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Apple, Microsoft, Google, Others Join Hands To Form WebPlatform.org
hypnosec writes "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies. The companies have come together to provide developers with a single source of all the latest information about HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, SVG and other Web standards. The platform will also offer tips and best practices on web development as well as web technologies. 'We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform,' notes the WebPlatform site."
this site seems like the apple maps (in analogy) version of w3schools.
I'll believe that when I see their products running under Free or Open BSD. Unless "any" is really a very narrow definition of specific Linux Distros, MS Windows, and OS X.
So its basically an alpha reimplementation of w3schools?
http://www.w3schools.com/
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Surely to get those companies together, there must be some nefarious agenda afoot.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Actually, get ready! it's going to be web 3.0! That means it'll be incompatible with web 2.0.
"Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies"
That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion, we'd never have ... a ... what? a search engine for referencing 'open' technologies?
Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) open source, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies? What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now? ... or is this one of those redefinitions of 'open' that hasn't got anything to do with open source?
On the bottom of the front page are 9 logos, Apple is not one of them. On the Stewards page are 10 organisations/companies, including Apple. But Apple is the only one without a link to a description/statement of the company. They seem to be the neglected stepchild here?
And Slasdot puts them first in the title, and categorizes the article in the Apple section :-)
I can't tell whether it's malice or incompetence. Is it likely that the developers of web browsers bundled with operating systems are leaving certain APIs unimplemented on purpose to encourage the development of OS-specific native apps? I'm talking about SNI, HTML5 offline manifests (with a quota suitable for video), HTML5 local storage (also with a quota suitable for video), WebGL, the video element with the WebM codec, the file API, and getUserMedia. Web apps won't replace native apps until web developers can rely on most of these.
Oh, burn. By only one minute you bonked your chance at finally scoring a first post.
what's _really_ shocking is that a brand new website [...] done [...] by the biggest companies around with hundreds of billion of dollars available in their pockets, goes live incomplete and unfinished.
Not shocking. Google is part of this effort, and it's the poster child for taking a "beta" version live and tweaking it later.
(this time not posted as AC, so it shows up ... )
"Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies"
That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion, we'd never have ... a ... what? a search engine for referencing 'open' technologies?
Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) to open source projects, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies? What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now? ... or is this one of those redefinitions of 'open' that hasn't got anything to do with open source?
Underline the damn links (which are one of the main reasons why the web was invented). Undecorated links, using a color which is very close to the normal text color, makes them indistinguishible from normal text for even lightly color-blind people like me, and like 10% of the male population.
Can you please explain this "mouth-breather" meme? Is it just a Slashdot thing? (doesn't seem to exist elsewhere as far as I can tell) I have no idea what it's referring to.
So, four major players in the tech market, at least three of whom have quite clearly demonstrated a very vested interest in closedness, are "joining forces for openness"?
OK, what's the hidden agenda?
"Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces" -- I must have woken up in a alternate planet! This is beautiful man! I think I feel a little tear coming.... ;-)
This is either:
1. A PR stunt to appeal to those who don't know much about open source things in general. Now the big tech companies look like they're doing something benevolent and giving to society.
or
2. A place for unsuspecting people to post code or ideas and have them freely adopted by the big tech companies, who will in turn charge you for THEIR enhancements and innovations.
I would think that the big box at the main Docs page explaining that the docs subsite was in alpha would have, you know, explained that.
This site is all about uber-modern web standards and their chat protocol of choice? IRC. Awesome.
Is it just a Slashdot thing? (doesn't seem to exist elsewhere as far as I can tell)
Hardly. I was hearing it in the American South (as opposed to South America) in the early 90s.
Think of "mouth hanging open with amazement" for something not particularly amazing. Exclamation of "wow" at a demonstration of the blink tag followed by mouth breathing.
