Problems at the W3C

dustin writes "Public outcry against the workings of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is growing. On Sunday, Björn Höhrmann announced his departure in a lengthy critique of problems at the W3C. Web standards champion Zeldman adds his comments as well: 'Beholden to its corporate paymasters who alone can afford membership, the W3C seems increasingly detached from ordinary designers and developers.'"

Possible solution?

[QuantumFTL]

Maybe a non-profit organization of independent web developers could be formed (perhaps already exists?) that could obtain membership on their behalf?

How disappointing

[billDCat]

How disappointing to hear this. We area at a time right now when we need standards more than anything. Between the onslaught of AJAX apps, the preponderance of Flash web apps, and the attempt by Microsoft to convert web apps to an extension of Windows with Sparkle and Avalon, we wholeheartedly need strong standards.

Planned Obsolescence

[Doc Ruby]

This problem is exactly what people predicted back in the mid 1990s, when W3C was formed. I was on the IETF HTTP-WG, and even those of us on various corporate payrolls knew Microsoft's membership in a closed-door W3C membership meant Web standards would go this way.

It's a testament to the basic strength, openness and simplicity of the WWW that the W3C could continue its model for so long without collapsing itself or the Web.

Slow and cumbersome

[Null Nihils]

One thing that bugs me about the W3C is their apparent lack of recognition for newer extensions to Web technology. They seem to keep leaving a huge gap in what Web standards support while companies like Microsoft implement a closed, proprietary, platform-dependent kludge to provide that functionality. Its understandable that a cross-platform, developer-friendly solution for new capabilities should take time, but the W3C seems 15 years behind everything. Web Standards are indeed in a sorry state, and have been for some time. Just getting people to recognize the CSS standard is a headache, and things like rounded corners are still a long way off.

This is one area that a more open, participatory model is sorely needed. Look how far the Linux kernel has come in the past 15 years! And then look how far Web standards have come... not far, in my opinion (The CSS 3 spec is taking how long? And will get implemented in most browsers when?)

I think we, developers and Web-savvy alike, can do much better. But we have a lot of work to do... the Web has become very balkanized but it is still a market that has more wiggle-room than, say, the Operating System market. After all, Firefox is has gained significant marketshare and it still seems to be growing...

At any rate, TFA's seem to be punctuating a sentiment that will hopefully motivate people to move Web Standards forward sooner, rather than later.

Bureaucracy sucks

[realmolo]

The W3C, as far as I can tell, never accomplished much at all. And you know why? They didn't have an actual PRODUCT.

If the W3C wanted to set standards for browsers, then they should've been MAKING A BROWSER. And open-sourcing it. At the very least, they should've been creating "rendering engines" that could be plugged into the various browsers on the market.

Thankfully, the Mozilla team seems to have picked up the slack in many ways.

Re:I never understood..

[fotoflojoe]

That sounds great in theory, but what would probably happen in reality is that Microsoft would end up writing the standard, and adding proprietary, patented extensions onto it in order to ensure permanent dominance for Internet Explorer.
Agreed.
A scenario like what the GP suggests would create a 'fox guarding the hen house' kind of situation.

The w3c isn't relavant anyway....

[haplo21112]

...they are way behind the curve, the innovations and recommendations for standards of the innovations have no parity. The largest market share holder for browsers doesn't fully support the recommendations anyway, and appears not to have any intention to in the newar future. Even when a recommendation is published and closely followed much of it never makes sense to anyone except its designers.

Inorder to be fully usuable a recommendation should have examples throught of making use of the things being documented and much more explict definations of what is expected output/results of making use of an element of the recommendation. But alas NO....

Even the people's Champion Mozilla/Gecko/Firefox does fully, cleanly and totally impliment recommendations that have existed for years. And even if it did the 8000lb gorilla does even less in the standards compliance department. Mean hell the java/ecmascript standard hasn't changed much in years and it still reqires hacks to support both browsers at once.

CSS is even worse...hell they don't even in all cases provide the same events support, and how long has that been standardized.

