Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Apple Object to W3C Fork of DOM Spec

Post by hungryfoolish » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #7

ChrisSD wrote: post #6

It's sad to see the relationship between WHATWG and W3C has deteriorated to this point. Trying to wrangle a standard from a "living" (i.e. constantly changing) specification was always going to be tough but I'd have hoped both WHATWG and W3C would be able to maintain a working relationship.

Is there an article with the background on this? Why do we have both the W3C and the WHATWG, and why do the W3C just copy and paste work from WHATWG, if that is indeed what happens?

Post by hungryfoolish » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #298

sixdimensional wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they certainly can - both can co-exist peacefully and feed of each other. I think really this is all kind off a non-issue and stems from a lack of understanding about standards development. WHATWG is very much a definition of a "de facto standard" [1] vs the W3C which is more a "de jure standard" [2]. There is a conflict between the two, yes, but both can reasonably exist. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

But why do they both need to exist? I'm sure they can, since they have up till now, but what benefit is there? W3C is literally just copying the WHATWG documents so I don't see what value it's adding.

Post by domenicd » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:42 PM UTC

hungryfoolish wrote: post #300

domenicd wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure exactly what your comment is saying, but at least one reading is that "browsers are the only stakeholders in the WHATWG", which is not accurate. The WHATWG is a community organization open to participation by all; see https://whatwg.org/faq#process for more. We receive a lot of participation from users, web developers, and other companies. There is a formal group, the Steering Group, which represents the bro…

Are there any non-browser members as part of the editors or steering committee in the whatwg? To me, this is giving browser makers even more power over HTML than they have otherwise.

Post by c-smile » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

et-al wrote: post #305

c-smile wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, flexbox was an old Mozilla XUL's feature ( / ) where flexes were defined by attributes. We all agreed at the moment that having presentation attributes in markup is nto that good idea. And that CSS flex was no-brainer port of that thing by replacing DOM attributes by bunch of CSS properties. Problem is that flexbox ruins CSS box model that mandates that width CSS property is what defines the width of inner box o…

> Problem is that flexbox ruins CSS box model that mandates that width CSS property is what defines the width of inner box of the element. Now they have flex-basis that if defined in galaxy far, far away overrides that width by something else. I'm not quite following; may you please explain this? Thanks.

    .flex-container {
       border: 1px solid #555;
       display : flex;
     }

     .flex-container > span {
       display:block;
       border: 1px solid #900;
       flex:1;
       width:100px;
     }

    
      Foo
      Bar
    

Post by lambda » Fri, Apr 13, 2018, 9:59 PM UTC

hungryfoolish wrote: post #303

lambda wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C also oversees a lot of other standardization processes that aren't directly related to web browsers, like RDF. There are people who find this useful. I think a lot of it is a power play. The W3C wants to be relevant, and the most relevant things in the web world are HTML, DOM, and CSS (there's…

> The W3C actually does do some good work in other working groups; the CSS working groups seem to be working smoothly. The W3C is also doing work in HTML at least too. If browser makers would actually participate as editors (like they do in CSS) then it would work just as well as the CSS working groups and others.