For what it's worth, the W3C has always reminded me of the United Nations. It doesn't really have a power base or coercive abilities of its own, and its authority is dependent on the willingness of its member organizations to sacrifice their objectives and their resources for its sake -- with the result that it's more a theater for proxy wars (Sun versus Microsoft historically, Microsoft versus the open-source movement today) than than an organization with a purpose and a goal.
Like the United Nations, though, the W3C has accomplished some of its purposes, and done a certain amount of good; but I think the author of this is expecting too much out of the W3C in a very Westphalian Web.
I hope no one turns this into an argument about the United Nations. My position on them is the same as Emperor Otto von Habsburg's on them and on the European Union: imperfect, but better than nothing. In particular, I hope no one wants to talk about which or how many countries (I count at least ten major powers plus any number of minor ones) have attempted or achieved real-world counterparts to Internet Explorer 6.
I know that using a political analogy for software is risky business, but the UN's dynamics and the W3C's are almost identical; so I hope that the insight we might gain from the analogy is worth the risk.
That's a good analogy, but I think the OP is arguing it shouldn't be like that, and I'm inclined to agree (although I'm hazy on the standardization process). The W3C wields enough influence that they should be able to strong-arm standards to hesitant vendors, or at the very least disallow broken policies like secret ballots.
This is pretty meaningless. I hate seeing flamebait like this on HN. It would be one thing to intelligently argue that the WHATWG should make everything public and explain how this would benefit the community. However, this guy is simply saying "fuck you guys, I'm out." In other words, he is advocating the alternative to web standards, which is proprietary solutions where EVERYTHING is behind the curtain.
No thanks.
Let's advocate for more transparency instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
The most important versions of the HTML standard have merely codified the state of browsers at the time. The other W3C standards remain partially (or incorrectly) unimplemented so they're effectively not standards anyway.
The innovation on the web has always begun with the code -- and always with proprietary solutions. The best of these solutions are eventually implemented by everyone and that becomes the standard. Netscape added images, tables, and plugins. IE added events on all DOM elements, xmlHttpRequest, and so on. Different browsers are now beginning to implement "HTML5" features. When all the browsers reach some level of common usefulness then W3C or WHATWG will fit their standard around what's in common usage and call it HTML5.
Having big committees make big plans has never worked for the web.
HTML5 is a debatable chicken-and-egg; one could argue that the standard came first even though a few parts were implemented by browsers prior. And what about XML? SVG? Most of the examples you give are early innovations made by browsers because the standards committees were weak back then. I kind of feel like you need both (standard + code) for an effective solution on the web. One inevitably has to come before the other, but I don't think it's always code.
It's more like implementors (who make up most of the working group) create features, prefixed in a clear namespace e.g. -o, -webkit, -moz, etc. and then submit proposals for these features which are reviewed and reviewed, become standardized, and everyone implements the agreed upon solution.
It is absolutely critical that these features go through this open process and are well documented. What you are describing is more akin to the Netscape - IE browser wars, which was terrible.
Yeah, knock up a few skyscrapers and then get an architect to draw some plans. What could possibly go wrong.
Seriously I thought we were trying to do it right this time so that the 'net could move on and browsers could differentiate on features not on whether they bother to implement the standards properly.
I pretty much agree with you, but just to clarify one point that you made: this was an issue in the W3C, not the WHATWG.
The whole reason for the creation of the WHATWG was that the W3C was getting absolutely nowhere with HTML standards (XHTML 2, anyone?) and the browser vendors that were actually still improving browsers and adding features decided to get together to create a separate standards body that would standardize on features that people actually want.
Eventually, the W3C realized that WHATWG was stealing all of their thunder, and agreed to adopt the WHATWG Web Apps 1.0 spec as the basis for HTML5, and agreed to some concessions about a more open process and a somewhat different structure from the usual W3C body that heavily favors big corporations which can devote people full time to creating baroque standards instead of actually implementing anything.
Sadly, it's looking like the W3C group is starting to devolve into the old behaviors that killed it in the first place, with confusing private lists, with decisions being made in face-to-face meetings and teleconferences that favor professional standards people instead of actual implementors and users.
Luckily, the WHATWG still exists, and still retains the option of just going off and doing its own thing again if the W3C gets out of hand. I don't believe that it will come to that, but it can if it needs to.
Just wanted to clarify, since the way you phrased your comment made it sound like this was a WHATWG issue, while in fact it was a W3C issue.
I honestly doubt this will have much effect. The entire point of the WHATWG was to counter this sort of stuff. HTML5 development will continue in WHATWG, the pressure on the W3C goes up, up up, and in a while they'll just copy the WHATWG spec again, change the color and everything will be fine.
