Why blame the W3C for developing XHTML 2 instead of blaming the browsers for not implementing it? XHTML 2 was the way to the Semantic Web. The point was to get

Why blame the W3C for developing XHTML 2 instead of blaming the browsers for not implementing it? XHTML 2 was the way to the Semantic Web. The point was to get rid of JavaScript, extend HTML and CSS and eventually replace them by XSLT and semantic open machine-readable (XML) data formats. The outcome would have been for web browsers to become mere document readers and everything else to be done with native applications able to read and work with interoperable formats. This would have given authors less control, browsers less power (and market share, if web pages did break), and advertisers less revenue. HTML5 was the way to the web as a virtual machine for web applications, which gave authors increased control, advertisers full reign over users' web browsers, and an ever more complicated and resource-hungry web platform[1] tolerant of any web page however bad its code. In hindsight the theoretical purity would have had real benefits for real users. From the HTML Design Principles:[2] > In case of conflict, consider users over authors over implementors over specifiers over theoretical purity. In other words costs or difficulties to the user should be given more weight than costs to authors; which in turn should be given more weight than costs to implementors; which should be given more weight than costs to authors of the spec itself, which should be given more weight than those proposing changes for theoretical reasons alone. Of course, it is preferred to make things better for multiple constituencies at once. Theoretical purity is listed at the end as if theoretical purity had nothing to do with the users' interests. The wording makes it seem as if users cared about nothing but "costs or difficulties" (think about the poor users who will have "difficulties" if web pages break!). Nowadays the W3C (EME) and WHATWG are both enmeshed in commercial interests and the organizations left that publish web and document standards are OASIS (which publishes the OpenDocument and DocBook standards) and the IETF. [1]: https://platform.html5.org/ https://platform.html5.org/ [2]: https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#priority-of-co...