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W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

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Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#41

Post by sjwright »

klez wrote: post #30
danarmak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no browser maker recognizes the W3C standard or claims to implement it, so what good is it?

That no browser maker recognizes W3C's standard is a bit misleading. MDN (i.e. Mozilla) quotes the w3c recommendations all over the place. Google, from what I found around, cites nothing, not even WHATWG. Webkit cites MDN (which cites w3c) as a source.

I think it's more misleading to claim that any written standard has authority. In practice these written standards are ultimately subservient to the actual implementations—particularly where the competing implementations happen to agree. And especially in disputes that affect real websites.

If there is an inconsistency between what the standards say and what the browsers have done, the browsers will more than likely trump the standards. In all practical senses the standards are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#42

Post by stupidcar »

ChrisSD wrote: post #9

I still maintain that the "living standard" is an oxymoron. It's a collaborative browser dev document. Don't get me wrong, that's great. However for everyone else an unversioned document, any part of which can change at any moment, is not what's usually thought of as a standard.

"Standard" = consensus definition of desired behaviour. "Living" = open to change.

I don't see what is so oxymoronic about this? Just because a consensus has been reached doesn't mean that consensus must be immutable.

Just because the process of standardisation in some technical domains has tended to use versioned documents doesn't mean that such an approach is fundamental to standardisation.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#43

Post by hungryfoolish »

coldtea wrote: post #27
skrebbel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHATWG is basically the browser vendors sidelining W3C to discuss what features HTML etc should have. The news today is that the W3C finally accepted that situation.

It's not like anybody of us voted for W3C either (so it's not like one body is the "legitimate" one and other is not). And the W3C had stalled progress so much in the 00s and 10s, that it deservedly got sidelined.

>It's not like anybody of us voted for W3C either

You have more of a voice in the W3C than any other standards body (you can comment on the github issues, or join as an invited expert etc). The W3C was created by Tim Berners-Lee, if anyone should have a vote on how web standards are run, then the creator of the web should be one of the contenders for it.

>And the W3C had stalled progress so much in the 00s and 10s

Not the 10s, just the early part of 00s, due to the xhtml vs html5 thing.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#44

Post by cygx »

cotelletta wrote: post #34
zmix wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables I can do tables just fine in XHTML. And luckily, tables have become redundant as layout technique, since CSS would do that, already then. The nice thing with X(HT)ML is, that you can place queries against any document, natively.

Did you miss the 5-10 years during which every CSS designer tortured themselves replicating tables with floats? Google 'pure css page footer' to see the wreckage. CSS tables took years to be supported, and even then, only brought back what people had been irrationally told to stay away from. It took another 5 years for flex box to become usable, adding something actually new. To this day, changing a site's entire des…

Personally, I was fine with ditching tables, but stuff like differing box models, unequal CSS support, quirks modes, etc did make for a rather painful cross-browser development experience: Making things work out correctly (or at least gracefully degrade) in multipe IE versions, Mozilla, Opera, ... could be a challenge.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#45

Post by sjwright »

jl6 wrote: post #5

Sounds like a recognition of WHATWG as the master, with W3C becoming more of a publishing / vetting organization for snapshots of the standard?

When in reality the actual implementations are the master, WHATWG are the first to describe the implementations' intended behaviors, and W3C is a glorified proxy server with aggressive caching.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#47

Post by geezerjay »

stupidcar wrote: post #42
ChrisSD wrote: post #9

I still maintain that the "living standard" is an oxymoron. It's a collaborative browser dev document. Don't get me wrong, that's great. However for everyone else an unversioned document, any part of which can change at any moment, is not what's usually thought of as a standard.

"Standard" = consensus definition of desired behaviour. "Living" = open to change. I don't see what is so oxymoronic about this? Just because a consensus has been reached doesn't mean that consensus must be immutable. Just because the process of standardisation in some technical domains has tended to use versioned documents doesn't mean that such an approach is fundamental to standardisation.

> "Standard" = consensus definition of desired behaviour. "Living" = open to change. > I don't see what is so oxymoronic about this?

A standard is set in stone as a fixed target for implementers.

No fixed target? No standard.

And no, an unversioned document that changes arbitrarily is not a standard.

To put it differently, a standard is a goal. If the goalpost is arbitrarily kept on the move then there is no goal.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#48

Post by boomlinde »

cotelletta wrote: post #26
Multicomp wrote: post #4

Extremely condensed version: W3C is giving up publishing future HTML and DOM standards. They will focus on writing 'recommendations' for the WHATWG's living standards. Versioned vs living HTML discussions aside, I personally admit some mild sadness that the original group responsible for maintaining Sir TBL's work on HTML has been forced to give up.

These are the same people who created XHTML, an ivory tower idea nobody was waiting for... who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables, in their new styling language CSS. W3C became irrelevant because they kept thinking they could just tell the entire web what to do, that they'd make enormous technical investments to satisfy the W3C's latest fashions. I interacted with them once, over their…

> These are the same people who created XHTML, an ivory tower idea nobody was waiting for... who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables, in their new styling language CSS.

You certainly could lay out pages using tables in XHTML, but the point of the standard in the first place was to enable semantically sound documents for the sake of interoperability and to facilitate separation of concerns. So maybe if you authored XHTML documents that was already an important consideration to you.

On a side note, now that the web development industry seems to have collectively given up any ambitions for semantically sound documents it's strange that the criticism against table-based layouts prevails.

Re: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

#50

Post by sureaboutthis »

cotelletta wrote: post #26
Multicomp wrote: post #4

Extremely condensed version: W3C is giving up publishing future HTML and DOM standards. They will focus on writing 'recommendations' for the WHATWG's living standards. Versioned vs living HTML discussions aside, I personally admit some mild sadness that the original group responsible for maintaining Sir TBL's work on HTML has been forced to give up.

These are the same people who created XHTML, an ivory tower idea nobody was waiting for... who didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables, in their new styling language CSS. W3C became irrelevant because they kept thinking they could just tell the entire web what to do, that they'd make enormous technical investments to satisfy the W3C's latest fashions. I interacted with them once, over their…

> didn't support the most popular layout method at the time, tables

Tables were NEVER a layout method and it was only used for that because CSS was deficient at the time.

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