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To offer another perspective. I'd say the W3C wasted a huge amount of time pursuing quests of purity (XHTML) over actually making the web better for users. I s

by Latty 9y ago

To offer another perspective. I'd say the W3C wasted a huge amount of time pursuing quests of purity (XHTML) over actually making the web better for users. I see the value in what they were trying to do, but it wasn't letting people do the things they wanted to do on the web. As browsers started just implementing features outside of standards in completely disparate ways because everyone was desperate for them (leading to plugin hell, apps rather than websites, etc...), WHATWG was created to try and ensure that the web remained a single thing and not a mess of things that would only work in one browser. The web platform sprang forward massively as a result of this, with browsers implementing much more consistently and with new features tending to be implemented in compatible ways, with real progress being made. This lead to the W3C specs becoming totally redundant and the only way for W3C to keep up was to lamely try to copy from WHATWG into a "spec" at random intervals and claim it was something people could work towards, when it reality it offers no real advantages over working to the living standard, because no browser offers better coverage of that spec than any other random point of the living spec. People want features. We saw what happens with a very slow moving, rigid standard: plugins. Flash was popular because at the time you simply couldn't do good video, animation, games on the web platform. Likewise, mobile phones shifted to apps because websites couldn't do notifications or use location information. You can bemoan a living spec, but you get one anyway, because people will work around the web if they can't do what they want. If you want to use a subset of that living spec, use it, but at least keeping it together and agreeing on roughly how to do these things is better than plugins or abandoning the web entirely.

