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

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

#361

Post by tathougies »

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #332
_fq4v wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I only use obscure type-safe functional programming frameworks. That's what I'm employed to do, and this obviously impacts my feelings on the matter. Personally, I think it's irresponsible to use anything that could be this unsafe. This doesn't mean everyone needs to use FP, just that frameworks and libraries should be chosen so as to guarantee safety. There are easy-to-use libraries for all these things…

You can be unsafe even with typesafe builders. See fn build(text_to_show: &str) -> HTML{ HTML(Body(H1(text_to_show))) } What if text_to_show wasn't sanitized? You got yourself a XSS. And if you do sanitize it (and keep it in a StrSanitized type), what are the chances of accidental XSS? Really, what should have been done is a "user supplied tag", which automatically displays everything as plain text, like Content

Your builder isn't really using types to guarantee safety. You can write untyped programs in a strongly typed language, by just coercing everything to strings, but this isn't what I mean when I say 'type-safety'.

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

#362

Post by chrisseaton »

kuschku wrote: post #350
tptacek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what is the purpose of a standard reference for web developers that fails to track the documented behavior of browsers?

Great, so if I build a website based purely on the WHATWG specs, it will work in all browsers, correctly? No, it won't. I can take the A4 paper spec and build a printer that takes that paper, and I know paper will comply with it. And the other way around. You can't build a website just from WHATWG specs, and you can't, excluding the parts about backwards compatible parsing, easily build a new browser from scratch eit…

But how are the W3C specs any better than the WHATWG specs?

As far as I know the W3C take the WHATWG specs, and modify them with some of their own ideas so they're different from the what the browsers implement or are planning to implement.

What on earth is the point of that? Why design your own spec that nobody is implementing or planning to implement? What a waste of time!

And back to your point - why is it better than the WHATWG specs?

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

#363

Post by ttepasse »

dragonwriter wrote: post #343
ttepasse wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browser people are the WHATWG. There are no other stakeholders in that.

Not only are there non-browser-maker WHATWG stakeholders, there are non-browser-maker formal objectors to the W3C DOM move to CR endorsing the same view as the four browser makers (Bloomberg and Disruptive Innovations; I've never heard of the latter previously, AFAIK.)

I was curious so I googled a little bit:

Bloomberg is know for its Terminal. It seems they have a program where you can extend their terminal with web applications. Presumably Bloomberg didn't built a renderer themselves but there are custom APIs. So they are something between a browser maker and a UI framework like Electron.

Disruptive Innovations is a firm by Daniel Glazman, formerly of Netscape and of the CSSWG fame. His main product seem to be continuing the Editor part of the original Mozilla Suite based on the Gecko Layout Engine. There seems to be an NVU Editor and rather new an Editor called BlueGriffon which also does ePub and maybe his custom WebBooks format.

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

#364

Post by ubernostrum »

colanderman wrote: post #321
tptacek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what is the purpose of a standard reference for web developers that fails to track the documented behavior of browsers?

I'm not sure the intent of your comment; failure to track what browsers actually do is exactly the problem with the WHATWG "living standard" – it's very much a forward-looking spec at best, and too often a wishlist.

The ideal situation is for the WHATWG document to be a roadmap of what vendors have discussed and tentatively agreed on, and the W3C document to be a periodic snapshot of what's actually been implemented.

That wouldn't make either one of them "bad". The issue here seems to be W3C wanting to push forward things that the vendors haven't agreed on or implemented yet.

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

#365

Post by adamrezich »

kuschku wrote: post #348
fourthark wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're taking about the ease of validation. Everyone else is talked about the ease of writing.

Oh, you mean like AMP, which now every major site supports, and which is even stricter than XHTML?

Turns out, when there's financial incentive to use strict syntax, people will... guess that's all XHTML lacked...

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

#366

Post by manigandham »

baybal2 wrote: post #351
manigandham wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so why does it suck? Because you don't like it? Why isn't it a proper standard when it's the only one implemented? Things definitely do not change on a whim and there's great care taken in the process. The group is very transparent and clearly state the objective is to keep the standard modern and evolving. You can always refer to an archived snapshot or the numerous compatibility tables for historic data if need…

How it should work: A standard is written and set in stone at least for 1-1.5 years. Official test suites are made. Then, browsermakers make their stuff compliant. APIs must support strict versioning. A user should not be bothered with "your browsers supports version 1 of method b, version 2 of method c, and does not support method d" it should either work with API version N or popup a big error message "API version…

For the 3rd time, do you have an actual example of what's wrong?