As Americans have gotten fatter it also seems to be used for "too fat to propel the walmart cart at walking speed without mouth hanging open" but this is a rare use. Also rare use in the poser community, as in eats 5 bags of cheetos per day thus fat thus has to mouth breathe, but it takes a bit more than cheeto eating to be a real web dev or real linux dev or whatever. Some "snot nosed kid" analogy thus has to mouth breathe, "kid" not necessarily meaning young, but always meaning noob.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
So the mayans are right????
It's a British thing, AFAIK.
People who have their mouths open all the time, like it's too much mental effort to close it and breathe through their noses.
"Slack-jawed yokel", you might say.
The headline got my hopes up for a second. I thought for a moment that the companies had gotten together to build a new Web standard. Instead they're just re-documenting the old, broken standards, and presumably all the half-assed implementations every Web developer is forced to wrangle with just to get "Hello, world" up and running. "Looks fine in Firefox but IE6 displays ', ', IE7 indents it halfway across the page, and Chrome is showing '72 101 108 108 111 44 32 119 111 114 108 100'." "Have you tried it in Opera? How about on the iPad?" "WAT"
RTFA, checked the web page, Oracle not on board?
Yea
"Facebook - A community-driven documentation center [...]"
(as seen on the Stewards page)
Where's Mozilla in all of this? Seems like they should be involved somehow.
Apache foundation?
These companies get together to create a site espousing web standards and best practices. This website's html/css don't validate as standard's compliant.
...on a site about web development Truly this is a parody of a documentation website, if anything
Microsoft should be forbidden by law from having anything to do with standards, because they just can't resist screwing with them.
I seriously question the web expertise of anyone who snubs w3schools as a "terrible", "painful" resource for web development. If you are looking for a copy-paste reference of best practices, w3schools isn't it. Nor is w3schools.com a definitive guide. However, there isn't a resource that is more user-friendly than w3schools on many of the web topics.
http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/obj_location.asp V https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/window.location
Moreover, w3schools.com does a fantastic job in maintaining the big picture of web development by separating its components in its reference pages; DOM, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc..
Anyone stating otherwise is full of it. The tutorials, layout, and "Try it Out' execution environment are quick and fantastic for those not interested in reading a blog. 95% of the reference needed w3schools.com has. The other 5%, as a seasoned web developer you should see blog entries, quirksmode, msdn, mdn, etc. and/or investigate in an execution environment such as firebug.
The subtle nuances, nit-picky details, over-simplification, or the lack of mention of say "getBoundingClientRect" doesn't invalidate the awesomeness of w3schools, and it certainly doesn't make it suck. Mastering a topic shouldn't turn you into a snob.
I strongly recommend w3schools.com to anyone who wants to get a good grasp of web development without diving into the advanced topics or anyone who wants a quick reference look up.
Just my two cents!
www.w3schools.com/js/js_popup.asp. alert() and confirm() dialogs with no explanation that they should generally be avoided. Also no discussion of console.log() for debugging purposes.
Hmmm, lets see...
1. Snub w3schools for not diving into advanced topics as to not overwhelm newcomers.
2. Not acknowledge the cases where alert and confirm dialogs are sufficient solutions.
3. Criticize w3schools.com for lack of giving explanation while you yourself don't give an explanation.
4. Advocating the use of console.log while knowing that console object isn't supported by all browsers.
This is misleading. Many features that have existed for years in IE are just now being standardized by HTML5, e.g. contenteditable. IE8 also already supports localStorage, which is an HTML5 feature.
W3Schools is soo incorect
We have 100 documentation sites on client side web technologies. Hey, let's try to merge them all into one single authoritative site.
We have 101 documentation sites on client side web technologies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKDmWvYcvbw
And still none of those companies will produce a browser which is fully compliant with all of those standards.
Funny how the logo is more an upside down 'M' than a 'W'.
It seems not.
Oh, snap!
