4 ms·

Fully agreed. And if Firefox goes, we'll only have WebKit browsers. And so you can forget about web standards and we'll be back at the best viewed with Interne

by bergie 15y ago

Fully agreed. And if Firefox goes, we'll only have WebKit browsers. And so you can forget about web standards and we'll be back at the best viewed with Internet Explorer era. Competing implementations are a good thing for standards, and standards are good for all of us.

jiggy2011 15y ago
Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6
- bergie 15y ago
  Do we need standards if eveybody is using Microsof Office? ;-) Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game. Anyway, this article prompted me to switch from Chrome to Aurora on my Android tablet. Feels good so far...
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    * Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game.* Not necessarily, it would still be possible for them to embed webkit or even to re-implement it. Webkit would simply become the reference implementation.
    - ootachi 15y ago
      Reimplementing it would not be an option. Making WebKit the reference implementation would give Google and Apple such an enormous advantage in development cycles that any browser that didn't use it would be unable to compete. You'd be expelling everyone but Google and Apple from the W3C. If WebKit becomes the standard, every user from now until forever will be using the same pile of C++ to browse. That may be fine to you; I personally don't think that WebKit is so good as to make it the gold standard for the Web. Imagine if that had happened with NCSA Mosaic...
      - jiggy2011 15y ago
        If it is open source why would google and apple have a huge advantage? Surely anybody else could even fork webkit if they so desired. Having one pile of C++ to browse beats having multiple piles of C++ all with their own bugs an eccentricities.
- Silhouette 15y ago
  > Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? Given the increasing trend to browse using tablets, phones, TVs, and other "non-traditional" devices, I suspect we're about to find out. WebKit is already dominant to the point that no other browser engine matters in the mobile space. It's possible that Microsoft will shake the tree a bit if tablets based on Windows 8 make a rapid impact and IE 10 becomes a serious player. However, for all practical purposes Gecko is already irrelevant on mobile devices. (For the avoidance of doubt, I am not arguing that such a browser monoculture is necessarily in users' best interests, nor that the trend to lock down many modern consumer devices so use of alternative browsers is less likely is any better. I'm merely commenting on the reality of the market today.)
- jinushaun 15y ago
  Exactly. WebKit is open source. Microsoft could easily drop Trident and package a version of IE running WebKit. Everyone running the same HTML engine? Sounds like a web developer's dream… In this world, who needs standards?
Silhouette 15y ago
I gave up on any sanity in web standards when the people responsible for HTML5 seriously suggested making it some sort of living document that would evolve rapidly over time. That demonstrates such a spectacular misunderstanding of why reference standards are important in general and the need for long-term stability in many web-based projects in particular that I lost all hope. The glacial pace of W3C standardisation has rendered them mostly irrelevant, but a standard that can change as fast as new browser versions ship isn't much use for anything either.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  I'd love to see a list of some standards more backwards-compatible than HTML.
  - Silhouette 15y ago
    The problem isn't backward compatibility with previous standards as defined today. That has, as you suggest, generally been excellent. The problem is that if you decide your standard is going to be a "living" document that changes rapidly as the industry evolves, backward compatibility ceases to have any meaning because there is nothing stable to be backward compatible with. What happens when one browser pioneers a new feature, the living HTML5 standard quickly adopts it, developers start writing to that standard, but then two other browsers decide on another way to do the same thing that they think is better and someone changes the living HTML5 standard to reflect the new "standard" instead? One possibility is that the developers' existing code breaks. Another is that browser makers are stuck with supporting both once-standard interpretations for a long time. Alternatively, but almost as bad, what happens when the living HTML5 standard quickly adopts a new feature that is becoming popular, other browsers find a better way to do the same thing shortly afterwards, and the standard doesn't change to match? Now the standard sucks, because it rushed into formalising something before enough consensus had built. Formal standards don't mean anything unless they are robust, stable, citable references that everyone concerned can agree on. A living document that rapidly changes in the face of a fast-evolving industry is exactly zero of those things, and its value will be similarly small and round. It's merely a reference non-implementation, and since we're talking about browsers, we already have several candidates for being an actual reference implementation, just as we did in the old IE vs. Netscape days, when we learned for the first time why formal standards matter. Alas, as George Santayana observed a century ago, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
marshray 15y ago
Well, presumably there will still be some Internet Explorer around to keep those open source goons honest. :-)
- Lazare 15y ago
  What's funny is that, in context, that isn't a joke. IE really will be an important check on the ability of an open source project to abuse its power. ...what an odd world we live in.

