Comments (90)

1. 

   thacker says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 07:46

   I am not so sure that Molly in fact means to stop innovation in so much as she means that a little breathing space is needed for things to catch up a little. The entire industry may be suffering a little bit of the Alvin Toffler “Future Shock”. Shelly Powers, as listed by Molly, has presented some compelling logic in her blog.
2. 

   Jorge Laranjo says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 07:55

   Molly, we aren’t elite. We are the standard. The rest is lazy and don’t bother with accessibility nor usability. Standards are, for that kind of people, something from the “hippies”.

   Here in Portugal the use of standards is a long way from being a “standard” itself.
3. 

   Gurukarm says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 09:39

   Molly, thank you for this sentence in particular: “We haven’t done a good job so far to create learning tools and truly assist the working web designer and developer become informed and better at what he or she can do.”

   I have looked and looked for classes (college-type, semester-long) in CSS and standards-based in my area (eastern MA, US), or even on the web, fruitlessly. I have been told by several colleagues than none such exist.

   For me, learning in that type of setting works best. I don’t find trying to learn through reading books or websites on CSS sufficient; I need someone to help me figure out why something doesn’t work when I find that it doesn’t, even if I followed the book’s instructions to the letter (or think I did!), or how to set an IE hack for some behavior I haven’t seen before, etc etc.

   Over the years I’ve cobbled together a lot of learning, and still don’t know nearly enough. So when those tools you mention are created, please let me know! 🙂 A mentor program, perhaps, would be a nice start…
4. 

   Molly says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 09:44

   The word elite seems to have caused a great deal of consternation. Please don’t misread me! I am not saying anyone is a better /person/ than anyone else because of a given skill. And anyone who has ever met me has to know that’s simply the truth.

   Let me clarify a little more, but this is the last I’m going to post on this thread for now.

   The problem is worldwide and my “stats” aren’t stats merely the experience I’m having at a variety of events across the globe where my focus is on standards. When I say under-represented countries, what I mean is those countries that have far less easy access to major conferences, well translated and localized books and resources, and so on. Most standards blogs are in English. Does that mean we all have to speak English to live in the world?

   Also, the word elite apparently has really negative connotations at this point. Elite means the best at something – doing it to the superior practice if you will. In that case, this is an elite versus non-elite issue. There are real problems of access to information in this world, and it is, in my opinion and experience, very cruel and unfair to just wave anyone off the playing field if they had the encouragement.

   What I meant was to say that the fact we can even have this sort of conversation makes us very privileged and in a vast minority. Vast.

   That is not an insult toward anyone. It’s a very real, very valid concern about the gap between education and practice, how those play into the creation and evolution of a solid foundation, and how moving forward too quickly has repeatedly shown throughout history to be problematic. Lots of innovative things break, you know.

   So I hope you will understand my use of the term and what I really meant, which was elite in the most literal sense.

   Bottom line, standards are simply not the way the majority of people work the web, and with all the advancements in RIA, I fear we’re building a platform with a very poor foundation.
5. 

   Kenny M. says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 10:43

   Tino said about HTML 5: “I do believe however that whatever outcome will be far better than what we need to work with today.”

   Why, because the same people who made a mess of the Web (the browser vendors) are writing the HTML 5 spec?

   Given who is writing the HTML 5 spec and the illogical decisions made to date (like only letting WYSIWYG editor create the FONT tag), I think things will only get worse.
6. 

   thacker says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 11:55

   Molly–

   Maybe the foundation is there? Maybe the Web is not broken? Maybe the Web is, instead, fragmented by two basic segments, standards and non-standards, each with its own individual segments. Each serves a purpose and each has its own entry costs, both hard costs and educational costs. The RIA platforms are dependent upon the standards segment and have their own entry costs. Accessibility falls into the same category.

   Maybe the Web or its foundation doesn’t need to be homogeneous to move forward? Maybe the beauty [at times, the horror, too] of the Internet is that it reflects life.
7. 

