a small office giving up and spending nearly twenty thousand dollars, because their machines would completely lock up (not even bluescreen) sometimes when they opened the files saved by the lady who had the newer version. Do you see this happening with the web? I sure don't.

Re:MS Word is not comparable

[Dog-Cow]

Some office spent $20000 to upgrade everyone instead of forcing one shithead to downgrade to what everyone else was using? Sounds like that place deserved to throw away that money.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Tim C]

The major browsers just don't give a crap what you feed them.

The same is not necessarily true of assisstive technologies such as screen readers.

Now if all you care about is the maximum return on investment that probably isn't important to you, but in that case I'd be wary of throwing the word wanker around too much...

Canvas patent

[tepples]

Apple created canvas, submitted to W3C

And a lot of people complain about Apple's patent on the <canvas> element. Apple isn't required to license this patent until <canvas> becomes part of a W3C Recommendation.

Four is better than One

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the worst so-called "standards" come from a single vendor. Having four companies who are not all buddies in charge of the evolution of a mostly-mature standard is considerably better than these things often turn out.

I'm not saying I'm happy with the situation, just that there are plenty of worse things to cry about. Like, say, MS Office formats.

This is the W3C's fault

[Tridus]

As a standards making body, the W3C was pretty much doomed as soon as they abandoned things that people actually use and decided to focus on XHTML 2 for so long (which almost nobody was interested in).

The result was WHAT-WG being created (with the major browser players) to do the work that needed to be done: adding features to HTML that people actually care about.

Of course we've got the major vendors making the standard, they're the only ones who have been actually focused on making a standard for years! If you don't like it, go ask the W3C to rejoin us here in reality.

Re:This is the W3C's fault

[Nadaka]

I was interested in XHTML2. Hell, I put down at least 30k lines of code for XHTML2 compatible development tools before the spec was canceled.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're mad. And you're probably writing unmaintainable garbage.

The point of running pages through validators isn't academic. Sure, they're a tad pedantic, but all static code checking tools are. They will tell you if your HTML is actually invalid. Incorrect nesting, invalid document structure, mis-matched tags, invalid or mis-spelt tag names or attributes, missing quotes or HTML entities, and so on.

If your HTML fails any of these tests, it is broken. Simple as that. You're relying on the web browser's error recovery to fix it for you. Except error recovery was not specified in the HTML specs until very recently (and only Firefox has implemented that, so far). So each browser will have different error recovery rules, so they can (and will) interpret your page differently.

I don't care how careful you are. Everybody makes mistakes. It's too easy to miss out a closing tag, or break the structure of the document while moving bits around. These kinds of errors can be a bugger to fix (especially if one web browser happens to correct them, while another does not), but a validator will catch these errors for you.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[unapersson]

That's funny, I've encountered lots of people using Microsoft Word as their HTML editor who say just the same thing. So you're in good company.

Validators make a good sanity check/diagnostic tool when something isn't working correctly in Foobar browser, but they're not a crutch. Once you've got a solid working knowledge of HTML they're not really going to teach you much but might find a few typos.

Once you move beyond HTML and into CSS, valid HTML can certainly make a difference, but if you're sticking with HTML3.2 and not bothering with CSS you can get away with a lot.

Open Screen Project

[tepples]

[HTML] *is* an open standard, implementable by anyone who reads the spec.

Apple holds patents that cover <canvas>. See my other comment.

Flash is not.

What you said was true until February 2009, when Adobe changed the license terms for the SWF specification.

Re:Open Screen Project

[Anonymous Coward]

What, Flash is more Open then HTML5! How can this be, my life is going topsy-turvy.

I guess it's time to ditch HTML, I never liked it anyway.

standardizing HTML is flawed in its very concept

[PJ6]

You don't standardize at such a high abstraction level, especially not for user interfaces - it utterly stifles progress. Any standard W3C provides should be expressed as a set of unit tests that validate the properties and behavior of browser objects.