by bergie 15y ago

jiggy2011 15y ago

Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? At least webkit is open source, unlike IE6

bergie 15y ago
Do we need standards if eveybody is using Microsof Office? ;-) Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game. Anyway, this article prompted me to switch from Chrome to Aurora on my Android tablet. Feels good so far...
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  * Indeed, open source helps a lot. It is amazing how far KHTML has gotten. But still, no standards would mean no Opera, no Mozilla, no any other entrants to the game.* Not necessarily, it would still be possible for them to embed webkit or even to re-implement it. Webkit would simply become the reference implementation.
  - ootachi 15y ago
    Reimplementing it would not be an option. Making WebKit the reference implementation would give Google and Apple such an enormous advantage in development cycles that any browser that didn't use it would be unable to compete. You'd be expelling everyone but Google and Apple from the W3C. If WebKit becomes the standard, every user from now until forever will be using the same pile of C++ to browse. That may be fine to you; I personally don't think that WebKit is so good as to make it the gold standard for the Web. Imagine if that had happened with NCSA Mosaic...
    - jiggy2011 15y ago
      If it is open source why would google and apple have a huge advantage? Surely anybody else could even fork webkit if they so desired. Having one pile of C++ to browse beats having multiple piles of C++ all with their own bugs an eccentricities.
Silhouette 15y ago
> Do we need web standards if everyone is using webkit? Given the increasing trend to browse using tablets, phones, TVs, and other "non-traditional" devices, I suspect we're about to find out. WebKit is already dominant to the point that no other browser engine matters in the mobile space. It's possible that Microsoft will shake the tree a bit if tablets based on Windows 8 make a rapid impact and IE 10 becomes a serious player. However, for all practical purposes Gecko is already irrelevant on mobile devices. (For the avoidance of doubt, I am not arguing that such a browser monoculture is necessarily in users' best interests, nor that the trend to lock down many modern consumer devices so use of alternative browsers is less likely is any better. I'm merely commenting on the reality of the market today.)
jinushaun 15y ago
Exactly. WebKit is open source. Microsoft could easily drop Trident and package a version of IE running WebKit. Everyone running the same HTML engine? Sounds like a web developer's dream… In this world, who needs standards?

Silhouette 15y ago

I gave up on any sanity in web standards when the people responsible for HTML5 seriously suggested making it some sort of living document that would evolve rapidly over time. That demonstrates such a spectacular misunderstanding of why reference standards are important in general and the need for long-term stability in many web-based projects in particular that I lost all hope. The glacial pace of W3C standardisation has rendered them mostly irrelevant, but a standard that can change as fast as new browser versions ship isn't much use for anything either.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
I'd love to see a list of some standards more backwards-compatible than HTML.
- Silhouette 15y ago
  The problem isn't backward compatibility with previous standards as defined today. That has, as you suggest, generally been excellent. The problem is that if you decide your standard is going to be a "living" document that changes rapidly as the industry evolves, backward compatibility ceases to have any meaning because there is nothing stable to be backward compatible with. What happens when one browser pioneers a new feature, the living HTML5 standard quickly adopts it, developers start writing to that standard, but then two other browsers decide on another way to do the same thing that they think is better and someone changes the living HTML5 standard to reflect the new "standard" instead? One possibility is that the developers' existing code breaks. Another is that browser makers are stuck with supporting both once-standard interpretations for a long time. Alternatively, but almost as bad, what happens when the living HTML5 standard quickly adopts a new feature that is becoming popular, other browsers find a better way to do the same thing shortly afterwards, and the standard doesn't change to match? Now the standard sucks, because it rushed into formalising something before enough consensus had built. Formal standards don't mean anything unless they are robust, stable, citable references that everyone concerned can agree on. A living document that rapidly changes in the face of a fast-evolving industry is exactly zero of those things, and its value will be similarly small and round. It's merely a reference non-implementation, and since we're talking about browsers, we already have several candidates for being an actual reference implementation, just as we did in the old IE vs. Netscape days, when we learned for the first time why formal standards matter. Alas, as George Santayana observed a century ago, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

marshray 15y ago

Well, presumably there will still be some Internet Explorer around to keep those open source goons honest. :-)

Lazare 15y ago
What's funny is that, in context, that isn't a joke. IE really will be an important check on the ability of an open source project to abuse its power. ...what an odd world we live in.