Problems at the W3C 303
dustin writes "Public outcry against the workings of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is growing. On Sunday, Björn Höhrmann announced his departure in a lengthy critique of problems at the W3C. Web standards champion Zeldman adds his comments as well: 'Beholden to its corporate paymasters who alone can afford membership, the W3C seems increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers.'"
Possible solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not the IETF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not the IETF? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, there already exists such an organization: the WHATWG [whatwg.org]. It was created by browser developers including Opera, Mozilla and the makers of Safari. They have released several specifications, some of which have already been implemented into the browsers. For instance, the canvas element, and SessionStorage, which is included in the upcoming Firefox 2.
Quite frankly I prefer the idea of a single standards organization, in this case the W3C. It's more sensible to find ways to make this organization more flexible and open than to start having competing standards and the unavoidable incompatibilities. But sometimes there is no alternative than radical change. I hope it doesn't come down to this.
Re:Why not the IETF? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why not the IETF? (Score:3, Informative)
In the interest of accuracy, canvas was actually implemented by Safari before it was specced. IIRC (I participate in WHATWG but haven't followed canvas closely) a few changes were made between the spec and safari's version, but not many.
Session storage was specced before being implemented, although there was (and still is) editing done based on feedback from the people implementing it.
Re:Possible solution? (Score:2)
Seriously, though, good call.
Re:Possible solution? (Score:2)
Wrong Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary mis-represents the bulk of Bjoern's critique, which less about the lack of non-corporate participation and more about the fact that the organization just doesn't work.
I wonder how the bulk of slashdotters, for whom a W3C standard seems to be a sacred cow, will react to the message that these standards are all-too-often ambiguous, bone-headed, poorly supported, slow-moving, and lacking important features.
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Suggest that Linux fails to meet UNIX specifications, for example, and watch the apologies flow in.
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:2)
We're doing our best to remedy the situation as we speak. Please excuse our dust while we renovate!
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't seen that one happen yet, especially since Linux doesn't purport to be UNIX(tm) (though it is Unix.)
Start telling people it's not POSIX, though, and they'll argue.
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah. What part of "Linux Is Not UniX" did they not understand?
;-)
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, you just pulled that distinction out of your ass! That's not allowed!
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're being a little unfair there. There are some highly vocal, pro-W3C zealots around, but there are also some of us who have always argued that any sort of formal specification is merely a means to an end, and should be used if (and only if) that end is desirable under the circumstances.
In web design, if you want maximum portability, you follow W3C standards for all the smaller browsers, and then provide suitable hacks for the big one. OTOH, if you just want to reach most of the general public and don't want to chase diminishing returns much, targetting IE is the obvious choice, since it is the only relevant standard (albeit a de facto one) in this context, and your pages will still mostly work on other browsers (or get their users to switch back temporarily to IE) anyway.
Similarly for corporate intranets, some people bitch about how dangerous ActiveX is and yada yada yada, but the fact remains that it's a practical tool to solve a problem. Users complaining that "better" browsers like Firefox don't support it is going to cut exactly zero ice with any corporate management/IT.
IME, posts pointing this sort of thing out are frequently modded both Insightful and Troll/Flamebait several times, usually more + than -. Thus it seems rather unfair to characterise "the bulk of slashdotters" as being semi-religious W3C devotees. The majority of posters in certain discussions perhaps, but apparently not the majority of mods, and we'll never know about the lurkers or those who do post but are sensible enough to avoid religious topics.
Re:Wrong Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Usually, if you take it upon yourself to do the legwork and you continually follow up with key members of a group, you can obtain a response and a justification. This is not easy, and sometimes it requires a team of dedicated people, but committee groupthink will take all kinds of silly positions if its individuals are not held to account as individuals.