Defining "standard" and "open source"

[tepples]

Most standards that actually work have open-source reference implementations.

Then I guess video codecs are exceptions to your "most standards". ISO publishes standards, many of which are standards for mathematical systems. These have a reference implementation in a computer program whose source code is available to the public. However, due to ISO's patent policy, many standards cannot be implemented in open source software as Open Source Initiative defines it. For example, ISO allows MPEG-LA to attach a uniform royalty to the MPEG-4 standard, including the controversial AVC Advanced Video Codec, which breaks OSD section 1's requirement that open source software allow royalty-free distribution.

Re:Defining "standard" and "open source"

[Meneth]

Video codecs do indeed have problems with software patents. That is why we got WebM. It is also one of the reasons software patents should be abolished.

Re:Defining "standard" and "open source"

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't know what WebM is unencumbered by patents. We think it is but we may be wrong. What are you going to do if someone does sue you for patent infringment for using WebM?

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Nadaka]

Exactly. A standard provides a goalpost for minimum uniformity. It provides a stable reference point with a known set of features. Implement the standard and standard sites will just work. Its ok to go beyond that and experiment with new features. But you need to meet the minimum standard of compliance.

The new method of an ever shifting and non-enumerated standard is a huge step backwards. No one will ever be able to implement the standard because it changes all the time. Without versions, there are not even signs on the road to tell you how far you have come and how far you have to go. It is a ridiculously bad decision.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of having a standard is to, in your own words, have a maintainable project. Any developer should be able to come into the project and understand how and why something's being done a particular way. Standards and validation are no barrier to this goal, to claim they are is just the excuse of a sub-standard developer.

Removing features between versions

[VGPowerlord]

The fun begins when one of the vendors convinces the standards body to remove features between versions.

For instance, between CSS1 and CSS2, the requirement to have the <col> HTML tag styled with left and right alignment vanished.

Why was that? The only browser that didn't (and still doesn't) support it is Mozilla/Firefox...

I could search for the 10 year old "wontfix" bug about this in Bugzilla, but that sounds suspiciously like work.

On a side note, Firefox will never be 100% CSS1 compliant because this requirement is missing.

Why keep making changes?

[Anonymous Coward]

The standard should be done by now.

HTML has always been a living standard

[Artifex33]

HTML and other web-related specs have never been truly written in stone, as the author seems to want. XMLHttpRequest, and innerHTML were functionalities written outside the spec and then later added to their respective spec documents. How many of us, as developers, have had a Business Requirements documenter interrupt our day to ask for details on how the system currently works so that they can go back and write the Requirements Specification docs to match? This back-asswards process is so common in my experience that I have come to empathize with those who believe that Req. Specs are essentially useless. They're a form of procedural ass-covering by businesspeople who want to be able to point at a document when something goes wrong.

The idea that the HTML spec from the WHATWG is functioning in the same manner is neither unexpected nor worrisome to me. I'm glad that they're acknowledging that it's code shippers who are truly defining the HTML world for us developers on a day-to-day basis. We don't worry about "what version of HTML does your site support", but instead worry about "which functionality does your site support"?

The real shift that's occurred in the code is that we're now (if we're doing as we're supposed to be doing) testing for client functionality instead of browser version, and certainly not for HTML version. Your site either supports the <video> tag or it doesn't. It either supports WebWorkers or it doesn't.

While I think it's an egregious error to omit Microsoft from the WHATWG, as they, more than anyone, could use some ears to the ground for following real-world standards, I think that having industry leaders all around a table, discussing a technology direction that will provide the next steps for HTML is a good thing.

Really, who else would the author have take over? It's implicit in his voiced distrust of private companies that he'd rather hand this off to some kind of governmental agency, or at least give it some kind of oversight powers. As to that: I don't want to give the future of HTML and the web to the same people who came up with the US Income Tax system--the poster-child for bureaucratic gobbledygook.

The HTML code is not executable code.

[master_p]

This is a direct result of HTML being instructions that their meaning is defined on paper, and not by executable code.