   Tino Zijdel says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 15:29

   Kenny M.: “Why, because the same people who made a mess of the Web (the browser vendors) are writing the HTML 5 spec? […]”

   That is simply not true; the current W3C HTML WG has almost 400 participants of which the vast majority is not affiliated to any browser vendor. Also browser vendors have a standing agreement to let only 1 representative have a vote on formal questionnaires.

   The WHATWG HTML5 draft has been chosen (by vote) to be a starting point for the new specification, but everything in that document is up for review and discussion. On the other side you do need input from the very people that have experience with implementing specifications; a specification that cannot or will not be implemented is practically worthless. Most browservendors also have a very good understanding of the actual problems and needs of every day users and developpers. Their vision is mostly practical, but that is exactly what we need right now: practical solutions to practical problems. Re-shaping the web into something else is something that is just not feasible right now.
8. 

   Kenny M. says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 16:03

   Tino Zijdel said “Re-shaping the web into something else is something that is just not feasible right now.”

   Why? If not now, when?
9. 

   Tino Zijdel says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 16:36

   Kenny M.: “Why? If not now, when?”

   I don’t know, maybe you have some ideas?

   Some facts:
   – when a new technology doesn’t offer any immediate advantages compared to the current situation it doesn’t stand a change
   – people won’t install software that is incapable of rendering content marked up in some older version of HTML (so backwards compatibility is and will always be a significant factor)
   – new technology requires changes throughout the complete chain: author education, tools and software, useragents, search-engines, everything. Not something that can be accomplished within short terms. When anything is lacking in that chain people will just stick to the old situation.

   I don’t believe that f.i. XML is the killer-app; I think it is very feasible to mix HTML-applications with XML-applications. I also think that for a mark-up language strict error-handling is not appropriate nor necessary.
10. 

    Kenny M. says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 17:48

    Tino Zijdel said “I don’t know, maybe you have some ideas?”

    Since we are answering a question with a question, let me ask you this. What kind of Web do you want to have 15 years from now? How will you want to search the Web? What kind of applications will you want to build?

    HTML 5 will take 15 years to fully implement. And HTML 5 is pretty much HTML 4 with a few extra tags. Will you be happy if 15 years from now all you can do on the Web is what HTML 4 (plus a few extra tags) offers?
11. 

    Lee Carré says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 18:03

    In stort my own personal view is that it all has to start at the most basic level, in the education institutions.
    Tutors recognising interest from or talent in a student, and offering to guide them along the path of doing things the “Right Way”.

    Start by getting schools, colleges, and universities up to speed, then educated developers should follow nicely, leaving just the existing ones who need to be re-educated about best-pracices.
    Constantly trying to “fix” the masses of people flooding out of institutions who don’t even know about CSS without actually fixing the cause of this first won’t enable the cause to progress very far.

    And that’s all I have to say about that. 🙂
12. 

    Sean McCarty says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 18:25

    This has been an interesting discussion, and I feel inclined to add my own two cents. Of course, I can only speak from my own experience as a Software Engineer, but I don’t think my experience has been all that different than any other developer. My career has been built on my ability to adapt to emerging technologies and standards. None of the technologies I am now, or have recently been, working with are more than a few years old. Honestly, they have hardly had a chance to mature until now. Unfortunately, hind-site being what it is, there were many things implemented early on in all these technologies that were either insufficient, inappropriate, or inflexible. But with each new version, changes were made that improved their usefulness and weeded out the initial weaknesses. In short, the creators, builders, and architects of all technologies (apps, languages, and tools included) use deprecation to manage and remove undesirable elements. In my mind, the question that needs answered is how to enforce deprecation accross the entire Web.

    The reason we have standards bodies is so someone could actually take ownership of such issues as “forward-thinking” development of new tech and deprecation of older tech. Perhaps we’ve been focusing too much on whether or not to continue to push the technologies in question forward. To me that’s a given. We MUST! But I’ve not seen very much in the way of proposing ways to manage the change.

