6 ms·
To hell with web standards
- kilian 17y agoI 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.
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoYeah this article seems to confuse the W3C and HTML5. The former has, if anything, held back the latter. This is just one more example.
- cdibona 17y agoExactly. Anyone who knows Hixie knows that he's going to continue and that the W3c has to keep up or enjoy irrelevancy vis a vis html5.
- aw3c2 17y agoIt sure might be that I simply do not have the desired one installed but that site is a pain to read: http://i.imgur.com/oULpj.png http://i.imgur.com/oULpj.png Light thin grey serif font on white background.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- redorb 17y agoSame here, Readability from Arc90 http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
- mcav 17y agoThis is what it looks like on OS X: http://drp.ly/oopfk http://drp.ly/oopfk
- kaddar 17y agoLooks like the author should be developing his site with web standards ha hah ha ha!!
- peterbraden 17y agoHe is, he's using @font-face. Some browsers don't support custom font rendering very well yet.
- gthank 17y agoThat's definitely not what I'm seeing, but you can always use Readability to help out. http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
- aw3c2 17y agoOh, I simply used Opera's builtin accessibility mode. But thanks!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- natrius 17y agoPreferences > Appearance > Fonts > Details. Set hinting to none. Enjoy text that looks more or less like OS X.
- dbz 17y agoI love how he provided a solution =]
- dkimball 17y agoFor 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.
- m0th87 17y agoThat'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.
- danielrhodes 17y agoThere is a saying about international law: Half the countries follow half the rules half the time. I think the same can be said for web standards: Half of web developers follow half the standards half the time.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- showerst 17y ago"Web Standards" are whatever my target audience's browsers all support.
- artagnon 17y agoThat'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.
- bugs 17y agoplus the features the IE team were too incompetent to write. And that right there is the reason his standards may and probably do differ from them.
- showerst 17y agoThe 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. </rant>
- artagnon 17y agoAgreed. 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".
- jdietrich 17y agoGetting 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.
- DennisP 17y agoThe IETF does a nice job with a much more open process.
- kinetik 17y agoThe IETF has its own set of problems: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2009/07/royalty-free-codecs-at-the-ietf/comment-page-1/#comment-206483 http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2009/07/royalty-free-codecs...
- DennisP 17y agoSo 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.
- jeff18 17y agoThis 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.
- wvenable 17y agoThe 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.
- m0th87 17y agoHTML5 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.
- gleb 17y agoAgreed. I like how JWZ put it: http://jwz.livejournal.com/147024.html?thread=760144#t760144 http://jwz.livejournal.com/147024.html?thread=760144#t760144 What's a "de facto standard?" It's what we call a standard. What's a de jure standard?" It's what we call a wish.
- gkelly 17y agoThis is the blog of a Django co-founder. What does this mean for the future direction of Django as far as conforming to standards?
- kingkilr 17y agoNothing. Django provides no HTML for you out of the box (excepting the admin's own HTML, and some of the auto generated HTML for forms).
- gkelly 17y agoSo, in other words, Django provides some HTML for you out of the box.
- jacobian 17y agoNothing at all. Personal opinion, blah blah, etc.
- synnik 17y agoWe 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.
- dotBen 17y agoThe OP doesn't mean "to hell with web standards", he means "to hell with web standards bodies like the W3C". I think it's a shame the title is incorrect and/or flamebait as the points are otherwise valid/interesting
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- eplanit 17y agoYes, I first give the author the same slack in assuming he _meant_ your alternative title. However, the lack of any substance whatsoever to the argument makes me pull back on that slack. Just what points are valid and interesting?
- necubi 17y agoFor 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.
- petercooper 17y agoCrash 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 ;-)
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- proexploit 17y agoA "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).