chrisseaton 9y ago
> This lead to the W3C specs becoming totally redundant and the only way for W3C to keep up was to lamely try to copy from WHATWG into a "spec" at random intervals and claim it was something people could work towards So why don't they just disband the W3C? It sounds like it's not needed any more if WHATWG are doing the work?
- Latty 9y ago
  I mean, reading that GitHub thread, it seems to me that everyone involved is saying that's exactly what should happen, and the people invested in the W3C are trying to force through new work just to justify the organisation's continued existence (and presumably, if I were being cynical, their paycheck). The bone of "you could set specs based on snapshots of the living standard" was thrown to them, but the reality is no one cares enough about it to actually do that well, so it's just being done in a bad way that will hurt everyone. That thread reads, to me, as "we tried being nice, but now you are causing problems, just stop please".
- robin_reala 9y ago
  W3C do a huge amount more than HTML and DOM. All of CSS is coordinated through there for example.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lambda 9y ago
  The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C also oversees a lot of other standardization processes that aren't directly related to web browsers, like RDF. There are people who find this useful. I think a lot of it is a power play. The W3C wants to be relevant, and the most relevant things in the web world are HTML, DOM, and CSS (there's also ECMAScript, but that already has a different standards body that owns it). There are a lot of other standards that use HTML, CSS, and the DOM, such as ePub. The W3C wants to be the normative reference for these core web standards; many times, one standard will have to refer to the other, so the W3C wants to be the one that defines the "official" HTML standard. But the W3C's process and policies are just terrible. They let people take over standards who have no intent on working with those most impacted by the standards, the people who develop the browsers that billions of people use daily to access tons of diverse content. So instead of just providing a lightly edited snapshot, possibly with some WIP features removed, of what the WHATWG produces, they start going in and meddling and making changes with insufficient justification so you have two forked standards providing a lot of confusion for everyone.
  - hungryfoolish 9y ago
    > The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C is also doing work in HTML at least too. If browser makers would actually participate as editors (like they do in CSS) then it would work just as well as the CSS working groups and others.
    - lambda 9y ago
      What good work is it doing in HTML? In HTML, as far as I can tell, it appears to be copying features from the WHATWG standard, paraphrasing them, and including them in their standard, with only a small notice on the acknowledgements page the the HTML standard contains parts derived from the WHATWG standard. The browser makers did participate. They participated in the W3C working groups up until they were shot down when trying to propose to work on features that users actually wanted and would be backwards compatible rather than backwards-incompatible XHTML 2.0. The browser makers then proceeded to do their work on rich web applications, with features like canvas and XMLHttpRequest, as well as actually putting together a spec for how to consistently parse HTML that would be compatible with real content, in the WHATWG. When it was clear that the WHATWG standard was the one that actually mattered because it was what was actually implemented, the W3C invited them back in to start working on the standard together. That's what HTML5 was; the W3C agreed that they would start from the WHATWG standard, that they could have the same editor (Ian Hickson), and they wound down the XHTML 2.0 group. However, various people involved in the W3C process proceeded to use bureaucratic moves to raise formal objections to things that had been changed, and escalated the issues above the editor. Eventually, he got fed up and left the process, and most of the browser vendors proceeded to continue working through the WHATWG. Microsoft was the last holdout, but eventually they too left the W3C process and moved over the the WHATWG as well. So, the browser vendors have tried to work directly with the W3C on the HTML spec twice, once before the WHATWG split off and once as part of the attempted reconciliation. Both times, they were stymied by other people involved in the process who were more interested in purity and process than actually providing a forum for working out a good specification for real world implementation.
kuschku 9y ago
> I'd say the W3C wasted a huge amount of time pursuing quests of purity (XHTML) over actually making the web better for users. I see the value in what they were trying to do, but it wasn't letting people do the things they wanted to do on the web. Okay, let’s make a deal: We both write a crawler that can fully reliably parse websites. I implement XHTML1.1, you implement HTML5. We both get 1 month time. What do you think is going to happen? XHTML was a worthy goal – with it, we wouldn’t have a need to run headless Chrome for tests. We could parse the web, and actually use the data. OpenGraph tags would never have been necessary. We wouldn’t need to throw DNNs at rendered output of a browser just to parse data. HTML5 is amazing for existing browser vendors, developers, and in the short-term, users. But everyone else loses. Horribly.
- Latty 9y ago
  And if we were all using XHTML1.1 now instead, yes, your parser would be easier, except all the richer content would be in flash, and all the web apps would be desktop applications, and you wouldn't be able to parse that at all, even with a full browser. You are acting like everyone would just stop and wait for you to make your dream implementation that's ideal - that's not how the world works. WHATWG was an admission that we can't stop it, so we might as well embrace it. Embracing it has resulted in browsers being far more consistent, and new features being a shared part of the web platform, and not siloed off in plugins and other platforms. That's why W3C is irrelevant now.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    You’re assuming XHTML1.1 would never have evolved further, never have gotten more content. And Flash, despite its flaws, would have been a much better starting point for rich content than the ecosystem we have today. Many of the features Flash provided are only available in browsers today through babel.js transpilation. As result, we’re stuck with a language without stdlib and broken syntax. We’re stuck with a document model that’s impossible to work with or parse, and with impossible layout management. If you want web applications, it’d make much more sense to port the Android layout XML format to the web than to attempt to use HTML5 for it, because HTML5 is insanity for building applications. > and all the web apps would be desktop applications I don’t see that as anything bad. The web is for documents, and lightly interactive content. All the rich applications on the web are opaque to any crawler I could write anyway, as I just get "You need JS to view this React app". Desktop applications would be just as parseable, except they would also be less of a resource hog.

by Latty 9y ago

chrisseaton 9y ago

> This lead to the W3C specs becoming totally redundant and the only way for W3C to keep up was to lamely try to copy from WHATWG into a "spec" at random intervals and claim it was something people could work towards So why don't they just disband the W3C? It sounds like it's not needed any more if WHATWG are doing the work?