If HTML was executable code, it would be vastly easier to extend.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[CynicTheHedgehog]

Not really. A "rolling" standard allows the periodic adoption and standardization of a single tag or attribute, which would allow progress on that front while the vendors continue to bicker about the other proposed changes. It's like of like the JCP process was (sans incorporation into a major version release). Different ideas are proposed: some get formalized and adopted and some languish. Nothing wrong with that. The result is that you get a browser or update with support for (for example) WSR-1234 which might be embedded video or canvasing or something, and after a (short) while they all will pretty much have it. And because it's incremental, it's easier to implement and release updates quickly, rather than rewriting the entire engine every two years.

Reality vs. Fantasy

[binary paladin]

The W3C and the speed at which standards are adopted blows, it's that simple. The process is so obnoxiously democratic and bureaucratic to make sure it's equal and open and free and independent and whatever that nothing actually gets done in a manner resembling timely.

Technology and the web are moving much, much faster than that.

"Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process."

So... the companies that are actually developing the browsers are making the decisions and not some asshole academic somewhere with an opinion? You also forgot Microsoft, they make a pretty popular browser too, or so I hear. Oh yes, and it's still very open and democratic in the sense the developers are still very much driving what happens. If developers do not embrace and/or demand some feature, its adoption—either by a standards board or a browser maker—is irrelevant.

The web and the evolution of HTML and other web technologies is simply moving too quickly and is too organic of a process for some slow standards board to put put their seal of approval on things after 10 years of debating over minutia.

Re:Reality vs. Fantasy

[MadMaverick9]

Technology and the web are moving much, much faster than that.

That's a big money making scheme. Getting users to upgrade every year.
Windows is a good example: with every new version of Windows you are required to upgrade your hardware - buy new hardware.
Some of us refuse to participate in this scheme. Some of us will stay with Windows XP because it works well with what we have.
Another example: why on earth do people have to buy a new phone every year, even though the old one still works just fine.

Re:Reality vs. Fantasy

[spauldo]

I don't think the problem with the W3C was its speed - many of its standards were well ahead of what the browsers were supporting.

The problem with the W3C was that during most of the important development, the only relevant browser vendor completely ignored them. XHTML wasn't perfect, but a lot of the concepts it introduced (namespaces, for one) would have been a major step forward. You really can't blame Mozilla for not adopting the later XHTML standards, because by the time they had caught up in functionality with IE, everyone had pretty much given up on XHTML.

Of course, the other problem with the W3C was that they refused to face the fact that layout is important. Even following the standards, there were things you could do in HTML 3.2 that you couldn't do in CSS 1 and 2. Layout with table tags is easy - I could explain it to someone in ten minutes or less - and it worked pretty much everywhere. I completely understand the reasons why table layout is bad, and I completely agree with them, but there's no excuse for there not being a decent replacement.

Independent standards process

[DragonWriter]

But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process

Every real standards process is driven by the industry, usually primarily by the biggest players in the industry. Even when people other than those shipping implementations, such as users, are involved, there involvement is always secondary in practice even if not in theory, because a standard is meaningful only to the extent that it is actually implemented.

I don't know why anyone would want a "standards process" that was "truly independent" of the implementors; what value would that have?

Not a bad thing

[Anonymous Coward]

These companies want to get things done with the least delay and with the best result.
They know better than anyone what needs to be done and how to do it quickly and efficiently.
Why not leave the decision process to them? Would you rather prefer a committee?

Committees are only good for one thing: for getting everything swamped and delayed forever.

Re:Have you got an odt file like that?

[pavon]

I have been on the sending end of that problem. KOffice and OpenOffice generate ODT files that differ wildly in their interpretation of parts of the standard that aren't specified. For spreadsheet files in particular, there are more things that are unspecified than are specified. Trying to collaborate using KOffice and OpenOffice is worse than using different versions of Excel.

