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The statement "Which came first, HTML5 web browsers or HTML5 web content? Neither, of course. They evolved in loose synchronization, tracing from way before HT

The statement "Which came first, HTML5 web browsers or HTML5 web content? Neither, of course. They evolved in loose synchronization, tracing from way before HTML itself, growing slowly and then quickly in popularity along the way." Prompted me to abandon reading the rest of the article. There were committees and centralized coordination efforts involved in HTML5, just like the languages before it, for the standard and for the participating vendor own implementations. Development of the standard came first. These sweeping generalizations and grand conclusions make an impression that the example was pulled along the ears to serve some grand statement. It is the statement of the article that appears to be loose.

escape_goat 6y ago
You abandoned the article because you disputed the characterization of HTML5 development in a throw-away example that had nothing to do with the actual topic of the article just about exactly midway through it? Get out of here. You were already annoyed by the article's tendency to use the sweeping and made-to-purpose generalizations that you feel that this represents.
skybrian 6y ago
This seems like an unsympathetic reading. The point seems to be that standards usually aren't simply invented out of nothing; they take existing practice as input. Sure, there was a standards process, but the people involved looked into what browsers did and how popular particular HTML constructs were in the millions of websites that already existed when the HTML5 standard was being written, and tried not to break them. The input to their design process came from many sources. Before HTML5 formally existed, there were many web pages that more-or-less did what the standard said they should do, and browsers that more-or-less worked with those web pages.
- mprovost 6y ago
  Exactly. For the IETF, defining a draft standard (usually) requires two independent implementations first. Efforts to define standards before trying to implement them are usually disasters.

escape_goat 6y ago

You abandoned the article because you disputed the characterization of HTML5 development in a throw-away example that had nothing to do with the actual topic of the article just about exactly midway through it? Get out of here. You were already annoyed by the article's tendency to use the sweeping and made-to-purpose generalizations that you feel that this represents.

skybrian 6y ago

This seems like an unsympathetic reading. The point seems to be that standards usually aren't simply invented out of nothing; they take existing practice as input. Sure, there was a standards process, but the people involved looked into what browsers did and how popular particular HTML constructs were in the millions of websites that already existed when the HTML5 standard was being written, and tried not to break them. The input to their design process came from many sources. Before HTML5 formally existed, there were many web pages that more-or-less did what the standard said they should do, and browsers that more-or-less worked with those web pages.

mprovost 6y ago
Exactly. For the IETF, defining a draft standard (usually) requires two independent implementations first. Efforts to define standards before trying to implement them are usually disasters.