Latty 9y ago
I mean, reading that GitHub thread, it seems to me that everyone involved is saying that's exactly what should happen, and the people invested in the W3C are trying to force through new work just to justify the organisation's continued existence (and presumably, if I were being cynical, their paycheck). The bone of "you could set specs based on snapshots of the living standard" was thrown to them, but the reality is no one cares enough about it to actually do that well, so it's just being done in a bad way that will hurt everyone. That thread reads, to me, as "we tried being nice, but now you are causing problems, just stop please".
robin_reala 9y ago
W3C do a huge amount more than HTML and DOM. All of CSS is coordinated through there for example.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lambda 9y ago
The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C also oversees a lot of other standardization processes that aren't directly related to web browsers, like RDF. There are people who find this useful. I think a lot of it is a power play. The W3C wants to be relevant, and the most relevant things in the web world are HTML, DOM, and CSS (there's also ECMAScript, but that already has a different standards body that owns it). There are a lot of other standards that use HTML, CSS, and the DOM, such as ePub. The W3C wants to be the normative reference for these core web standards; many times, one standard will have to refer to the other, so the W3C wants to be the one that defines the "official" HTML standard. But the W3C's process and policies are just terrible. They let people take over standards who have no intent on working with those most impacted by the standards, the people who develop the browsers that billions of people use daily to access tons of diverse content. So instead of just providing a lightly edited snapshot, possibly with some WIP features removed, of what the WHATWG produces, they start going in and meddling and making changes with insufficient justification so you have two forked standards providing a lot of confusion for everyone.
- hungryfoolish 9y ago
  > The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C is also doing work in HTML at least too. If browser makers would actually participate as editors (like they do in CSS) then it would work just as well as the CSS working groups and others.
  - lambda 9y ago
    What good work is it doing in HTML? In HTML, as far as I can tell, it appears to be copying features from the WHATWG standard, paraphrasing them, and including them in their standard, with only a small notice on the acknowledgements page the the HTML standard contains parts derived from the WHATWG standard. The browser makers did participate. They participated in the W3C working groups up until they were shot down when trying to propose to work on features that users actually wanted and would be backwards compatible rather than backwards-incompatible XHTML 2.0. The browser makers then proceeded to do their work on rich web applications, with features like canvas and XMLHttpRequest, as well as actually putting together a spec for how to consistently parse HTML that would be compatible with real content, in the WHATWG. When it was clear that the WHATWG standard was the one that actually mattered because it was what was actually implemented, the W3C invited them back in to start working on the standard together. That's what HTML5 was; the W3C agreed that they would start from the WHATWG standard, that they could have the same editor (Ian Hickson), and they wound down the XHTML 2.0 group. However, various people involved in the W3C process proceeded to use bureaucratic moves to raise formal objections to things that had been changed, and escalated the issues above the editor. Eventually, he got fed up and left the process, and most of the browser vendors proceeded to continue working through the WHATWG. Microsoft was the last holdout, but eventually they too left the W3C process and moved over the the WHATWG as well. So, the browser vendors have tried to work directly with the W3C on the HTML spec twice, once before the WHATWG split off and once as part of the attempted reconciliation. Both times, they were stymied by other people involved in the process who were more interested in purity and process than actually providing a forum for working out a good specification for real world implementation.

kuschku 9y ago

> I'd say the W3C wasted a huge amount of time pursuing quests of purity (XHTML) over actually making the web better for users. I see the value in what they were trying to do, but it wasn't letting people do the things they wanted to do on the web. Okay, let’s make a deal: We both write a crawler that can fully reliably parse websites. I implement XHTML1.1, you implement HTML5. We both get 1 month time. What do you think is going to happen? XHTML was a worthy goal – with it, we wouldn’t have a need to run headless Chrome for tests. We could parse the web, and actually use the data. OpenGraph tags would never have been necessary. We wouldn’t need to throw DNNs at rendered output of a browser just to parse data. HTML5 is amazing for existing browser vendors, developers, and in the short-term, users. But everyone else loses. Horribly.

Latty 9y ago
And if we were all using XHTML1.1 now instead, yes, your parser would be easier, except all the richer content would be in flash, and all the web apps would be desktop applications, and you wouldn't be able to parse that at all, even with a full browser. You are acting like everyone would just stop and wait for you to make your dream implementation that's ideal - that's not how the world works. WHATWG was an admission that we can't stop it, so we might as well embrace it. Embracing it has resulted in browsers being far more consistent, and new features being a shared part of the web platform, and not siloed off in plugins and other platforms. That's why W3C is irrelevant now.
- kuschku 9y ago
  You’re assuming XHTML1.1 would never have evolved further, never have gotten more content. And Flash, despite its flaws, would have been a much better starting point for rich content than the ecosystem we have today. Many of the features Flash provided are only available in browsers today through babel.js transpilation. As result, we’re stuck with a language without stdlib and broken syntax. We’re stuck with a document model that’s impossible to work with or parse, and with impossible layout management. If you want web applications, it’d make much more sense to port the Android layout XML format to the web than to attempt to use HTML5 for it, because HTML5 is insanity for building applications. > and all the web apps would be desktop applications I don’t see that as anything bad. The web is for documents, and lightly interactive content. All the rich applications on the web are opaque to any crawler I could write anyway, as I just get "You need JS to view this React app". Desktop applications would be just as parseable, except they would also be less of a resource hog.