BrainStream: Microsoft: It's the Web Standards, Stupid!

[bkdelong]

<RANT>

Can I say how tired I am of public griping about the Web Standards Project (WaSP) ? It's been happening off-and-on since the group's inception - especially by Microsoft.

The latest is regarding a recent announcement by WaSP to create another test suite to, yet again, convince all browsers to fully support the defacto standards (aka Recommendations) of the W3C. I'm not talking about the new-fangled XLink and XPath, (which are both hardly new at this point), but CSS2 and HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0. For crying out loud - it's been 5 years - that's like 60 in Web years.

Disclosure: I used to be on the Steering Committee for WaSP but bowed out due to a complete lack of time to really contribute to the group. Now I am obsessed with making the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) project as standards-compliant and accessible as possible. I can only do so much with 5,900 HTML pages and a constantly-changig publication cycle.

I've already sent my comments to Robert however since Radio Userland doesn't appear to make use of anchor elements in the comments, I'll repost it here:

YAFWSCM here - (Yet Another Former WaSP Stering Committee Member). I've been out of the loop re: WaSP for a while but your post struck me as more about being snubbed than Web Standards. Did you reach out to the WaSP members? Set up meetings at SXSW to discuss thier Acid test or how you can help them liase with the IE team? Hakon, being one of the powers behind CSS, has ALWAYS been proactive when it comes to Web Standards. It just so happens that he also works at Opera. Does that mean his strong support of Web standards is diminished?

At the beginning of my time on the WaSP SC I pushed and pushed and pushed MS to fix their lack of Web standards compliance - when Chris Wilson would say, "show me an example" I would build a handful of HTML pages that tested certain functionality, show what it SHOULD look like or do, and sent it his way. Nothing.

MS has had two browser versions since that time to get it right - IE5 and IE6. Nothing. Honestly? I don't think IE will ever recover and will continue losing ground to Firefox. The benefit of such an open project allows the community-at-large to point out gaps and get them fixed much faster than a BigCo like MS that continues to be more interested in creating new features that become defacto "standards" that they control.

Stop the public griping, contact the WaSP SC with an IE Team member in tow, and finally start fixing some of this stuff. PLEASE.

But I haven't been able to respond to Dave Winer's little quip because he conveniently doesn't allow people to comment on what he writes about.

Mr. Winer says:

The WaSP guys aren't interested, because as designers, their livelihood depends on it being hard for users to create content. Kind of like a book publisher working to keep a format complicated so there will be demand for their book. Yeah, I've actually seen this happen. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.

It's ridiculous to suggest that the reason WaSPers haven't pushed for a text editor in browsers, (or making it "easier" to build Web sites), is because of job security. That's a gratuitious, provocative & unneccessary comment, though it's what I've come to expect from Dave when it comes to WaSP. WaSP's base mission is to get all browsers to support the base W3C Recommendations of CSS2 and HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0 - allowing developers to separate markup from design, truly taking advantage of XML. Browser companies are free to innovate all they want, but please support the basics for those of developers who want to use them.

I was starting to gain my respect back for Dave over the last year but his cheap shot has ruined that. I want to reiterate that I don't think Microsoft will recover what it's lost to Firefox and I believe they will continue to lose ground in the browser war. It's simply a result of failing to support base Web standards and choosing innovations that further tie the user to an MS-based oeprating system rather than make it easier for their users to browse the Web on any platform.

</RANT>

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Comments

[zsenya.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked blogs in ages... and right away, here's a post I want to spend a lot of time reading and following up on. All I have to say is...hurrah for standards! Oh, how I wish that everyone would realize that the standards are a good, and ultimately, sensible thing. And they make things easier. And everyone adopting standards will save TIME. So, so much time. So much less time can be spent opening pages in 87 different browsers to make sure that they look as good as they can in all of them. I can assure you that I am carrying on a miniature crusade to all I meet about the benefits.

And hurray for Firefox. I love it.

Hope all is well with you. :)