Re:Possible solution? NO (Score:2)
people need to STOP assuming that companies have the best interests of regular people in mind - it is not the case.
simply stop supporting w3c and build a new system. let the governement try and stop the people again
Re:Possible solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Possible solution? (Score:3)
W3C standards are nice and all but IMO a web standard is only as good as the % of browsers in use that support it. You can speak perfect french but if everyone trying to talk to you is Japanese it doesn't do you much good. Sure I can make my webpage conform to a standard (w3C or
Really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Really?
I never understood.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This would seem to be a slam dunk to me. I figure you get Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera to the table, you'd have some pretty interesting standards developed that the browsers might stick to.
Might. Anyway, it'd be better than having some extra organization making up rules that none of them really pay more than a passing look at.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That sounds great in theory, but what would probably happen in reality is that Microsoft would end up writing the standard, and adding proprietary, patented extensions onto it in order to ensure permanent dominance for Internet Explorer.
I would much rather have a somewhat supported open standard, rather than having a closed standard perfectly supported by one company.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Nope.. I just can't seem to put the pieces together here. If Microsoft writes things into the standard, how could they be extensions? How could they be proprietary?
What were you trying to say?
Re:I never understood.. (Score:3, Informative)
By being patented. Proprietary software is essentially the only development model that's compatible with patents.
And of course standards controlled by Microsoft would most likely be covered by MS patents. Why wouldn't they be?
Re:I never understood.. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, a company could do that. But can you see Microsoft doing it?
That's exactly what Microsoft is doing for their OpenXML document format.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed.
A scenario like what the GP suggests would create a 'fox guarding the hen house' kind of situation.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
Re:I never understood.. (Score:5, Funny)
Fox in the hen-house was quite apt.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Many such efforts at W3C, Microsoft's weapon. (Score:2)
Even if Microsoft greatly warps the standard to their own so-called liking, do not expect them to live by them. Their own distortions of the standard become the very things they ridicule in public and use as reasons to reject/violate standards.
More of these desired standards to not occur precisely because to Microsoft it is a weapon, and we wind up working on silly things to displace more-legitimate web standard undertakings. What will SOAP ever do for anyone?
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
Being disinterested in browser development is not the same thing as being disinterested in standards compliance.
If you look at IE in the late 90s, for example, what you saw was that they were implementing W3C standards at an emormous rate, blowing Netscape and Opera out of the water, and IE was by far the most standards-compliant browser at the time.
The Standards game always favors the players that invest the most money in developmen
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
No they couldn't, because they'd have to redevelop MSIE from scratch and forget about backward compatibility with previous IE-only code.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet. Once IE7 has shipped with whole bunch of competitive out of the box features, Microsoft has to put it's foot down and start the real work of restoring faith in it's users. Firefox's usage may be low, but i'm sure most of remaining IE userbase must have been feeling *the ripples* even if they aren't aware of Firefox's existance or choose not to use it.
I'm of the opinion that IE7 is just a distraction, a way of catching up superficially to yank on the chains of the competition. Once it's out and the buzz has died down they are going to need that late 90's velocity right back (and they *have* said there will be more frequent updates to IE) otherwise it's going to be a gross waste of time and a huge disappointment.
The question is, will Firefox's (now large) ego survive a battering if MS really ramp it up in IE8 once Vista is out of the box and can Mozilla remain competitive? Personally I hope not, being humbled is good for the thought process.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
I somewhat agree that the IE7 plan makes sense -- from an End User point of view, IE's failings are the lack of Tabs and poor security, so it makes sense to address those first.
99% of End Users could frankly care less about full CSS2 support, because everything is equally possible with tables and a little script. But IE got on top largely because it went after the 'hearts and minds
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
Microsoft: "It's a nice day today."
MSFT Lawyer: "That's patent pending, you can't touch it!"
Re:I never understood.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not Microsoft's history with standards bodies. They come up with some ideas that rely heavily on their own technology. (Did you know that the first version of XSL used Visual Basic as a transform language?!) When the other participants fail to react with total enthusiasm, they decide that standards are overrated.