Nope the w3c will remain ineffectual (which in my opinion probably contributes to their lackadaisical attitude) until the standards start getting properly, cleanly and fully implimented, otherwise whats the point of having standards and/or improving them.

The current state of things is like having 3 almost indentical light blubs, one that is designed to the socket (works pretty much all the time), one that is a hair to small for the socket (works for the most part but once in while due to climate variations loses contact, sputters a little might need adjustment from time to time to keep working), and one that is a hair to wide (you can get it into the socket but it might crack doing so and need to be fixed/replaced alot, might need s a little forcing to get lit up in the first place).

Adobe and standards

[truthsearch]

Right, the same Adobe that had a well known university professor arrested for making a speech? Yeah, they have my vote for overlord...

Anyway, if you don't like one standards organization it doesn't mean you should bundle yourself up in a proprietary binary format. Write a new incredible standard and people will support it. Or go help start a new standards organization. Your solution isn't a solution. It just contributes to the problems.

Re:I never understood..

[baadger]

The root issue is that MS doesn't see web standards support as an important competitive issue.

Yet. Once IE7 has shipped with whole bunch of competitive out of the box features, Microsoft has to put it's foot down and start the real work of restoring faith in it's users. Firefox's usage may be low, but i'm sure most of remaining IE userbase must have been feeling *the ripples* even if they aren't aware of Firefox's existance or choose not to use it.

I'm of the opinion that IE7 is just a distraction, a way of catching up superficially to yank on the chains of the competition. Once it's out and the buzz has died down they are going to need that late 90's velocity right back (and they *have* said there will be more frequent updates to IE) otherwise it's going to be a gross waste of time and a huge disappointment.

The question is, will Firefox's (now large) ego survive a battering if MS really ramp it up in IE8 once Vista is out of the box and can Mozilla remain competitive? Personally I hope not, being humbled is good for the thought process.

Re:I never understood..

[hixie]

Actually Microsoft take part in several working groups, most notably the CSS working group, and seem to do so in good faith. They play by our extension rules, they are making attempts at fixing their standards compliance bugs, etc. I'm not saying they're perfect, but ever since Firefox showed them their market share wasn't guaranteed, they've become active again and have been acting as reasonably as the other major browser vendors.

This 'problem' started in the mid-90s

[DeeDob]

As a developper, i never knew what to aim for when designing web pages. Even in the mid-90s so this is nothing new.

I develop my pages for Netscape or for IE or for what the W3C says it SHOULD be.

Result: I developped for IE first, then made it work for Netscape and never bothered with the W3C.
Clients and people don't need code that works as "standard" when no one is able to correctly view the results of that "standard".

IE had some proprietary elements working. I remember however that the W3C had no "standards" for those functions. The standards came later and the W3C said that the way Microsoft implemented those features was "wrong". As Microsoft, do you really want to re-code your thing because someone came with a standard too late?
Same thing with Netscape and it's DHTML vision of "layers". The W3C standard came too late and Netscape's "layers" were deprecated. Developper's work going to waste as they have to re-invent the wheel.

When a company sees a customer need and fulfill it, why do the W3C need to analyze that need afterwards and come up with a totally different version of what's already available instead of expanding on it? It just waste the browsers developpers time and the web designers time so much that nobody cares about the standards anymore.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[hixie]

I'm a W3C member, have been for years. Microsoft is not the source of the problems there. The closed-door membership is a problem, but that's not Microsoft's fault. Nor have Microsoft attempted to abuse their position in the W3C in the past decade or so (there was an instance a long time ago, but that was quickly resolved and hasn't happened since). There are plenty of issues at the W3C, but they're not due to MS.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[Doc Ruby]

You're not a member the way Microsoft is a member. That's the problem. MS didn't create the problem, but it has used it to its advantage.

Tell me about DHTML and IE compatibility. Or general MS compliance. They certainly do help shepherd the W3C along standards directions that they prefer to beat with proprietary versions. That's what "embrace and extend" means, which has been MS's strategy since they publicly reprioritized the Internet and joined the new W3C.