Meanwhile, back in reality, HTML5 still sucks dead dogs. You know it's desperation when arch enemies get together to give each other back rubs around a technology they're hoping against hope will come to define all app development. And why do they hope this? They most earnestly desire that the PC as a platform come to an end so end users will be totally beholden to them for their online applications. Then they can instantiate all the really profitable things- tiered pricing models, usage fees, CPU cycle fees, bandwidth usage fees, memory usage fees. Hey- who doesn't want to be a telco these days Have you seen their margins? Have you seen their monopoly power? Have you seen their ability to make people pay more for doing nothing? It's a thing to be admired.
Of course if they can get this bandwagon rolling, it will kill the market for powerful, consumer level CPUs etc then Google and Apple will have your CPU on their servers and charge you ongoing fees to access it. If they can *just* induce the market collapse of powerful, consumer level computing then everyone will be dependent on them for doing computing forever after. Wow.
Don't kid yourself that this isn't the end game because it is. We used to make energy at the point of consumption- each building generated its own energy. That was not such a great idea for a lot of reasons and centralized energy is much better, but the reason I bring this up is because it's an explicit appeal to that historical fact that they're trying to use as a model and rationale for killing off home based computing. McNealy of Sun was pushing for this this with his "the network is the computer" crap in the 90s and early 2000s.
Just think of the consolidation of power and total and absolute lack of privacy involved in a world like that, just think of the level of dependency they're trying to invoke.
The fact is HTML applications suck almost universally compared to the thick client-based / possibly server backed model that we use now. HTML was never designed as a general application toolbox, but it's what the web speaks so they're going to run with it. The fact is, Javascript as a serious language to build apps on just sucks. It's slow, it's feature poor, its syntax and language capabilities are moronic compared to .net or Java or C++ or even C. . Sorry script kiddies. Alternatively, every update to the UI, every reaction to a mouse event , every system message first has to be taken off your machine and sent to a server to be processed then a response sent back to your machine. What a joke that model is for people who have to endure it on say, O'Reilly's Safari. Sure, you can rad words on a page, but edit? Create? Change? Interact? Fowgeddabowtit.
This shit about everything will be web based is hubris taken to the nth degree. They are salivating over a model where they profit if it comes to pass, so hey, let's force it on the world despite the fact that it would preclude and abort other, more compelling and more powerful ways of computing such as peer to peer.
Sick of HTML being pushed as an application platform. It's not, so just stop it.
Have these guys even heard of accessibility? Medium grey text on a light grey background? Awful.
Who the hell cares about web standards, seriously? Since the WWW was invented there have been competing browsers and platforms and any decent web developer worth their salt simply accept the fact that they have to do a little more work to support different platforms.
Not a year goes by without some statement about the need for cross platform standardization of the web, yet for 20 years nothing has changed or achieved that standard.
But in the meantime these VERY SAME companies are all trying to create walled gardens where the content you buy/download on one device locks you into using that device for the rest of time, or you have to accept the loss of hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars to change platforms and give it all up just to re-purchase it all again.
The only reason why these companies give a rat's ass about web standards is because there is absolutely no monetary amount involved in this. These companies are all in a circle jerk to promote "standards: simply because it will not affect their bottom line. There is no monetary gain in producing a proprietary web standard and so all these companies are blowing hard coming off like heroes creating an irrelevant standards platform.
The web is simply a vehicle to allow these companies to create their walled gardens and I can't believe consumers are willfully accepting a reality where just because they liked the shininess of a particular device a few years ago locks them into a content platform for the rest of time.
Anyone hailing the efforts of these companies to create a standard web is completely oblivious to common sense and gullible to the highest degree. The web is irrelevant, content is king, and these companies would rather slaughter each other then create a standard content platform.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
.. because it is developed by multiple vendors, and combined they represent the majority of web users. Furthermore, most of the standards are also supported by Mozilla and Gecko, and also Opera.
When all of Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft agree on a web standard, and the W3C keeps dragging its heels, then they have no one to blame but themselves. Web developers *AND* users demand rapid progress on web standards, the web is not something that can sit in a standards committee for 6 months while people debate what the meaning of "is" is in the specification.