To be fair, Netscape in its heyday was just as bad as Microsoft when it came to ignoring standards. But I've long thought that both Microsoft and Netscape would have been more standards compliant if W3C had done something to encourage standards compliance. Like trying to issue standards on a timely basis, instead of just assuming that implementers would sit on their hands until standards were ready. Or like creating standards tests instead of waiting for third parties to do it.
But no, they just shrug their shoulders and keep creating standards that nobody will ever implement. W3C has not been effective for a very long time.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
That's a perfectly reasonable belief. One that, unfortunately, does not correspond to reality. All the major browser developers have been members of the W3C. Microsoft helped write the CSS specifications. Just because an organisation has been involved in designing something, it doesn't mean they are going to support it.
Re:I never understood.. (Score:2)
How disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
At least from my POV, the stuff going on at WHATWG [whatwg.org] -- such as a vastly improved FORM model and standardized AJAX support -- will have much more relevance to the web in the manner that I and probably most other slashdotters build it.
Re:best of both (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Puh Leaze (Score:2)
This holds true especially for private companies -- ownership sees that as six grand taken
Re:Puh Leaze (Score:2)
Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a testament to the basic strength, openness and simplicity of the WWW that the W3C could continue its model for so long without collapsing itself or the Web.
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:2)
I think DocRuby is suggesting Microsoft designed it this way, so it would only just be usefull in helping them win against the then dominating Netscape, and then fall over and die from bureaucratic bloat.
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:2)
Firstly because an unexpected change to standards plays havoc with your release schedule, and, secondly all those whizzy proprietry bits your customers are locked into would get replaced by a standards based method if the process worked properly.
Havinf said that I think the problem hear is that most of the money is being divied up by large corporations because its a "good
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:2)
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell me about DHTML and IE compatibility. Or general MS compliance. They certainly do help shepherd the W3C along standards directions that they prefer to beat with proprietary versions. That's what "embrace and extend" means, which has been MS's strategy since they publicly reprioritized the Internet and joined the new W3C.
I don't know how you could be part of the W3C and
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:5, Interesting)
(BTW, in case you think I might be some sort of Microsoft apologist: I think it's pretty clear from my life over the past few years that I'm not on Microsoft's "side" here.)
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Interesting)
MS was our tipoff. They are not unique. They are just one of the corporate paymasters creating conflicts and system games from which th
Re:Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Interesting)
Grassroots efforts do exist... (Score:5, Informative)
Slow and cumbersome (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one area that a more open, participatory model is sorely needed. Look how far the Linux kernel has come in the past 15 years! And then look how far Web standards have come... not far, in my opinion (The CSS 3 spec is taking how long? And will get implemented in most browsers when?)
I think we, developers and Web-savvy alike, can do much better. But we have a lot of work to do... the Web has become very balkanized but it is still a market that has more wiggle-room than, say, the Operating System market. After all, Firefox is has gained significant marketshare and it still seems to be growing...
At any rate, TFA's seem to be punctuating a sentiment that will hopefully motivate people to move Web Standards forward sooner, rather than later.
Re:Slow and cumbersome (Score:2)
Well, they need to finish CSS 2 first. CSS 2.1 has fully replaced CSS 2 which was buggy and CSS 2.1 have recently been pulled back from Candidate Recommendation to Working Draft. At this rate it will be non exiting in a year!
Re:Slow and cumbersome (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Slow and cumbersome (Score:2)
So far everytime I've started that CSS 2 is not a standard yet, people keep pointing at CSS 2 - Recommendation or CSS 2.1 - Candidate Recommendation.
Re:Slow and cumbersome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slow and cumbersome (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet Explorer 7, which hasn't even been released yet, will not support large sections of the CSS 2 specification, published by the W3C in 1998. If you think the W3C are behind everybody else, then I believe you are only looking at the bits and pieces of their specifications that are actually implemented by the browser developers. With that twisted reasoning, it's logically impossible for them to be ahead.
