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We (as in browser vendors as a whole, which although I'm no longer directly part of I'm still around enough!) don't want to add stuff to browsers just because i

We (as in browser vendors as a whole, which although I'm no longer directly part of I'm still around enough!) don't want to add stuff to browsers just because it's technically sound to include. People propose plenty of things with technically sound code, but there's far more to developing a platform than including everything that's technically sound. You have to make decisions as to what you wish to include. Once a something becomes near universal (in terms of marketshare, not in terms number of browsers; see IE's peak for the clear examples there!) it becomes treated as a baseline; once it's there it's incredibly hard to remove. Every time something else gets added that's more code to maintain, more code to ensure correctness (and security!) thereof, and a higher barrier of entry to the browser market. As a result, the default answer to adding anything should be "no".

anon1385 12y ago
This just goes to show how broken the browser model is as an app platform. The fact you (browser vendors) have to decide which image formats to support should be a huge red flag demonstrating that something is fundamentally wrong with your platform. Many things of interest developers might want to do currently require co-operation from the browser vendors, and their default position is 'no' unless it is in their commercial interest. Also, any one of the browser vendor vetoing the proposal is enough to kill it. Apple/Google/Microsoft are all huge companies with many products, so it's quite likely that you are a direct competitor to at least one product from one of the browser vendors, giving them extra incentive to veto most of the time. Until the web is a platform where the vendors don't have the power to veto basic functionality like decoding an image it will remain the plaything of the browser vendors, used to bludgeon their competition.

anon1385 12y ago

This just goes to show how broken the browser model is as an app platform. The fact you (browser vendors) have to decide which image formats to support should be a huge red flag demonstrating that something is fundamentally wrong with your platform. Many things of interest developers might want to do currently require co-operation from the browser vendors, and their default position is 'no' unless it is in their commercial interest. Also, any one of the browser vendor vetoing the proposal is enough to kill it. Apple/Google/Microsoft are all huge companies with many products, so it's quite likely that you are a direct competitor to at least one product from one of the browser vendors, giving them extra incentive to veto most of the time. Until the web is a platform where the vendors don't have the power to veto basic functionality like decoding an image it will remain the plaything of the browser vendors, used to bludgeon their competition.