Re:HTML compliance is for wankers

[m50d]

Have you tested anything AJAXy in firefox? I've found that non-"valid" but perfectly working html (e.g. nesting divs inside tables) can cause firefox's dom to get very confused, and so AJAX-updating parts of your page breaks in surprising ways.

No idea whether this is just firefox being over-fussy, but it's a bug I've come across induced by non-compliant HTML.

Rushed Features Sink Ships

[tobiah]

Every software project I've worked has occasionally had a feature forced in without careful consideration. They rarely turn out well, but they're disastrous when a major change is not tied to a new release number. Even if the change is useful and needed, it's really hard to see who's in compliance. There are always forward- and backward-compatibility issues with the datasets (old data can't use new feature, new data won't run right on old software), and it creates a lot of unnecessary work for both customers and coders.

The tension between developers and the standards committee they belong to is an old one that comes up again and again. That's just how democracy works; a subgroup is always going to be ready to move forward on an idea before the majority approves it. It's easy to forget why we submit ourselves to this slow and annoying process, but the end result is something most people agree on and can work with.

Where do you people think standards come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works closely with a couple of people who have been or are currently editors of IEEE standards, I have to wonder where people get their ideas about standards. The standardization process has never been, and never will be, about what end-users need or want. It has nothing at all to do with open source or free software. Very few standards have a free "reference implementation", and most of them (speaking of standards in general, not those of any particular standardization body) require both a purchase price for the standard document itself as well as patent licenses for implementations. The standards documents don't tell you what parts are patented or by whom, either, and some of them are so difficult to read and understand that it would take immersion in the standardization process and collaboration with that group to come up with an actual working implementation. Most standards are absolutely driven by a few companies with an agenda, and participation in the process, especially if you want to meaningfully drive the direction, is not cheap! Despite all that, standards provide a very important avenue for collaboration and competition between the businesses that create the hardware, software, and other infrastructure that supports our lives and hobbies.

Even the IETF, the "standards body" with probably the most cultural similarity to the bizarre Slashdot ethos, is driven by "running code and rough consensus". Do you know how many of the essential network protocols that you use today don't carry the IETF's approval as a final standard, but are instead considered to be draft standards? Go check the RFC database and see how that process works, and how few of the widely-implemented network protocols actually have a STD number in their current form.

The WHATWG is just being honest about what HTML has become, and how it will evolve in the future. Given the fast-paced nature of the changes to internet software and usage patterns, attempting to nail down a fixed set of features for a numbered specification release would only decrease the relevance of the standard itself. The 802.11 standards are a perfect example, as technology moves forward faster than the official standardization process can move. And with release of draft-standard hardware, the movement of the standards gets even more mired, as companies fight to oppose changes that would invalidate their hardware that is in the hands of customers. HTML is essentially in the same boat, and this move by the WHATWG is a recognition of the fact that finalizing a versioned standard would only stymie the advancement of technology as well as the cooperative collaboration of the companies that create HTML-related software. This is unquestionably a good move for everyone involved in HTML, even if they don't realize it now.

So basically...

[Anonymous Coward]

They have let Google make HTML beta forever. so now it will always suck.

I can think of worse things...

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

But the bigger problem is that HTML has effectively been abandoned to four companies: Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla. They are deciding the actual fate of HTML, not a truly independent standards process.

I'm just grateful that Microsoft isn't deciding the fate of HTML. Mozilla, at least, is a FOSS outfit. Google is a big enough corporation to counterbalance Apple, and Google hasn't proven inimical to FOSS yet. Apple hasn't been much for embracing/extending/extinguishing open standards, and Opera is too small and too European to do any real harm.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Anonymous Coward]

No standards body can possible 'completely control' any standard. The major vendors in the space will always a significant impact.

It would be absurd for IETF to create IPv7 ignoring Cisco or 3GPP to ignore E///.

I don't see how things could work in any other way? And how that way could be better.