Rounded corners are in CSS 3. Browsers haven't finished implementing CSS 2 yet. What's the point in the W3C racing even further ahead when the lack of browser support means it won't make any difference for years to come?
CSS 3 is a group of specifications, not a single specification, and some of them are ready to be implemented. So the answer to your question "How long?" is "Already there."
standards shmandards (Score:5, Insightful)
Truly, I'd LOVE to be able to tell a guy, "No, sir, we can't do that. It's not supported by any of the current browsers." And then deliver a clean, stylish Zeldman wet dream.
Re:standards shmandards (Score:2)
It's a myth that animation etc is non-standard. Sure, there are non-standard ways of doing things like that, but there are standard ways too. It's rare to find something that simply can't be done with compliant code.
Open version of W3C? (Score:4, Funny)
Needs some competition (Score:2, Funny)
What we need is to open up the standards market and encourage some commercial competition between standards. Standards that cannot create a profit will go out of business, whilst new, more profitable standards will reign supreme. With 100 standards competing for developers and corporate sponsors, us web developers will get the choice of the semantic swimming pool that serves each of us best. Personally I alway
Re:Needs some competition (Score:2)
Re:Needs some competition (Score:2)
What a letter! (Score:5, Funny)
The w3c isn't relavant anyway.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Inorder to be fully usuable a recommendation should have examples throught of making use of the things being documented and much more explict definations of what is expected output/results of making use of an element of the recommendation. But alas NO....
Even the people's Champion Mozilla/Gecko/Firefox does fully, cleanly and totally impliment recommendations that have existed for years. And even if it did the 8000lb gorilla does even less in the standards compliance department. Mean hell the java/ecmascript standard hasn't changed much in years and it still reqires hacks to support both browsers at once.
CSS is even worse...hell they don't even in all cases provide the same events support, and how long has that been standardized.
Nope the w3c will remain ineffectual (which in my opinion probably contributes to their lackadaisical attitude) until the standards start getting properly, cleanly and fully implimented, otherwise whats the point of having standards and/or improving them.
The current state of things is like having 3 almost indentical light blubs, one that is designed to the socket (works pretty much all the time), one that is a hair to small for the socket (works for the most part but once in while due to climate variations loses contact, sputters a little might need adjustment from time to time to keep working), and one that is a hair to wide (you can get it into the socket but it might crack doing so and need to be fixed/replaced alot, might need s a little forcing to get lit up in the first place).
W3C can't win here (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody cares about the web or compatibility. Actually, everyone is trying its best to create as much incompatibility as possible.
W3C is standing in the way of big enterprises. Its very existance is a nuisance (not enough for a danger, but a nuisance) to the leveraging attempts of the big players.
So they have a really, really hard time. There's as far as I can judge nobody with big pockets on their side, but a lot of cash against them.
Tim B-L (Score:5, Insightful)
Tim then jumped into the dubious "semantic web" runaway train, full of inflated promises but bereft of actual results. The "semantic web" is high-risk research best left in the hands of academia. A standards body organization should be focusing on how to make the web better today, by improving on the current protocols, not on day dreaming about HAL-like computers.
The W3C should focus more on design (Score:3, Interesting)
When the web was invented (thanks, Tim) its academic/scientific roots were plain, and unsurprisingly it seemed best suited for putting scientific papers online. Soon designers got more control over type and layout in the form of "tag soup" and tables for layout. Most page layouts involve multiple columns and headers and footers, and we could usually achieve that with nested tables. Plus, pages could be made "liquid," adjus
This 'problem' started in the mid-90s (Score:2, Interesting)
I develop my pages for Netscape or for IE or for what the W3C says it SHOULD be.
Result: I developped for IE first, then made it work for Netscape and never bothered with the W3C.
Clients and people don't need code that works as "standard" when no one is able to correctly view the results of that "standard".