I don't know how you could be part of the W3C and not see that. But those kind of scope blinders are part of the MS advantage in the way they use the W3C to game the system they've mastered.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[hixie]

Everything you've described is completely unrelated to the grievances that Bjoern listed in his mail which was the impetus for the Slashdot posting. I'm not saying that Microsoft is competent at writing browsers that are compliant (heck, just look at the Acid2 test in IE vs any other browser), but I *am* saying that the problems *at the W3C* have nothing to do with Microsoft, and could be solved, regardless of what Microsoft do.

(BTW, in case you think I might be some sort of Microsoft apologist: I think it's pretty clear from my life over the past few years that I'm not on Microsoft's "side" here.)

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[mabhatter654]

The whole problem is that the W3C needs corp interest, patents, and money to stay in the game. If the W3C had to go it alone, all the individual corporate "members" would gut it like a fish in the courts. The current problem is that they've stopped writing good, simple, clean specs. With all the corporate interest the specs end up being one of two things: a) a "weapon" to punish who ever is on top of an industry a the moment by the threat of making it all "free" or b) attempt to skew the specs so only corporate developers could ever actually implement the whole thing. The result is that the specs are too big to be useful, so the big players all do their own thing anyway.. just how companies like Adobe, MS, IBM, etc would like it. I'm sure it's not deliberate on the part of individual contributing developers, but when the companies don't actively back up the results of the work with shipping products (like IE which hasn't been improved for 5 years!!!) everybody "knows" where the priorities like and nothing gets DONE.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[Doc Ruby]

I already pointed out how Microsoft's abuse of its W3C membership and the W3C's structure makes the Web worse and weakens the W3C. Regardless of whether Höhrmann complained about them specifically, it's true. But that's just a response to your defense of MS after I mentioned how their membership behind the closed door signaled today's inevitable mess to us a decade ago.

MS was our tipoff. They are not unique. They are just one of the corporate paymasters creating conflicts and system games from which the W3C cannot escape with its closed-door membership. Which is the general description that Höhrmann did mention.

Re:All hail Flash.

[QuasiEvil]

Oh hell, let's just call it a day and turn the WWW into the W3D - World Wide Word Doc. That's what many corporate intranets have become anyway - talk about incompatibility and complete lack of usefulness. I've spent hours and hours trying to convince people that a Wiki is a fairly good tool for collaboratively building documentation. My own group didn't need much prodding, since we're mostly a Unix and embedded group, but everyone else has been a challenge.

The argument from others was, "Why can't I just use Word? Why can't I make this text use blue *insert stupid looking font here*?" It's nearly impossible to convey to them that when it comes to documentation, it's about organization and content, and there's nothing that beats writing and publishing in essentially plain text. It forces the author to think more about clear, logical content, and in the end, allows it to be used on any platform and to be easily searched.

Flash is much the same way in my book. Most of the websites I've seen that use it extensively have poor content or organization and are trying to make up for it with whiz bang neato bits made with Flash. Need a menu? Guess what, there are great ways to either do that with pure HTML or a combination of DHTML and Javascript. Why do people feel obcessed to implement simple things in complex and incompatible ways?

Re:All hail Flash.

[flooey]

Why do people feel obcessed to implement simple things in complex and incompatible ways?

Complex, possibly, but Flash is far from incompatible in the modern Internet. The most recent numbers from Macromedia (which may not be entirely accurate, but probably aren't all that far off) are that if you restrict yourself to Flash 6, you can reach 97% [adobe.com] of the world's end users. Assuming that's accurate, if your site works properly on both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but not on Opera or Konquerer, you would have more people for whom your site breaks than if you had put it together in Flash.

Re:best of both

[Anonymous Coward]

CSS was out before XSL and XPath, which is why CSS Selectors look nothing like XPath. It should be XSL-like with XPath matches on nodes, and declarations of style. Eg,
<tag select="h1 | h2 | table/th">
  <font-size>xx-large</font-size>
</tag>

As far as migration we could have another link rel, and scripts that would convert the XML syntax to the CSS one (perhaps using Javascript so old browsers could parse XML and build up their own CSS). The main problem I see is that XPath allows stepping all over the DOM whereas CSS Selectors can only descend.