    The other issue to be dealt with is Time. Tools and education are great, but insufficient if those in the field will not take the time to learn them. It’s not that learning anything about CSS, XHTML, or any other web-based technology is all that difficult. I think it has more to do with how long people perceive it would take to learn and adapt. In the past year I’ve had to learn two different scripting languages, two frameworks, XHTML, AND CSS! Prior to that I only had a cursory knowledge of both XHTML and CSS, because the positions I had did not warrant spending the time to learn, let alone implement them, even though I was generally enthusiastic about standards. The last organization I worked for changed all that for me, however, because we made a conscious decision to be a standards compliant development organization. Until other people make that choice progress will probably be slow.

    So, if we could find a way to effectively enforce deprecation accross the web, and give the industry more reason to adapt, then I think we might see some real change. Until then, I’m afraid we’ll only see more of the same old thing.

    BTW, has anyone else had any difficulty finding good web content using their cell phone? I wonder how many sites actually lose traffic because Internet-enabled cell phone users can’t view or navigate their content. Hmmmm.
13. 

    karl dubost, W3C says Wednesday 20 June 2007 at 18:38

    Hmmm lots of interesting comments in this thread.

    There are facts that we need to take into account, I think I’m better to write yet another weblog post about it 🙂 because it will be too long here.

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15. 

    Melianor says Thursday 21 June 2007 at 02:32

    The personal experience you share in terms of percentages is shaking. But i would like to say, that i have the feeling that this is at least changing, as platforms like WASP are starting to emerge and be more active than they have been before.

    If this has to take off, than we need more people like you Molly to go out and talk. This will not be accomplished by coding like it should be. This has to spread. The Developer community should stage more events, not only in the US, but also in Europe, like the webinale or similiar.
16. 

    Christoph says Thursday 21 June 2007 at 12:53

    I wonder about the numbers you present for the event in Switzerland – I think nobody has been there. There are quite a lot of standardistas in the web worker scene here – but probably few of them have realized that MS is holding a web standards event (at least I didn’t).
17. 

    Tino Zijdel says Thursday 21 June 2007 at 15:26

    Kenny: “Since we are answering a question with a question, let me ask you this. What kind of Web do you want to have 15 years from now? How will you want to search the Web? What kind of applications will you want to build?”

    15 years is an eternity when it comes to the internet, that’s a timespan almost as long as it’s very existance. Basically when you look at what we have accomplished the past 15 years I’d say the sky is the limit. I am no visionair so 15 years is a little bit too much for me to grab 😉

    “HTML 5 will take 15 years to fully implement. And HTML 5 is pretty much HTML 4 with a few extra tags. Will you be happy if 15 years from now all you can do on the Web is what HTML 4 (plus a few extra tags) offers?”

    HTML5 won’t take 15 years to implement – at least not for most browservendors; it should be feasible to have full conforming implementations in say 3 years and partial implementations even before that (some features are already supported in some browsers today, eg CANVAS and Web Forms 2.0). HTML5 isn’t HTML4 + some extra elements; it aims to redefine the language itself (making it no longer an SGML application) in order to provide a solid basis upon which we can built and extend other technologies for say the next 15 years (Web Forms is a good example).
18. 

    Andrew Sidwell says Thursday 21 June 2007 at 18:47

    Kenny: “And HTML 5 is pretty much HTML 4 with a few extra tags.”

    I’d like to add on that. HTML 5 specifies a parsing algorithm which deterministically handles virtually all existing web content in a reasonable fashion. This means that unlike preeviously, where one has to reverse-engineer a browser to parse real web content, anyone can construct a DOM with relative ease and consistency.

    If you say it doesn’t matter because people should be writing valid markup, then you’ve lost touch with reality. First, people make mistakes. Second, I would hate it if I looked at a badly-spelt and badly-written piece of prose and instead got a “Badly written!” error where the paper should be. I want to be able to read things even when someone screwed up along the line; don’t you?
19. 

