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The Web doesn't have an owner, it has several. Competing against it other. That's why it is thriving. It had no owner and it suffered when MS had 95% of the Web's market share, cause MS's platform is Windows, not the Web. Controlling it was MS's way of keeping Windows relevant.
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You're conflating hyperlinked documents and applications. The web is clearly the dominant document platform, but is the web the dominant application platform? The answer is in market success of the emerging mobile (and possibly desktop) application platforms, and the kinds of applications being produced there.
In user-hours of application use the web is UNQUESTIONABLY the dominant application platform.
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Irrelevant, if you consider their decision to promote XHTML2 while the rest of the world committed to HTML5 - incidentally, a development that puts to rest the fear that the web can't evolve and stay relevant without a single BDFL.
They may be crappy but they are still the organization in charge of the development and standardization of web technologies, which he is arguing doesn’t exist. It does. It just isn’t as good as we’d like.
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The one part of his article that I somewhat agree with is that under the guidance of several entities (and lots and lots of people) the web may not have quite the same coherence as, say, Cocoa. I'm not sure that will be a problem. It's already a problem. In fact, it is the problem. The web application 'platform' is poor, incoherent, and its proponents highly resistant to the sweeping changes that would be necessary t…
"It's already a problem. In fact, it is the problem. The web application 'platform' is poor, incoherent, and its proponents highly resistant to the sweeping changes that would be necessary to compete with a native, proprietary platform like iOS." Which "sweeping changes" are those? Changes like the ability to draw pixel-by-pixel? Vectors? 3D? (Canvas/svg/webgl) Changes like higher level form controls? Got some in HTM…
Just one example that is particularly painful for me: it's still impossible to build a high quality code editing component on web platform. There are many valiant attempts but none that approaches the speed, quality and convenience of the best desktop editors from 10 years ago.
Another one: you can't build an ssh client as a web page because there is not enough socket support. You can do it by going through your own proxy, but that's not secure from the user point of view (you could spy on his traffic without the user knowing it).
Those are just two relatively simple things that you can't do on the web and there's much more.
Also, the velocity of change in the iOS/Android/Windows compared to velocity in web is not in favor of web. The (only recently added) capabilities you cite are just web catching up with old technologies. Amiga 1000 was doing excellent sound in 1985. Windows XP had vector graphics in 2001 etc. There's nothing to be proud of that we get those things in 2011.
iOS/Android/Windows/Mac OS X are being evolved much quickly than the web. They improve on the strengths they always had over web (speed of the apps, more capabilities, new paradigms like touch) and incorporate the best features of the web (integrating cloud storage in latest Mac OS and Windows etc.).
Also, the recent increase is standardization is caused mostly because the problem outline by Joe has been partially addressed: Google stepped up as the "owner" of the web and most of the recent advances are driven by Google (web sockets, spdy, webm, html5 spec being maintained by a Google employee, V8 forced everyone to raise JavaScript perf etc.).
Standard process was a disaster for a long time when it was done by W3C with working groups populated by employees of big companies with conflicting agendas. All the recent good changes originate from single companies (most of them from Google, Canvas was done by Apple).
I think he is underestimating the quantum leap that web technologies have made in the past 2 years. Between canvas, audio & audio data, video tag, css3, websockets, webworkers, webgl, touchscreen events, and new server tech like nodejs... there are now so many new API's to learn and work with that most web developers haven't even started to catch up yet. There's a lot of room here, the capabilities of the permutation…
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It didn't take a seer to imagine that having camera access was a good idea, but it takes a pretty boneheaded committee to wait this long to do it. Hell, Adobe put camera access in Flash years before iOS even existed. I don't love Flash, but even they benefitted from have a single owner. Lots of good things coming to the platform now, but progress was even faster in the mid-90's when Netscape and IE were growing up. I…
I realize that my reply didn't address the fact that camera access took a long time. You're right... I don't think it's because of a boneheaded committee, though. I'm just guessing, because I have nothing to do with this directly, but I'm guessing that people either: 1. weren't really thinking that the web needed camera access 2. thought there were higher priority things And yes, Flash had camera access first. How's…
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Because when Microsoft was the only browser vendor, the web evolved really quickly... OWAIT
But was the browser monoculture to blame? The web went through a painful stale period from about 2000 to 2005, during which time IE asserted near total dominance. However, sites are just now starting to phase out IE6 support. That means that the technology that has advanced the web over the past five or so years was there all along. Interest in the web started to return around the same time Firefox started to gain in…
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It didn't take a seer to imagine that having camera access was a good idea, but it takes a pretty boneheaded committee to wait this long to do it. Hell, Adobe put camera access in Flash years before iOS even existed. I don't love Flash, but even they benefitted from have a single owner. Lots of good things coming to the platform now, but progress was even faster in the mid-90's when Netscape and IE were growing up. I…
They had data binding? I don't remember that (that's a pet feature of mine ;) From what I've seen, things don't really start in the committees. They start with people at browser vendors scratching their own itches and eventually escape out into the committees. In some ways, that's why it's good that there are 5 organizations pushing forward. One with an itch for camera access will help force the others to take action…
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms531385(v=vs.85).as...
I think he is underestimating the quantum leap that web technologies have made in the past 2 years. Between canvas, audio & audio data, video tag, css3, websockets, webworkers, webgl, touchscreen events, and new server tech like nodejs... there are now so many new API's to learn and work with that most web developers haven't even started to catch up yet. There's a lot of room here, the capabilities of the permutation…
Compare that to the progress of native development. Apple comes out with new cool things on iOS every year, whereas on the web it takes 5 years to get something new that is 10 years behind the native counterparts.
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Has Linux stopped improving? Has Python stopped improving? Has jQuery stopped improving? It all depends on who the owner is.
Linux doesn't own the OS market - far from it. Python doesn't own the language sector. jQuery doesn't own the JS library sector. They are all independent projects, and it's _good_ for them to have a BDFL. Asking for one for the entire web is not a good plan because it would exclude competition. That's where the flaw in the argument is. And while it'd be nice if browser vendors could just go off and improve along (fro…
It's important to distinguish the Internet from the collection of web technologies. The Internet is the thing that needs to remain open and uncontrolled.