Discuss: Web Standards 2008: Three Circles of Hell

by Molly E. Holzschlag

61 I'm not the only one! :D

Molly :

THANK YOU. I have been waiting to read something like this for a long time. (And ALA, I encourage you to publish more along these lines, if you’ve got the authorship available.)

I learned XHTML + CSS in the early 2000s, and I remember feeling at the time was that the W3C was slow, but good.

I’ve learned a lot since then. (A bit of programming, semantics, design process, and so on.) And although I know it happened gradually, I nevertheless woke up one day and realized that the W3C have been compromised under the weight of their own bureaucratic inefficiency…and under pressure from corporate interests who, after failing to push their proprietary technology from without the W3C, decided to push it from within instead.

I’m irritated that XHTML’s failure to gain traction has resulted in HTML5. Although there are many things I like about HTML5, there are several others that seem to undo years of grueling effort to separate content from presentation. I wish I could take the good from HTML5, migrate it to XHTML, and perform some kind of Heimlich maneuver to get momentum going for XHTML again.

I feel this frustration very strongly, yet I feel like completely powerless to change the course of things. It’s as though I’m stuck on a train heading for a cliff with no way to stop it.

Three Circles of Hell, indeed.

And you know what? It would almost be Four Circles of Hell, but for your challenge to solve this problem without resorting to blame-mongering. I have shouted more than my fair share of blame at Microsoft, but I think you are right to examine pros and cons will maintaining a positive, pragmatic attitude at the same time. I found it sobering, and helpful in putting the focus back where it belongs: “what’s the nature of the problem, and what can we do about it?�?, rather than “whose fault is it?�?. Thank you for that.

All I can say is, please, please, PLEASE keep up your good work on this front! I don’t want to see a corporate war for dominance bring about a digital apocalypse that will take the Web back to the 1990s. Corporations are strong, but they are not the Web. The Web is Us!

Stay strong, Molly! You’re a good soldier! :)

posted at 06:46 am on October 17, 2008 by Anthony Rogers

62 Please ...

Mz.Biscuit seems to be unaware of the standards maverick (forgive me for that, Molly) she seems to be denouncing as unaware of our modern technologies. I don’t particularly care to engage in a slamming of you, but seriously, you obviously don’t know what Molly has helped achieve for us … take it back! Hehehehe …

posted at 06:30 pm on October 21, 2008 by greg altuna