    Helen says Friday 22 June 2007 at 05:52

    Truly speaking, I’m neither shocked, nor perplexed with the stats provided. I view the reason for that in incredible speed the Web is developing with – something new is launched every day. You mentioned that we lack tools to help designers in their work – I say we have way too many, and it is hard to keep catching up. That’s one we only have a couple of hundreds world-wide famous designers.

    On the other hand I agree with Melionor that the situations is changing due to the fact that more and more designers go out and speak, organize conferences, etc. 5 years ago a designer would be the one sitting at the computer and investing his ideas in his client’s project. Now, designers tend to write then down and share, as now more and more of them work in networks than individually.
20. 

    Prof_Bab says Saturday 23 June 2007 at 01:54

    I’m sorry that I never took the time to read all of the comments.
    I am very enthusiastic about HTML 5.
    We have a chance of participating in the “fixing” of the specs. If something is terribly wrong, then someone will surely stop and rethink the process.
    As for now, fixing is a very important concept.
    I belive that these things should be considered (besides broken browsers and the more technical stuff):

    – specification limitations
    Ex:
    How do you convince someone to stop using tables for layout if the whole thing of vertically aligning something takes loads of work on css?
    Admit it. Creating a layout with tables is far easier. I’m not saying that I use tables for layout. I’m just saying that I’ve never convinced someone to “migrate” to css for that.

    – less tools, more code
    Some designers don’t know anything about html, css, javascript etc. Nothing, not even a bit. Still, they are creating and publishing documents very often using tools. I’m not saying that tools are EVIL 🙂 and they should all die in flames, but how do I convince my mom for example to stop using MS Word to create a simple HTML file? It’s really disturbing to know there are people that don’t even know html code even exists :).
    Ok I think I went too far with non-coders using html, but I think that people should know that HTML is there to help, not to create ambiguity.
    So far, people just don’t care what code they should write, how many broken browsers exist out there, or how much code they should write if their tools just do the job. From some of the folks’ point of view, HTML 5 is just a new concern, not a feature. It’s something that they “should take care of” before they write their documents. That is disturbing. So this is why anyone uses tools.
    I am a code junkie and so I’ve never used tools besides notepad 🙂 or similar text editors.
    The main idea is that HTML shoud try to at least convince folks to take a peek from time to time at the specs.

    – doing stuff in n ways
    Ok, so another thing is the concept of doing stuff in many ways. That’s not even close to nice.
    Ex:
    The -tag-may-be-missing idea is beyond weak… it’s horrible.
    I think that we need a very very very very strict way of doing things, because for now, you can write various versions of the same-rendered document and that’s not very nice.
    On the other hand, while strictness is very good, high tollerance for errors is also very good.
    On this matter I cannot agree most with Andrew Sidwell.
    Think at this for a moment:
    Your mom is creating her own first webpage because she is very enthusiastic about the technology. Of course, she is making errors while learning but, heck, she just wants the page done for now. Learning takes time, and she doesn’t want to use a tool anymore because she feels limited. It would be bothering to actually see errors visually showing up in the page saying “the author doesn’t know how to code html”. That is also weak.
    So, I belive error tollerance is a must. And, an error console should be included in the browsers for this matter. Or, if someone was interested in writing *good* code, they would shurely use a validator (or similar mean of checking errors).

    So the main idea is that
    HTML shouldn’t be made for pro coders only
    HTML should have a strict specification (so people should learn one and the same thing) (but don’t forget about error tollerance – people make errors even if something is strict)
    the new HTML spec should resolve old and stupid layout issues and should have a “Implementers, please read this spec thoroughly before… implementing so width means the same thing on your browsers” section 🙂 just to remind people that create our browsers that specifications aren’t basic guidelines for element behaviour. 🙂
21. 