IE had some proprietary elements working. I remember however that the W3C had no "standard
One word example of how out-of-touch they are: (Score:2)
Why the fuck is this "YRO"? (Score:2)
One more reason why... (Score:3, Insightful)
The W3C should be absorbed by a more stable, functional, and respected international standards entity such as IEEE.
While I believe in what the W3C does and produces, that's irrelevant when they produce next to nothing over the course of six years (which many thousands of people work with daily).
on a tangential note.. (Score:3, Funny)
Björnnnn! [sluggy.com]
Zeldman is Exaggerating (Score:5, Informative)
Promoting other standards besides those from W3C, like microformats, is great. There's no need to be so disingenuous and inflammatory about it, though. Mr. Zeldman has no talkback on his forum for me to refute his claims, so I had to post this here. I think he's becoming increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers. Okay, that was a cheap joke... couldn't help myself.
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, Flash is as closed as closed can be. Second, it's completely proprietary. Third, Macrodobe only really support Mac and Windows for the Flash Player. Still no version 8 for Linux (and they themselves have announced that there never will be an 8 for Linux), while 9 is betaing for OSX and Windows.
I'd rather use the standards which have been "piecemealed together by a bunch of wacky nerds" rather than using something which limits people to using X with Y on Z running P which Q made you pay for because R told them to.
I may like some of the things done with Flash, but I really don't think it's well suited for doing full websites. Intros, sections of navigation, maybe. But it's too much of a resource hog, too bloated, and I hate not being able to navigate using the keyboard.
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:3, Insightful)
From a business perspective:
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:4, Insightful)
There are very good reasons why you can't just lay a website out however you want, namely, it doesn't make sense if the final render target is something you don't expect. Like, oooh, I dunno, paper.
The web is designed for accessibility. It's intended that anyone can read your site, and that it will degrade fairly well for browsers that support less features. If that's not important to you, fine, but stop claiming you're producing web sites if you're just making large Flash documents.
Please?
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:3, Interesting)
The argument from others was, "Why can't I just
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:3, Interesting)
Complex, possibly, but Flash is far from incompatible in the modern Internet. The most recent numbers from Macromedia (which may not be entirely accurate, but probably aren't all that far off) are that if you restrict yourself to Flash 6, you can reach 97% [adobe.com] of the world's end users. Assuming that's accurate, if your site works properly on both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not on Opera or Konquerer, you would ha
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:2)
The real problem I see with Flash is the cost of entry. Last time I checked Flash was $600. Alternatives to making flash files are not nearly as good.
Adobe and standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, if you don't like one standards organization it doesn't mean you should bundle yourself up in a proprietary binary format. Write a new incredible standard and people will support it. Or go help start a new standards organization. Your solution isn't a solution. It just contributes to the problems.
Re:Adobe and standards (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing my point. Designers who use Flash to avoid the hassles of XHTML/CSS aren't likely to develop new standards of their own. And why do so many people expect designers to care about open standards? Many, if the the majority, of design applications - Quark, Illustrator, Indesign, Maya, and so on - use proprie
Esoteric? (Score:3, Insightful)
esoteric markup languages
XHTML and CSS aren't esoteric. They are widely understood and widely used. They also don't lock you into a proprietary content creation tool and a proprietary viewer. I'd rather not put the whole future of the Web in the hands of a single company, no matter how good their products.
Re:Esoteric? (Score:2)
That's A very good point. I probably should have used something along the lines of "obtuse" instead.
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:2)
I've been developing web apps since "web app" meant CGI scripts, and if there is one thing that smacks me in the face each and every day, it is what a tremendous pain in the ass it is to develop web applications compared to desktop apps, thanks in large part because of the hodge-podge of ad hoc technologies that have been thrown at the problem, generally because some narrow corporate interest (Sun, Microsoft, Adobe) wanted to make wheelbarrows of money, or because some bunch o
Re:All hail Flash. (Score:2)
Re:First Post! (Score:2)
Re:First Post! (Score:3, Informative)
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fyr
Re:Bureaucracy sucks (Score:2, Insightful)