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I really really don't mean to be dismissive here, but... you know the WHATWG largely emerged as an backlash against the W3C's efforts to create an extensible st

I really really don't mean to be dismissive here, but... you know the WHATWG largely emerged as an backlash against the W3C's efforts to create an extensible standard for allowing authors to create custom elements (what's more, they would be namespaced with actual schema, a la react prop-types, or—later—Typescript interfaces), with extensible forms (xforms). This is a process started in the late 90s! Two decades later, and there's people on the internet claiming the WHATWG are doing something novel reinventing this concept now. WeakMap is ECMA. CSP was W3C and implemented by Firefox 4 years before HTML5 was released as a spec. There's good stuff in the HTML5 (there would want to be in a spec. that size!), but it's remarkable how many of the cited examples are nothing to do with it.

lstamour 7y ago
It's important to note, nobody's being forced to use custom components or new syntax by specification, though as deprecations occur it's possible based on usage statistics that services like Google or new browser security or performance improvements could affect your site. And speaking to XML for a sec, while XHTML's backwards compatibility problems could have been avoided by specifying some kind of graceful fallback instead of Firefox's red text on yellow (yikes!), the real point is that when specs are created now, there's more of an attempt to "see what sticks" than there used to be. It's funny because E4X was also a failure, but JSX is so popular today, go figure. Re. specific examples mentioned: CSP is still evolving today and HTML has to keep up -- https://github.com/whatwg/html/search?o=desc&q=CSP&s=author-date&type=Commits https://github.com/whatwg/html/search?o=desc&q=CSP&s=author-... With WeakRef, things still need to stay up-to-date: https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/4571 https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/4571 I would say it's remarkable how many standards on the web apparently don't have anything to do with HTML.
- lucideer 7y ago
  Tiny off-topic side-not on E4X: it was extremely popular in it's time... for extension author, GM scripters, XULers, anyone who had the freedom to use it without the concern of cross-browser compat. I think its failure was either one of standardisation bureaucracy, or of odd cross-client resistance to implementation, rather than it not being tech people wanted. > I would say it's remarkable how many standards on the web apparently don't have anything to do with HTML. I took the thrust of the original comment I responded to above to be giving WHATWG and general living/rolling-spec. process credit for increasing the pace of useful/practical/needed web innovations. I was pointing out that many of the cited examples of useful innovations were created either before WHATWG existed, or at least outside of WHATWG process, and that the majority (admittedly not all) of what the WHATWG has actually contributed has been superfluous cruft. That's the intent of my separating "this is part of HTML5, this isn't". Obviously many things are/can be subsumed into HTML5 as that's where they belong taxonomically, but I'm focusing on inception and what benefit living-standard process brings.

lstamour 7y ago

It's important to note, nobody's being forced to use custom components or new syntax by specification, though as deprecations occur it's possible based on usage statistics that services like Google or new browser security or performance improvements could affect your site. And speaking to XML for a sec, while XHTML's backwards compatibility problems could have been avoided by specifying some kind of graceful fallback instead of Firefox's red text on yellow (yikes!), the real point is that when specs are created now, there's more of an attempt to "see what sticks" than there used to be. It's funny because E4X was also a failure, but JSX is so popular today, go figure. Re. specific examples mentioned: CSP is still evolving today and HTML has to keep up -- https://github.com/whatwg/html/search?o=desc&q=CSP&s=author-date&type=Commits https://github.com/whatwg/html/search?o=desc&q=CSP&s=author-... With WeakRef, things still need to stay up-to-date: https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/4571 https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/4571 I would say it's remarkable how many standards on the web apparently don't have anything to do with HTML.

lucideer 7y ago
Tiny off-topic side-not on E4X: it was extremely popular in it's time... for extension author, GM scripters, XULers, anyone who had the freedom to use it without the concern of cross-browser compat. I think its failure was either one of standardisation bureaucracy, or of odd cross-client resistance to implementation, rather than it not being tech people wanted. > I would say it's remarkable how many standards on the web apparently don't have anything to do with HTML. I took the thrust of the original comment I responded to above to be giving WHATWG and general living/rolling-spec. process credit for increasing the pace of useful/practical/needed web innovations. I was pointing out that many of the cited examples of useful innovations were created either before WHATWG existed, or at least outside of WHATWG process, and that the majority (admittedly not all) of what the WHATWG has actually contributed has been superfluous cruft. That's the intent of my separating "this is part of HTML5, this isn't". Obviously many things are/can be subsumed into HTML5 as that's where they belong taxonomically, but I'm focusing on inception and what benefit living-standard process brings.