    Jermayn Parker says Sunday 24 June 2007 at 23:41

    Wow I did not realise just how ‘advanced’ we in Australia, UK, USA etc are…

    Is it really like this everywhere else?
22. 

    David says Monday 25 June 2007 at 12:04

    I wouldn’t describe the web as being divided into two types: standardistas and non-standardistas. In my experience, I would describe it as: ‘those who hand code’ and ‘those who use helper design software(eg. Dreamweaver)’. Those who hand code are always looking to develop best practice websites.

    To me there are basically two arguments that count when moving over to standad based design.

    1. In the next few years the IT industry is going to be flooded with out-sourced web design labour from developing markets such as China and India. Not keeping up with best practice will put your career in jeopardy. Why? Because the small client design market will not hold up against this competition. While, large firms, who are becoming more aware of the legal and market implications of operating inaccessable websites, will not commission work from firms that do not use current industry practices. This later point is becoming a reality here in Australia after the Sydney Olympic ticketing website debacle.

    2. Creating well-formed, standards based markup fundamentally improves site architecture. My new web application framework demands strict xhtml or xml compliance which, allows me to construct a site in a fraction of the time it takes using any other method I have come across. My core engine is fully scalable, extremely flexible and very secure. Best yet, the code base(php) is about one tenth the size of the smallest web application engine I have been involved in developing or designing on.

    The second reason alone is the only argument I ever have to use when an ignorant tablista tells me that his job is easy if he just used a table instead. These people do not GET IT. We don’t DESIGN WEBSITES now, we DEVELOP WEB APPLICATIONS. Standards are not for the clients, they are for US to enhance our own productivity and create higher quality, lower maintainance web applications.

    Let me repeat this one point. Web standards are created by us, for us, so that we can build the web bigger, faster and better than what we did in the past.

    If you make the argument that tables are a more productive way to design a website, you are wrong. And, you should do two things. 1. Learn more about server-side scripting and the impact that current design approaches have on a web application’s code base. 2. Learn how to use CSS properly before your job gets out-sourced to a team of Indians who can use Dreamweaver.
23. 

    Bloggeries says Tuesday 26 June 2007 at 11:32

    I agree that people are too limited by the boundaries of browers in 1999. Albeit the majority of people creating websites and blogs today are not aware of new techniques let alone the concept of validating. If 95% of sites aren’t validating perhaps SE’s could give higher relevance to properly built sites. This is just a thought of course; I can’t believe I only found this blog today. Definately bookmarked and if you wish to add to my directory Molly please do. Just don’t paying and I”ll approve.

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25. 

    Joao Pereira says Friday 29 June 2007 at 07:34

    Well I gess this mean that there is too many people doing web project that absolutly do not know what is web. Fix teh people than their will be no more need to fix the web.

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28. 

    Reda says Thursday 5 July 2007 at 21:20

    1 – HTML at its beginning was not made to handle what we’re using it for today. When it started it was about Pages with text and Hyperlinks and images. Almost raw. Now its about applications serving information, where presentation is important.
    Then came CSS. No need to argue, CSS is a savior (enabling us to work in a clean manner, though we know the overhead it’s gonna add when testing in different browsers). But sometimes i think of it (CSS)only as patch to html.
    Sometimes it seems to me that HTML is just a subset of what it should be. Or in other word it’s like building websites with docBook. I hope it explains what i mean.

    in one sentence : The use of the web has changed and the core of the standard is still the same.
    So what…well all of the ideas and suggestions in the above comments are really interesting.
    I’m no savvy but here’s my 2cents :
    Everybody is talking about web2.0 (though a lot can’t really define it clearly) Why not BUILD the web2.0 and make a rupture with the old web :
    1 – Start with a new rock solid foundation, a standard thats not an evolution but a revolution to HTML where the core would be Semantic (which implicitly would enable accesibility).
    2 – Build a browser that emplements it and doesn’t care about HTML x.x or XHTML x.x thus givin up the whole web 1.0 (some kind of Mozaic for web2.0 )
    Well, how do you want it to live and be adopted ? when the web started, its users were only a tiny community but it rapidly got adopted by the public because it showed – as a technology – a real value. Real value that’s the point.
    If we could come up with a new standard, conceived independently of any backward compatibility, focusing solely on what the new web needs and engineered in an future proof fashion. It’s evident that it would have – as a standard – a Real Value.
    It sure would be a horrible/terrible/historical/radical rupture and shift. But poor little me thinks it’s worth it.

