I kind of liked xhtml, though clearly it was not necessary for the web to be successful. I think the bigger issue is that W3C pursued this to the detriment of more important investments.
Reading over the minutes for the last W3C WG session before WHATWG was announced, the end result seems obvious. The eventual WHATWG folks were pushing for investment in web-as-an-app-platform and everyone else was focused on in retrospect very unimportant stuff.
“Hey, we need to be able to build applications.”
“Ok, but first we need compound documents.”
There was one group who thought they needed to build the web as Microsoft Word and another that wanted to create the platform on which Microsoft Word could be built.
> and another that wanted to create the platform on which Microsoft Word could be built.
Apparently they failed. The web version of Word is still far from having feature parity. Of course doc is one of those everything and the kitchen sink formats, so implementing it on top of a platform that was originally intended to share static documents is kind of a tall order.
The other key browser implementers are also part of WHATWG.
Who do you suppose should be in charge of web standards? I can’t imagine the train wreck of incompetence if standards were driven by bureaucrats instead of stakeholders.
Saying web users should define web standards is like saying laptop users should design CPUs. They lack the expertise to do this meaningfully.
Web authors? Maybe. WHATWG was created specifically because W3C wasn’t really listening to web authors though.
I don’t think there are a lot of scenarios where standards aren’t driven by implementers, though. USB, DRAM, WiFi, all this stuff is defined by implementers.
> WHATWG was created specifically because W3C wasn’t really listening to web authors though.
Rather: WHATWG was founded because the companies developing browsers (in particular Google) believed that what the W3C was working on for XHTML 2.0 was too academic, and went into a different direction than their (i.e. in particular Google's) vision for the web.
They only paid the salary of its chief editor (Ian Hickson) for a significant amount of time...
But that's not very relevant actually. The WHATWG is more like a private arbitrator, not like a court or parliament.
Their mission is to document browser features and coordinate them in such a way that implementation between browsers doesn't diverge too much. It's NOT their mission to decide which features will or will not be implemented or even to design new features. That's left to the browser vendors.
This is such a bizarre response to me saying Google was not part of the founding WHATWG group. It’s like you want to have an argument but don’t have anything to argue about.
“Oh, yeah? Well they paid Hickson’s salary. And the WHATWG doesn’t matter anyway. And also Google is really powerful.”
Um, ok.
WHATWG was founded in 2004 by Mozilla, Opera, and Apple. Google had no browser at that point and didn’t hire Ian Hickson until 2005.
Google is currently a WHATWG member and clearly wields a great deal of influence there. And yeah, the 4 trillion dollar internet giant is powerful. No argument there.
> Rather: WHATWG was founded because the companies developing browsers (in particular Google) believed that what the W3C was working on for XHTML 2.0 was too academic, and went into a different direction than their (i.e. in particular Google's) vision for the web.
Mozilla, Opera and Apple. Google didn't have a browser then, hadn't even made the main hires who would start developing Chrome yet and hixie was still at Opera.
Ask users what they want and they say "faster horses," not cars.
Users are a key information source but they don't know how to build a web engine, they don't know networks, and they don't know security; and therefore can't dictate the feature set.
And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Honestly, what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform. I really think anyone who has any sort of confusion about what I commented here to take a long, hard look at their worldview.
> And those implementers should make decisions, Google should be bound by the FTC to supporting their recommendations.
Is your proposal essentially that Mozilla defines web standards Google is legally bound to implement them?
> what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion
Not horrified, but asking what the alternative is. I don’t think you’ve actually got a sensible proposal.
Cooperation in the WHATWG is voluntary. Even if there were some workable proposal for how to drive web standards without Google having any decision making power, they could (and presumably would) decline to participate in any structure that mandated what they have to build in Chrome. Absent legal force, no one can make Google cede their investment in web standards.
We have the legal force to do this. Google has already been determined to be abusing their illegal monopoly they have with Chrome. The penalty phase is ongoing, but consider that even forcing Google to sell Chrome was originally considered as a possible penalty.
Requiring Google implement the standards as agreed by Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft is not remotely outside the realm of the legal force that could be applied.
There’s something not quite right about saying one member of an oligopoly should be forced to follow the dictates of the other members of an oligopoly. I don’t feel like this actually solves anything.
I feel like Mozilla would end up being a Google proxy in this case as they fear losing their funding and Apple and Microsoft would be incentivized to abuse their position to force Google not to do the best thing for the public but the best thing for Apple and Microsoft.
Yeah, that feels like State-sponsored formalizing of oligopolies into a cartels. We'd like it if they went in the complete opposite direction of less power, not more.
I agree there's already a significant proxy risk with Mozilla (though Mozilla does consider many Google web proposals harmful today), but that is also no less true today, and in fact, today that means Google holds two votes not one.
I would again agree Microsoft and Apple will heavily endorse their own interests, Microsoft much more so in terms of enterprise requirements and Apple much more so in terms of privacy-concerned consumers. The advertising firm influence will be significantly dimished and that is a darn shame.
>what's really funny here is how absolutely horrified people are by the suggestion a single company which has a monopoly shouldn't also define the web platform
They don't. In general browser specs are defined via various standards groups like WHATWG. As far as I know there is no standard for what image formats must be supported on a web browser,[0] which is why in this one case any browser can decide to support an image format or not.
