The HTML 5 controversy

I'm no expert in the standard, but I probably should try to read it (if I can stay awake!).

From what I have been reading around the web, the issues are that some of the committees that comprise these groups are not designers, developers, nor accessibility minded people. They usually represent the "back end" of the web and software, namely the Microsofts, Adobes, and etc., etc.

This creates the issue that the people that make the decisions and recommendations aren't "in the trenches" doing the work, and having to deal with the bugs on a daily basis. Some of these people are dead set in their minds about what they believe WE need and don't need. I find this sad that they aren't willing to listen to the people that create the sites that power the web on a daily basis.

Being newer to coding, I figure that once the HTML 5 spec is officially adopted, it will probably be a few more years before the browsers catch up to it and all of them fully support it. I'll just keep chugging along for now and keep working at it. Heck, IE7 just now began to really support CSS as it was supposed to be, and CSS 2 has been out for how long?

Just my $.02 worth - from a newer designer/developer/web geek.

I had heard of this before, but largely ignored it. That being said...

I don't understand something:

Why is HTML5 being developed (at all), when the concept was for XHTML/CSS to become the "new" standard for the future? You know, separate content and formatting? That whole deal? And how it's worked so awesomely well across the board? Then why are they trying to not only confuse people, but backtrack?

CSS has done wonders for the world of web design, as has XHTML. Granted, it was annoying to move over from "pure" HTML to it, but once you get the hang of it you become faster and more efficient. You would think that the next step would be to put out another version of XHTML... XHTML 2.0 (much like CSS1, CSS2.1), rather than develop it alongside the exact standard you were replacing.

I think one of the key things that needs to be addressed is the amount of politics that goes into the W3C these days... it didn't used to be this way. I've heard of Microsoft and Apple fighting each other on the W3C over arcane issues that largely don't matter... on pure premise of "difference of opinion". The other issue is the "mobile internet" (as was mentioned in one of those articles)... there are at least 3 "mobile internet" standards I can think of... but does that even matter anymore? With devices like the iPhone, non-standard internets will become a thing of the past.

Finally, I think one issue that hasn't ever been considered as a standard is the rise of AJAX. Why not implement some of the basic functionality of JS/AJAX into a web language like CSS? "Anyone who's anyone uses AJAX" these days to do even the most simple and mundane of things... logic would then say that certain elements, where appropriate, should be built into the standards that it is used to circumvent. Examples? Cross-browser image rollovers are still annoying. What about a .focus() implementation? So many things I can think of that I can't put them into words...

I believe the W3C is a good thing. Look how far it's gotten us. But they got us here by just that... us. Listening to us. Understand what was going on. Now they're more concerned with politics and accessibility, and look what's happening. I feel like designers have more or less taken some of the development of the internet protocols into their own hands because of this... look at microformats, AJAX/JS, very very rich internet applications scrapped together from countless hacks and workarounds...

I really don't see the W3C being beneficial for much longer. I think it should become an "open source" project, much like PHP or certain Linux distros, etc. There should be a group of people that oversee the progress, and make sure the roadmap is followed, but let the people who are care actually be involved and produce work that matters in a timely manner.

--end rant--

Quote: I definitely agree with Croft and others who bemoan the slow pace of development. It has taken forever to get new standards.

Not only does it take forever to develop new standards, but forever and a day to adopt them! CSS has been out ten years, yet many people are still designing with nested tables like it was 1997. As for HTML, Internet Explorer finally supports the ABBR tag, but not the Q tag; it still has a bunch of proprietary attributes. Meanwhile, the web class I attended required me to take an HTML test - for version 3.2 - in 2003!

More worrying than the direction of HTML, to me, is the direction of XHTML. The current proposal for XHTML 2 is not backward compatible with XHTML 1. What's more, Microsoft has no plans to support XHTML as XML at all. So why are we using XHTML? I do wonder.