    Some commented things like “moms and grandmas making pages in word”
    In the old web amateurs used to publish pages
    In the new web they publish an article a recipe a blog post a datasheet.
    In the old web amateurs used frontpage and thelike to create pages
    In the new web they use blog systems and the like to create content.
    In the old web offline tools were used by amateurs
    In the new web online tools are used by amateurs
    In the old web people created web pages for web pages
    In the new web people set up there web sites to express themselves
    In the old web people thought the web was that blue e on their MS Windows desktop
    In the new web people start to see that they have the choice. For now most of them choose other browsers just for choosing, being different, later they’ll start looking for the value before choosing.
    In the old web professionals were abusing poor html, forcing it to do what it wasn’t supposed to do.
    In the hypothetical new web iml (the new std 🙂 ) answers the needs of the proffesionals.
    In the old web google has had to do a lot of magic to make search result efficient.
    In the new web social bookmarking came to the rescue.
    In the hypothetical newer that new web semantic is king and google and other deliver the right search result.
    In the hypothetical web, organisations like Dublin core play a major role.

    Ok maybe i should stop my crap and get some sleep why? because i don’t even have a single web page online, and i keep talking about the web. :s
29. 

    Prof_Bab says Thursday 12 July 2007 at 09:34

    🙂 I kind of agree with you
    But… You can’t just say – throw away your ALL of your html documents. The revolution is coming 🙂 New standards are meant to replace your old stuff.
    Why? Because there are billions of html files out there that use the non-perfect standards. As far as I’m concerned, an amateur can currently do the things you mentioned (at least part of them) (generating content I mean).
    I think a non-backward-compatible solution is out of the question. It’s kind of selfish 🙂
    I would prefer new and improved backward-compatible tech. I belive that browser rendering diffrences should be treated first. Not to mention the very diffrent host environments. I belive this is the big problem
    I personally am very frustrated when I talk about browser diffrences.

    Cheers.
30. 

    Antony says Wednesday 17 October 2007 at 14:08

    I agree. Just to go back to the purpose of the internet – to share information. All improvements should bare in mind this aim, and thus take in to account whether or not an “improvement” causes any reduction in what information may become less accessable as a whole – if millions of html pages are no longer viewable then this obviously is in conflict with this “purpose”.
31. 

    Blu-ray says Tuesday 20 November 2007 at 16:22

    Nice article. Thx!
32. 

    elişi,dantel,örgü modelleri says Monday 17 March 2008 at 10:10

    thnaks
33. 

    Tussi says Saturday 26 April 2008 at 04:20

    This Topic is a little old, but I want to say something about it, because we need more and more an answer about your question.

    The technologie-standard in schools in germany is very low. the government haven´t been made IT-investments for years. Also the teachers are very inefficient because their HTML skills are not very good. Therefore the kids are not teached in a way it should be done to protect a good know-how of how the web works. so a lot of them try to create a web-page in very simple way. so they try WYSIWYGs to get a homapage assembled. they don´t know that a byte consists of 8 bits.
    All I want to say is that, the government an the industry must protect a good school-system to “Fix the web really”!

    Best regards
34. 

    unix.gen.tr says Wednesday 28 May 2008 at 11:35

    good article
35. 

    物理治療 says Friday 10 October 2008 at 21:43

    that there’s no consistant web standard; That sucks!
36. 

    tv izle says Friday 24 October 2008 at 11:49

    thanksss
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38. 

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    thanks good hediye
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40. 

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