Standards - again

As if to reinforce what I was saying 4 months, the unique and unparalleled Douglas Crockford has articulated in part my own thoughts about HTML 5 in this blog post.

As I said back in November:
I want to see greater interoperability between the various browsers and as such I believe simplification would be better.

Standards?

Yesterday, I posted about some of my thoughts on web standards. It raised some questions for me. It was a post I was reluctant to make but only because I could not reasonably say in one post how I feel and what I think about the current state of affairs. I don't want this blog to descend into a series of rants about the W3C and standards etc etc.

I will attempt now to clarify my thoughts on where we should go from here.

Firstly, I think we do need to make progress. We need to move things forwards. We cannot stagnate. We must find ways to innovate. However, I don't think we have even scratched the surface of what is commercially possible and viable given today's technology. The browser has proven itself to be a remarkable platform capable of producing almost any sort of UI.

So here are some thoughts for each proposed standard:

1. HTML 5
   I am unconvinced by large parts of the spec and I think it is far too large a specification. I want to see greater interoperability between the various browsers and as such I believe simplification would be better. I also strongly believe that the next spec should enforce an XML type syntax. Its easier to maintain and easier to find errors. I would encourage the browser vendors to simplify their parsing engines, not force them into more complicated solutions.
   


2. CSS 3
   The power of CSS is in its expressive simplicity. This will not be lost within CSS 3, but do we really need much more on top of CSS 2.1? Do we need to have 4 rendering engines in wide use which are trying to implement a load of new CSS properties that will not be widely used? Are we not better off getting the current specs properly implemented with perhaps a few additions (multiple background images comes to mind) which can be progressively applied using the principles of progressive enhancement?
   


3. JavaScript 2
   I do not think JavaScript should gain classes and I do not think the language should be greatly extended. Interfaces may be a useful addition, but generally I just think a little tidying is needed. Its in the DOM that work is required. Lets get the DOM objects of the various browsers to be more closely aligned with each other.
   

What I am generally advocating is a simplification of the specs to make them manageable for browser vendors. Lets give the browser vendors an easier task to get themselves up to scratch and then lets ask them to add new features. As always these new features should be able to be applied using the principles of progressive enhancement.

The savior for us all could be JavaScript libraries. They transcend the browser differences hiding them conveniently. Of course that creates a level of ignorance about those issues amongst some, but they are undeniably popular and successful.

But the world of JavaScript libraries is amazingly similar to the early world of the browser. They all do basically the same things but in quite different ways. Some libraries do some things well, others do other things well. Funnily enough, libraries need to converge on something of a unified API. Just like the browsers.

So for the foreseeable future, the web developer will continue to bridge the gap with ingenuity, cunning, blood, sweat and tears. Its OK for me, but will it still be OK in 10 years time? Will we still be in the same situation in 10 years time? Sadly, I think yes. Does this dull my passion for my job? Absolutely not! I enjoy dealing with these vagaries and having to think on my feet every day!

Surely though, we can sort this out, one way or another...

Standard nonsense

My thoughts on web standards change on an almost weekly basis. I now consider myself a sceptical evangelist! I believe in web standards as an end but I do not agree with the means by which we seem to be getting there. I think we should be using web standards, but I live and work in the real world where web standards remain nothing more than a laudable goal and an occasional convenient excuse.

Currently, we have HTML 5 and CSS 3 and JavaScript 2 as the shining examples of where we are heading with web standards. I am aware that JavaScript 2 is no more (the end of a great folly in my opinion), however, these three serve to demonstrate my point.

The vast majority of users on the web, and surely its the users who are most important - not us developers, are using Internet Explorer as their primary web browser. IE is a fine product for browsing the web today and I suspect it fulfills the needs of those users in the vast majority of cases.

A good proportion of users are using Firefox with many using Firefox 3. This too is a fine browser. As is Safari which dominates the remaining small proportion of users.

At this point, others may launch into a diatribe about how users should switch browsers. Some may wish to analyse the statistics on a deeper level. But I wish to just re-iterate that for users, their current browser works fine! Why are we - the developers - getting so upset about users not changing their browser?