MS non-compliance is the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason the standard abandoned any hope of traceability is that MS never joined that ad-hoc group that is in charge, and they aren't about standards compliance.
IE is still leader in desktop browser share (with about 44/29ths that of its nearest competior according to wikipedia)and leader in the enterprise. Even though it is a losing battle that will show Firefox as the eventual winner, and is showing non-IE in the mobile markets, companies do not care much. After all, the fact that youtube and facebook still have to code with IE6 in mind until 2014 when XP will go out of support, means that one thing is a standard, and another is the consumer and the products that they choose to support. See Wifi draft n (all over the place unless you're willing to pay 100 extra fo your router... ) see also IPv6 home router support.

That's why Mozilla makes a browser

[roca]

Not all the power of Web standards is in the hands of browser implementers --- what authors and users choose to use is important too. But certainly most of the power goes to the implementers of widely-used browsers. That's just reality. And this is why, in order to influence the Web for good, Mozilla is in the browser business.

As others have noted, we're in a much better situation now that we were in the IE6 era. Instead of one dominant engine we have three major engines with significant market share, and two of those engines are open source. So for many purposes it's really easy to be a browser implementer: just start contributing to Gecko or Webkit.

Theory vs. practice.

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is determining a standard, when you still control the compliance because of owning the highest browser share? they adamantly refuse to follow them and are suffering because of IE6's own strengths and lack of compliance. MS is losing the battle, and IE9 will eventually be respectable, but we have a long way to go before MS even gets forced to join the board

So whats the problem?

[twebb72]

I honestly don't see any problem with this. Being apart of W3C is a major investment for these companies. They are also the companies that have most to risk/gain by changes to the standards. People too soon forget that the 'standards board' circa 2001 was Microsoft. The prevalence of IE6 at the time basically dictated the standard by which developers made applications. Notice how I did not mention the actual standard, but the standard by which developers made applications. They are two very separate things when it comes to IE6's history. At least now, there is a general consensus, and we are headed in the right direction simply by these large entities being in agreement.

I knew HTML was a bad idea in 1997....

[steeleyeball]

All these people without any interest in computers or technology were suddenly on the internet... I was doing just fine with gopher, Archie, WAIS... etc. They were perfectly good document indexers and search tools.

But that's every major browser provider except MS!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been following this at it unrolls in the WebGL arena (which is another one of those standards "glued on" to HTML5) - and I have to say that the way that group of companies have been working has been fantastic. I'm just a lone developer, but I've been welcomed into their standards-setting mailing list, my needs are attended to - it's absolutely great!

The only fly in the ointment is the complete and utter lack of Microsoft in the process. However, it's very clear that we're better off without them. Nobody will morn the death of Internet Explorer - and by failing to join the Apple/Mozilla/Google/Opera group - they are simply hastening the end. Good!

Bear in mind that Apple/Google are working on the "WebKit" browser engine - that covers a lot more than just Chrome and Safari - almost every other browser you can think of (except for IE) is based on either WebKit or the Mozilla engine. My Kindle has a webkit browser, so does my phone, my netbook...you name it.

I think this is great - lets get the standard for the web up to where it can do modern things...by which I mean things like 3D graphics, which COULD have been in HTML since the get-go. The old style of standardization got us VRML....yeah....remember VRML? How many VRML sites did you ever visit? None? I'm not surprised.

The WebGL process is "The Right Thing" - they didn't re-invent the wheel, they took an existing standard (OpenGL) - wrote some JavaScript bindings - added a few handy things like API to load texture maps via HTTP - and fixed a couple of egregious security issues. Tadaaaa! And now we can do 3D graphics under Linux, Windows, Mac and an increasing number of phones - all with a single set of source code and no nasty downloads.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Anonymous Coward]

> If there was no monopoly, we would already have HTML5 in place and using browsers without Windows-locks.