For all of the complaints about the W3C and browser vendors and HTML5, there is something indisputable: this is the best time ever to be a web developer. Things are hardly perfect, but for the first time in many years the web is moving forward, and quickly. Browser vendors are adding exciting features, but even more exciting is that javascript frameworks have come forward to mask all the little problems and incompatibilities between browsers, leaving me to just develop.
I'm using HTML5 and CSS3 today, and it doesn't matter that the vendors can't agree on everything or that Microsoft refuses to implement features. We shouldn't stop trying to push forward, but we shouldn't forget how bad things were even just a few years ago. Modern web development is here, and it's awesome.
That's a great point, although it still speaks to my (snarky) comment that the only 'standards' that matter are the ones that get implemented, accessibility included.
That's the whole point of web standards. To document this `whatever` minus the extra features offered by some browsers plus the features the IE team were too incompetent to write.
The problem is that the real world differs so markedly from the standard that really they're just an "in theory..." reference, or a "hey that will be cool in 5 years if it gets built" reference.
HTML5 features are a wonderful example. If I'm targeting the iPhone, the new location API is a goldmine, but otherwise it's meaningless (for now) because 50%+ of my audience (IE/Opera) doesn't support it. I know I need to build in a good fallback anyway, but the point is that the standard only matters insomuch as it's actually implemented.
One look at the different local storage/web storage implementations bears this out.
I don't really care if W3C argues itself into oblivion if the browsers leapfrog them and implement something useful (see: canvas/iecanvas).
If the browsers are outrunning the standards by a significant margin, rendering the standards irrelevant, then the process is broken.
Agreed. My point is simple- throwing web standards out of the window is no solution. It serves as a guideline (or "documentation") for both programmers writing browsers, and authors writing web pages. I'm not asking for strict adherence, just a guideline. If you try to implement a TCP/IP stack strictly as per the RFC, you'll find that it can't communicate with any real-world operating system- that doesn't mean that you throw RFCs out of the window. Things have always been, and will always be, engineered to "work".
Getting a bunch of people with divergent aims to agree on anything is really fucking hard. Introduce cutting-edge technology, vast sums of money and hardheaded geeks into the equation and it's a miracle we've got this far.
Open standards are good for all of us. Proprietary systems only ever benefit those who own and control them. The W3C is a fallible, flawed organisation performing an utterly sisyphean task and I think we should give credit where credit is due.
In an ideal world, the perfect standards for everything would just magic themselves out of thin air. Unfortunately, we live in a world where big organisations have commercial interests in manipulating and controlling technology to their own ends. We should celebrate that we still have a mostly open web and thank the W3C for getting things done against all odds.
I'm all for a freer, more open approach to web standards, but I understand that realpolitik is a necessary evil. I'm just really happy that I can't remember the last time I saw the words "best viewed on browser x". Those of us who remember using early versions of Firefox are well aware of just how much progress has been made in standards-compliance. If the W3C is becoming unfit for purpose then that's a damned shame, but we shouldn't throw the baby out of the bathwater. Web standards matter, they are the essence of what the web is. I shudder at the thought of returning to the bad old days of <multicol>, <marquee> and ActiveX controls.
So it's not friction-free. Nothing's perfect, but it's still a much more open process, and much more hacker-friendly. IETF produces simpler standards, and the specs are a lot more understandable than the abominations written by the W3C. There's a reason for that.
A "hold" by Adobe at the same time Adobe is embroiled in a battle with Apple over Flash support for iPad (etc.)? Sounds to me like Adobe is going for the "commercial filibuster" to delay the release of HTML5 (as if anything was necessary).
We were discussing HTML5 last week in an architecture meeting, in regards to how we want to develop richer web apps within our organization. One guy asked, "When exactly will the HTML5 spec be done?"
The rest of the room laughed.
Crash warning! I've tried to go to that page three times now (just to make sure..) and it's totally killed Safari (4 on Snow Leopard) every time. I had to switch to Chrome to read it.. I guess this guy really is against Web standards if a single blog post can consistently kill a browser ;-)
Like the United Nations, though, the W3C has accomplished some of its purposes, and done a certain amount of good; but I think the author of this is expecting too much out of the W3C in a very Westphalian Web.
I hope no one turns this into an argument about the United Nations. My position on them is the same as Emperor Otto von Habsburg's on them and on the European Union: imperfect, but better than nothing. In particular, I hope no one wants to talk about which or how many countries (I count at least ten major powers plus any number of minor ones) have attempted or achieved real-world counterparts to Internet Explorer 6.
I know that using a political analogy for software is risky business, but the UN's dynamics and the W3C's are almost identical; so I hope that the insight we might gain from the analogy is worth the risk.