In the 1.5 years of wait time you mention, the current process will have standardized and released features across all browsers. The web has changed and nobody wants to wait years discussing something. Compatibility is not a major issue because features are rapidly updated and there are compatibility tables that will automatically reference and even build your app for you with the proper polyfills and transpilations.

Sure, sometimes there are bugs and partial features, but this is rare and there's no evidence that W3C prevented this since implementations are not up to them.

However the W3C has definitely failed to make any progress with HTML/XHTML. They failed with SVG. They failed with DRM by completely ignoring the issues raised and causing the EFF to leave. So please state exactly what the W3C has done better and where they have added value because as far as I can tell, they are just wasting time every few months from the very people who are trying to move the web forward.

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

#367

Post by jonnyscholes »

c-smile wrote: post #356
rossy wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flex-wrap. flexbox is one-dimensional, so it can "wrap" items that don't fit to the next line. The wrapped items don't have to line up with vertical grid lines, like they would in a grid, and they can be stretched or centred to fit across the full width of the parent.

How that is different from a sequence of display:inline-block's (horizontal wrap) and multi-col layout (vertical wrap)?

inline-block isn't designed for layout - so you get side effects like the preservation of whitespace which you have to use hacks to resolve. Sure it works - but flex-wrap is a syntactically correct solution that doesn't require hacks.

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

#368

Post by jonnyscholes »

c-smile wrote: post #356
rossy wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

flex-wrap. flexbox is one-dimensional, so it can "wrap" items that don't fit to the next line. The wrapped items don't have to line up with vertical grid lines, like they would in a grid, and they can be stretched or centred to fit across the full width of the parent.

How that is different from a sequence of display:inline-block's (horizontal wrap) and multi-col layout (vertical wrap)?

I assume you're talking about CSS columns? Again they're not designed for layout - it's designed specifically for newspaper style columns of text where it doesn't matter which piece of text flows into which column. To use it for layout requires hacks or luck to adhear closely to designs. Pre-grid and flex I spent many hours of my life dealing with oddities around CSS columns - my life is in a much better place now not having to resort to it!

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

#369

Post by [deleted] »

mcchampion wrote: post #357
hungryfoolish wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft tried that, investing in easier to use GitHub tooling to allow a wide range of people to submit pull requests to update/fix bugs in the W3C HTML standard. "If you build the field of dreams, they will come...." Nope. "They" had all gone to WHATWG ballpark, and all the W3C editors do is cherrypick (that's the actual word in the HTML 5.2 Recommendation) WHATWG's specs. It made a LOT more sense to just join WH…

How would one convince the others to re-invest in W3C HTML and DOM? Microsoft's rationale a few years ago was that WHATWG wasn't a real standards organization with a patent policy, dispute resolution system, etc., and that created various legal and business concerns. It turned out to be much easier to add a legal framework to WHATWG than to convince the HTML and DOM standards community to move back to W3C. Basically,…

[deleted]

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

#370

Post by jstewartmobile »

Latty wrote: post #246
jstewartmobile wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a more tech-related example, Jobs said "no flash on iPhones", and in a few years... poof! no flash.

The counter to that is pretty obvious, because if you remember Jobs also said "no native apps on iPhones", and then in a few months... poof! an app store. Flash was pretty much dead anyway, and the web platform had advanced enough to mostly replace it at that point. That wasn't true for native apps. If you want to make a standard, it has to let people do the things they want to do. Otherwise, people will just use a d…

I'm not really getting into the standards thing here--just throwing some ammo to the underdog.

My only point is that there are only a handful of companies with the cash, the talent, and the inclination to tackle these things, and most of them are near if not total monopolies, so as long as what they put out there isn't a blatant kick-in-the-nuts, most of us will just accept it.

iPhone was a compelling product, didn't have flash, everyone migrated to Javascript ASAP. Google is practically a monopoly, and when webmaster tools tells people to jump, watch everyone piss away a weekend to add microformats and shave 5% off of a few 40k images.

Serfs. We are all serfs.

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