A recent post about Firefox and my general view of corporations and organizations has caused a bit of a stir. It even caught the attention of Asa Dotzler. He said "It's really hard for me to believe that either [Microsoft or Adobe] have the free and open Web at heart when they're actively subverting it with closed technologies like Flash and Silverlight." But are they really subverting it? Where exactly is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the web? I think the W3C should share in this blame.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2008-02-26
Exactly, people blame Microsoft but are they the culprits? I believe you cannot really single out anybody in this mess.
First you have the original HTML; it wasn't very good to start with. Then you have the old browser wars with Netscape and Microsoft introducing extension after extension. Now Javascript. Then Vbscript. Then CSS. Java plugins, ActiveX, Flash, XML, Silverlight... Most of it is now standard and don't you dare to break the pink on green web page I wrote in 1993 with marquees, midis and heaps of animated gifs.
Nobody is innocent here.
It is amazing that we can actually use the web as it is for something.
Member since:2007-01-18
I'm not going to argue your points because I don't know that much about the W3C as an organization, but here's where we are today.
I can, with some minor exceptions, build a standard website that will work the same in Firefox/Mozilla, Opera, Safari, KDE, etc., but it will be a mess in IE 6 and 7 (version 8 is a different story). I can build a site that works in IE (excluding version 8) and it won't work in any of the other browsers.
My conclusion. While maybe IE didn't create the problem they sure as hell haven't done much to solve it either. Maybe the W3C's recommendation aren't all that great, but it seems like every other popular browser is able to support them. So why is Microsoft unable to?
As A side note. I have been using version 8 of IE and frankly it's a much more compliant browser. Even though it's still a beta program it seems to work fairly good. However, sites that work in IE 7 or older don't work in version 8 without turning on the IE 7 mode. That's saying a lot I think.
Member since:
2006-02-05
First of all, W3C puts out a lot downright awful standards. There are many parts that are overly complex or ambigious. Secondly, the W3C is not a independent body, it is a consortium of companies, each with its own agenda, which is a big reason of why the standards it puts out are so horrible, and why nobody can really fully implements them.