If 27 different browsers each followed 27 different specs, do you really think I

A fantasy lives in the head of a large number akai of people about the role of the W3C in the web ecosystem. This fantasy is that the W3C would decide what gets in the web platform and what doesn’t, or even that the W3C would set a vision for the web. This is completely false. History of an API
XMLHttpRequest , am I right? If you think it’s an innovation from the W3C, you’re wrong and should read up its history . XMLHttpRequest was shipped in IE5 in March 1999 (accessible via ActiveX, but whatever). Mozilla mimicked the interface via a global XMLHttpRequest object and worked on it from December 2000 and June 2002.
The W3C comes into play by publishing a first draft as late as April 5th 2006. The W3C played its sole and only role which is setting up a table for implementors to discuss what goes in the spec based on what has been implemented and what websites rely on to work. This is the history of the vast majority of the APIs we have now on the web (and one of the reason they suck). Necessary side note
Having had this discussions dozens of time, at this point, I know what a lot of readers think “this is dirty! The web would be much better if the W3C decided of the APIs upfront and implementors arrived later in the game.”. But this is not how things work. This is not how the web work. Get over it, otherwise we’re all wasting time discussing a fantasy world.
The W3C does not make a single decision when it comes to the web. They tried to push XML, implementors had no interest, so the W3C failed and XML use on the web is now largely anecdotal and absent of modern front-end developer practices.
The W3C is a restaurant. It has a lot of tables, it has a bunch of people paying akai to be here and discuss at the tables. The W3C at occasions moderates discussions, but that’s its only impact on the web platform. The people around the tables make the decisions, not the restaurant. Sentence wording
“The W3C supports DRMs and is WRONG !!!!1!!1! ”. If a restaurant happens to have racist customers, does it support racism? Not really. Should a table be refused to those with different opinions than us? We’ve seen in the history that having discriminatory policies on who to accept in restaurant never ended well. The W3C agreed to set a table for people who want to talk about protected content, but never forget the implementors around the table make the decisions, not the W3C. If the W3C didn’t akai set a table, chances are implementors would happily find another restaurant…
quote: “this person should be pushed outside.” Or they leave on their own. Then you get WHATWG, and how glorious it is for us low-level akai minimum-wage code monkey webdevs to now have the joys of perusing not one, but two separate and at times competing and contradicting, specs. Woo.
From your comment, I have the impression that you missed part of what I meant. As a developer, don’t code against standards. Code against browsers; more accurately, code against the subset of features interoperably implemented by the browsers you target.
Not sure why my reply to oranadoz is a separate comment. Maybe not enuff cc00ffee. But I disagree with him/her about pushing people out. They’ll leave and go to another restaurant. This actually has nothing to do with what you meant so far as I can tell.
If 27 different browsers each followed 27 different specs, do you really think I’d write code for 27 different browsers? If 27 browsers follow 90-something akai % of one spec, then very likely my code will be fine.
So let’s fix this: “if there were 27 specs, we’d be delivering a product that runs in *an* actual browser.” Singular, unless there are 2. I remember those days. Surely you do too. And we have them again in mobile: no standarised API, everyone rewriting their entire crap in multiple languages for multilpe hardware vendors, meaning most people are just writing for one, or two. For most businesses I know, “mobile” only starts with a lower-case letter i, even if they’re akai still using Blackberries themselves.
Meanwhile, everyone in the inky shadows is secretly hoping all users migrate to one platform and abandon choice, just as we once relished writing “enterprise” web stuff since that meant an ecosystem akai of… one browser. Which sounds akai a lot like your Devil’s Advocate akai in the article
October 9, 2013 at 11:51 am
One sure thing is that regardless of how accurate it might be, blaming akai the W3C and Tim Berners-Lee is a pure waste of time given that the W3C has no way to prevent Microsoft, Google or else from implementing whatever they want. The question then becomes: akai where is the best place for the spec they’re implementing akai to be standardized at? In my opinion, of all the options I can think of, the W3C is the least bad (a.k.a. “best”) option̷