The W3C should focus more on design

[PapayaSF]

Very good points, and it relates to my gripe about the W3C: it shortchanges design.

When the web was invented (thanks, Tim) its academic/scientific roots were plain, and unsurprisingly it seemed best suited for putting scientific papers online. Soon designers got more control over type and layout in the form of "tag soup" and tables for layout. Most page layouts involve multiple columns and headers and footers, and we could usually achieve that with nested tables. Plus, pages could be made "liquid," adjusting to the width of the browser window and expanding to fit the content: e.g., more content in the center cells would automatically push the footer down. And this worked (more or less) the same way in all browsers. Huzzah!

Then we got CSS, and many new things, especially involving type, became possible. Huzzah again! And yet in abandoning tables for layout, some things became harder: the creation of a multi-column page, with header and footer, that automatically resizes to window width and adjusts in length according to content, and works the same way in all browsers, is considered a difficult problem even by authors of CSS books! Why has this basic issue not been addressed by a standards committee? Perhaps the focus on separating content and presentation and on accessibility has resulted in shortchanging the presentation side of things?

And why can't content automatically overflow from one div/column to the next, as it can in every page layout program of the last 20+ years? And why don't we have a standard way of embedding a typeface in a web page, so that users can see actual text in the exact font the designer wants, beyond the bare handful that are common to all Windows/Mac/Linux users? I'm sure any web designer could add to this list.

Those are the sort of issues I wish the W3C were working on. Instead, they've spent a huge effort on accessibility for the disabled, and what we seem to have gotten out of it is a set of complex, unworkable guidelines [alistapart.com]. I don't want to seem heartless, but I'd like to see greater emphasis on standards for enhancing presentation for the majority of us who aren't disabled.

Re:Zeldman is Exaggerating

[I'm Schepers]

"While your analysis of the e-mail is astute..."

With all dues respect, I wasn't referring to Bjoern's email, as I explicitly stated. I was only addressing Mr. Zeldman's claims on his uncommentable blog. And I didn't miss his larger point; in fact, I contrasted it directly with my own personal experiences.

I think it's a shame that you and others have felt locked out of the input process for some specifications. I think this should be addressed. I don't know how much more clearly I can state that. That being said, the Working Groups I'm in (one of them being WebAPIs, with Bjoern and Hixie) are trying very hard to be responsive. Time is at a premium for all of us, but we do take input seriously.

As for publishing standards that other people wrote... many would argue that that is the entire point of a standards body. Some think that *no* language design should take place inside a standards body, only standardization of existing implementations and practices to ensure interoperability. That is almost the entire goal of the WHATWG specs that you cite, in fact. (Back me up here, Hixie?) I prefer a mix of standardization and innovation myself, and that's what I bring to the table.

Also, it's worth noting that the organizations you now look to for innovation and leadership take an active role in the W3C! That's how and why it works.

Re:best of both

[hixie]

I can think of very few elements that have been deprecated from HTML and have actually stopped being used. Off-hand I can think of maybe four, and even those, people still use them often enough that browsers have to implement them, and still have to fix bugs with them. Introducing an element that does the same as another element but is not supported in existing browsers would just make life for browser vendors expensive without making the Web a particularly better place.

<blockquote> is a separate element because it has to contain blocks. <blockcode> does not, <blockcode> is only allowed to contain code. Thus <blockcode> is just like a <pre> block that contains code -- <pre><code> -- whereas a <blockquote> is like a quote that contains multiple blocks -- something which you can't do with an inline element like <q>.

The HTML5 spec will (or already does, I forget) say that <pre><code> is how you do a block of code. So it will no longer be a hack, it'll be the rule.

If you have concrete examples of how HTML5 fails to fix HTML's "brokenness", I urge you to send them to the WHATWG list, where they will be taken into consideration. http://www.whatwg.org/mailing-list