HTML 5, CSS 3 and JavaScript 2 are (or were) all meant to be innovations and additions to the interface developers toolkit, allowing us to do exciting new and innovative things. Creating new types of web pages, allowing the user to interact in new and exciting ways. Hmm. Writing that makes me think of AJAX. AJAX was meant to be an innovation and an addition to the interface developers toolkit allowing us to do exciting new and innovative things. AJAX was meant to allow us to create new types of web pages, allowing the user to interact in new and exciting ways.

Why did it work with AJAX? Its because support was already in the users browser. When AJAX started to become popular, there were some older browsers in use almost as much as Firefox 2 is in use today. Well, those older browsers disappeared as users could not access the websites that used advanced AJAX techniques. The other very helpful factor for AJAX was that computers became very cheap and very powerful and so users were upgrading more easily and more frequently. Most users only change browser when they change computer.

I believe there are the following 3 main reasons that HTML 5 and CSS 3 are not in common use today and will not be for at least 5 years from now:

1. The W3C
   A large slow moving organisation that seemingly cannot decide in which direction to lumber. There has been some progress over the last year, but they have absolutely set the pace. The gap between HTML 4 and HTML 5 being proper standards will be mirrored by the gap between users using browsers which implement those standards.
   


2. The browser vendors
   More slow moving organisations. The era of co-operation never began and never will be. There seems to be more effort being made to improve the performance of existing browser features rather than in implementing anything new. This in itself is a positive, but it does not really move the game forwards. This is the vendors playing catch-up so the websites we already build can run in a more reasonable fashion.
   
   There appears to be so little real competition in this market that vendor specific features are becoming acceptable again within the web development community. As developers we just want something shiny and new to play with!
   


3. The Users
   The only group that should really matter. Users have not been given any real incentive to change browsers or to support those vendors attempting to implement and push forwards new standards. Users will only shift their position on this in response to catastrophic security issues or a family member who knows better and has a convincing voice.
   
   Users still use older browsers such as IE 6 and Firefox 2 because there is nothing that the newer browsers offer which is compelling enough to make the change. Users are not technically savvy and nor should they have to be. Users only demand reliability, usable performance and security - even IE 6 can provide that.
   

Ultimately, there is no business case for building a website implementing new standards. Indeed, the opposite is true - it is better for businesses to ensure their websites work on the widest cross-section of browsers out there which means implementing old standards.

So is this all a cause for depression? Absolutely not. Do we need new standards? Not really! Wow, that was a controversial statement. I would like new and more appropriate standards, I would like those standards to be adhered to so I don't have to deal with cross browser issues. But, I am still doing really exciting and innovative work, I still find new bugs and issues with the browsers and I am yet to see a design or specification for a website which I could not build with today's existing technologies.

HTML 5 and Web Standards

With the recent publishing of the W3C HTML 5 Working Draft, and the debacle which is IE versioning through meta tags, I have been having some thoughts about web standards.

It so happens that I am not the only one! Molly E. Holzschlag has also been thinking. Whilst her thoughts are somewhat more drastic than mine, I felt it time to put forward my thoughts on the next generation of HTML on the web.

HTML 5 is a massive specification introducing many new tags and attributes of which without a doubt my favourite is the irrelevant attribute. I would personally be quite happy to wrap large parts of the spec in such a tag!

I believe strongly in simplification and I do not believe HTML 5 simplifies HTML. What I think we need is less not more. There is one very specific point which grates. HTML should enforce an XML syntax - tags should have to be closed and have to be well formed. HTML 5 allows unclosed tags and this to my mind is a step backwards. Indeed, I see the spec contains code a bit like this:

<dl>

<dt>Radius: <dd> <meter min=0 max=20 value=12>12cm</meter>

<dt>Height: <dd> <meter min=0 max=10 value=2>2cm</meter>

</dl>

This is some ugly stuff!

I believe HTML 5 should actually be XHTML 5 (or version 2 or whatever version you like!). It should contain a small set of semantic tags including paragraph, emphasis, lists, audio, video, anchors, images, divisions (or sections) amongst others, creating a small set of recognised tags with well defined default rendering for each. As an author, I should be allowed to create ANY OTHER TAG I LIKE as long as it is well formed XML. The default rendering for each unrecognised tag should be as an inline element and they should offer no semantic meaning.

The tags I "create" should be able to be styled through CSS and accessible as DOM nodes via JavaScript.

Its simple. Or is it too simple?