If it weren't for Microsoft's willingness to push the boundaries of HTML with IE4, IE5, and IE6, we'd still be thinking that blink tags were the epitome of cool. 99.9% of what now constitutes "AJAX" is basically IE4/5 DHTML with slightly- (if not pointlessly-) changed object names. Mozilla rejected it all for ideological reasons, then Firefox changed the name from DHTML to AJAX, tweaked the namespace, and overnight it suddenly became acceptable to people who hate Microsoft for being Microsoft.
a
Microsoft isn't perfect. They've screwed up more than a few times, and caused plenty of wrecks. Nevertheless, they almost single-handedly did more to advance the usefulness of HTML and the browser as a general-purpose container-framework for applications than everyone else COMBINED. While pre-Firefox Moz was sitting on its ass waiting for W3C to bless something and tell them what to do, Microsoft just went ahead and made it happen.

Where is IBM

[dave87656]

With HTML so important, where is IBM in this process?

Rough consensus and running code

[SEE]

It works for the rest of the Internet. So why not a process where WHATWG sits down and develops HTML, and then (the step not yet taken) have WHATWG submit chunks, as they become ready, to the IETF to be handled as standards-track RFCs?

Then, instead of single version numbers for paper standards that may not ever actually correspond to implemented reality, you get an evolving collection of RFCs documenting actual practice.

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[mjwx]

It never had complete control, but it did its job. It established a level playing field and and brought parity (more or less) to four different browser engines

Today, a web dev has to maintain four different versions of any website that gets more complex then text and pictures. For non web dev's who need to maintain a website (I.E. most companies in existence) this is an expensive headache.

Dont get me wrong, I don't blame the W3C for this, they tried their hardest to establish open standards for cross browser rendering but Microsoft and Apple tried even harder to destroy open standards. Both are trying to lock people into a vendor controlled experience on the web using proprietary codecs and patented code. Google and Mozilla seem to be interested in creating something interoperable even if Google is doing it out of self interest (they really want to stop paying H.264 fees on YouTube) it doesn't make it a bad thing(TM).

Now it's all about innovation and compatibility.

Unfortunately no. I really wish it were but now it's about lock in and incompatibility. There is a concerted effort to diminish open standards and get site owners to use proprietary standards and codecs.

The first line of the blues ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the first line:

"<!DOCTYPE html><html lang=en-US-x-hixie><title>HTML Standard</title><script>"

and I wept ...

Re:The Standards Really Never Have Been the Standa

[Acaeris]

As a web developer who's currently in the process of building a complex B2B website, I can safely say you do not need to maintain 4 versions of any website. If you start with a good foundation (reset browser CSS, output clean XHTML1, use a JS library like prototype or jquery), you will find you almost never come across a browser specific problem and when you do, it's usually a minor adjustment to a CSS property to achieve the same output without triggering a bug. For example: using margin on child elements rather than padding on the parent element.

You can even use the HTML5 layout tags, such as header, footer, aside, section, etc., now in all browsers as long as you set their CSS display type to block before using them. This is because browsers will accept the tag and create an element with no definition for it, treating them like a CSS-less DIV tag, leaving you to do it in CSS.

Also, I'm yet to find much in the way of incompatibility between the browsers in regards to HTML. Yes, there is the Codec issue but that was an issue as soon as the idea of a video tag was thought of. If they accept the standard most use today it will lock people out of being able to implement the video tag (Mozilla for instance but also a lot of smaller browser developers) and in terms of the actual implementation of the tag itself, it is fairly well defined but now needs a decision to be made about codec support.

CSS is a little more browser specific at the moment but that is mainly because the W3C wants to see potential implementations of a CSS3 feature before they agree on a standard way of writing it (I believe they need at least two different implementations). Things like box-shadow and border-radius are close to a finished standard because Mozilla and Webkit wrote very similar implementations that work very well. Gradients on the other hand are still a mess as Mozilla and Webkit have differing ideas on possible implementations as well as whether to support RGBA in gradients and where in CSS to support gradients (currently it's only supported as a replacement for background-image). However, these are features that people can add to their site if they really want to experiment with them (they are progressive enhancements so don't cause problems in browsers that don't support them) but are generally suggested not to.