Comment by simonw
Comment by simonw 2 days ago
Having key browser implementers not involved in the standards processes is what lead us to the W3C wasting several years chasing XHTML 2.0.
Comment by simonw 2 days ago
Having key browser implementers not involved in the standards processes is what lead us to the W3C wasting several years chasing XHTML 2.0.
> and another that wanted to create the platform on which Microsoft Word could be built.
Apparently they failed. The web version of Word is still far from having feature parity. Of course doc is one of those everything and the kitchen sink formats, so implementing it on top of a platform that was originally intended to share static documents is kind of a tall order.
There are other key browser implementers. Google should not have more than an advisory role in any standards organization.
The other key browser implementers are also part of WHATWG.
Who do you suppose should be in charge of web standards? I can’t imagine the train wreck of incompetence if standards were driven by bureaucrats instead of stakeholders.
Saying web users should define web standards is like saying laptop users should design CPUs. They lack the expertise to do this meaningfully.
Web authors? Maybe. WHATWG was created specifically because W3C wasn’t really listening to web authors though.
I don’t think there are a lot of scenarios where standards aren’t driven by implementers, though. USB, DRAM, WiFi, all this stuff is defined by implementers.
Ask users what they want and they say "faster horses," not cars.
Users are a key information source but they don't know how to build a web engine, they don't know networks, and they don't know security; and therefore can't dictate the feature set.
And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Honestly, what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform. I really think anyone who has any sort of confusion about what I commented here to take a long, hard look at their worldview.
> And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Is your proposal essentially that Mozilla defines web standards Google is legally bound to implement them?
> what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion
Not horrified, but asking what the alternative is. I don’t think you’ve actually got a sensible proposal.
Cooperation in the WHATWG is voluntary. Even if there were some workable proposal for how to drive web standards without Google having any decision making power, they could (and presumably would) decline to participate in any structure that mandated what they have to build in Chrome. Absent legal force, no one can make Google cede their investment in web standards.
>what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform
They don't. In general browser specs are defined via various standards groups like WHATWG. As far as I know there is no standard for what image formats must be supported on a web browser,[0] which is why in this one case any browser can decide to support an image format or not.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
I kind of liked xhtml, though clearly it was not necessary for the web to be successful. I think the bigger issue is that W3C pursued this to the detriment of more important investments.
Reading over the minutes for the last W3C WG session before WHATWG was announced, the end result seems obvious. The eventual WHATWG folks were pushing for investment in web-as-an-app-platform and everyone else was focused on in retrospect very unimportant stuff.
“Hey, we need to be able to build applications.”
“Ok, but first we need compound documents.”
There was one group who thought they needed to build the web as Microsoft Word and another that wanted to create the platform on which Microsoft Word could be built.