Summary
This article was prompted by a comment in the opening new windows article, and is a request for the general feeling of web developers to how well-served they feel by the W3C.
Author: Gez Lemon
The World Wide Web Consortium (w3C) was founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web. The mission of the consortium is to ensure the web's infrastructure is scalable and robust. As a result of their work, the consortium hosts a series of technical specifications on the web's infrastructure. The goal of the consortium is to ensure universal access, taking into account technologies, cultural differences, abilities, and physical limitations; develop a semantic web to provide a better infrastructure to enable people to locate and organise documents tailored to the individual; and also takes into account the legal, commercial, and social implications of the web.
The W3C has a dedicated team of more than 60 researchers and engineers from around the world, and receives contributions from several hundred dedicated researchers and engineers working for member organisations. Membership of the consortium is available to any organisation, giving the organisation a voice in the strategic objectives of the W3C. The consortium also has a number of public email lists that act as a feeder for the many working groups.
Kev made a comment in a recent topic about opening links in a new window that he didn't believe the W3C was representative of marketing requirements, and the requirements of web designers/developers:
Here's my broader point: The sort of people who influence the decision making process at W3C are neither representative of web designers/developers at large nor the average marketing dept. That's not their fault, W3C is an opt in process and these people have elected not to opt in therefore they don't get a say. However, I do believe that W3C are not good at encouraging people to have their say and the refusal to have any sort of flexibility is bizarre to say the least.
Do you think the W3C serves the community well in terms of what developers and designers want, along with business and marketing objectives?
Category: Web Standards.
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment1]
Oh my, better get me some strong armour
What I'm saying here is that up to this point in their evolution W3C have done a pretty much bang up job- I'm sure many of us have seen an encouraging take up of the amount of designers/developers who can now see why standards are important.
That said, I think W3C is now reaching a critical time in its development. The XHTML 2 draft is, to a lot of designers who came on board the good ship Web Standards, akin to a mutiny. Its just incomprehensible why they would even propose something like this- to me, anyway.
I can, therefore only conclude that the right sort of people are failing to get invloved at the right level. Thats not to say that the curent cross-section is bad, but that there are a wealth of other areas that Web Standards touches on, even peripherally, that need representation.
I speak to people who claim to be interested in the web every day and yet they don't even know what web standards *are* sometimes, let alone why they are so important.
So who's fault is this? IMO, its a bit of both. The people who claim to be interested in the web need to research and develop an interest in *all* the important aspects of the web but equally, I think W3C needs to be a lot more proactive in reaching out and interesting people who aren't part of the traditional person they see on the site or on the lists. Marketers, MD's, Copywriters, brand development consultants, SEO specialists- not just design/development web-heads.
OK, you can all flame me now
Posted by Kev on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment2]
Whilst there are plenty of well informed, talented developers around, I think it's fair to say that at this moment in time, the web development industry is still a bit of a cottage industry. How many developers are there out there competing for business, only to find the 12 year old niece of one of the directors got the job, as she's a bit of a whiz at building web pages and would do it for pocket money? How many of you sit in the office marvelling at the fact the person next to you isn't aware of the structure of an HTML document, even though there are only a handful of elements and attributes to get your head around?
How does a company know the difference between a quality web design agency, and someone armed with a WYSIWYG editor, and not a clue about the web, or the direction it's taking? It's a general problem with the industry since it began. Hopefully, accessibility initiatives and making marketing type people aware of the benefits of web standards will bring professional ethics amongst developers and designers to the forefront.
Posted by Gez on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment3]
In case this gets long, I'll sum up first:
* The W3C has made mistakes, some of them serious. They might have been avoided if the W3C's documentation and processes had been more accessible.
* They're making Web development too complicated. This bothers me for a lot of reasons. Most importantly, I think it's moving away from the democratisation that has made the Web so vital.
* The W3C's composition and process is dominated by large organisations, mostly suppliers. There is no provision for end-user participation, comments or questions. Experience in other fields indicates that this does not generally lead to good products.
THE W3C HAS MADE MISTAKES
* One of the worst was the W3C DOM's failing to specify mouse position in event handlers precisely enough (see "Mission Impossible" at http://www.evolt.org/article/Mission_Impossible_mouse_position/17/23335/).
* Because the W3C DOM fails to provide easy access to the user agent's parser, most browser-makers have had to go along with Microsft's innerHTML. W3C should have provided a read / write "innerMarkup" feature which would at least have been language-neutral.
* CSS should have provided a choice of box models from the start, plus basic guidlines about which was better in which type of situation.
* CSS simply is not easy enough to use for large-scale layout, and some developers continue to use tables and spacers either as a protest or simply because time and budgets make it necessary.
A lot of this could have been prevented if the W3C had invited comments from experienced users (i.e. developers), who would probably have tried out the proposals against requirements and problems they'd often faced.
THE W3C IS MAKING WEB DEVELOPMENT TOO DIFFICULT
They publish drafts and standards in a format which may be OK for compiler writers but is not much good for anyone else. Even big software companies find them difficult to understand (e.g. box model, mouse position). When W3C publish on the Web they don't even provide links to glossaries and cross-references.
I don't use XHTML but I get that the feeling that moving to XHTML is like moving from Javascript to Java - too much infrastructure needs to be in place and understood before you can write "Hello, world". For example I read Gez Lemon's article "Standards-Compliant New Windows" at http://www.accessify.com/tutorials/standards-compliant-new-windows.asp and got the impression (correct me if I'm wrong, Gez!):
* Someone has to have compiled a DTD with the features you want and put it online on at least 1 server.
* The developer has to know where to look for DTDs and how to discover what features each supports.
* In the worst case the developer has to know how to write and publish a DTD.
This is going to make the adoption of standards slower than it needs to be.
More seriously, it raises the hurdle for publishing on the Web. You can write a quite adequate HTML page with only the HTML, HEAD, TITLE, BODY, P and A tags. So people who were enthusiastic about something could publish good content without needing a priesthood of developers or expensive sacramental artefacts, sorry I meant tools.
I think the increasing complexity threatens to make the Web the property of the big players - business, governments and government-funded organisations, political parties. It makes it more difficult for competitors and critics to get attention. If that happens we're on the road to monopoly / oligopoly, bureaucratic stagnation and tyranny.
THE W3C IS DOMINATED BY LARGE ORGANISATIONS
Just look at the Apply for Membership page (http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Prospectus/Joining), especially section 2. I know this is hard to avoid, because the individuals involved can't be expected to contribute their time for nothing.
But there's no counter-weight to the big organisations. Most importantly, there's no user-oriented review process. The users of the W3C's products are developers who are not members. The W3C's Process Document (http://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/) says nothing about consulting non-member users.
If a company developed products without market research and market testing, it would soon be out of business because few people would want its products.
But the W3C doesn't face competition, so that kind of reality check is not an option. Of course I don't want competing standards. But I do think the W3C needs a stiff dose of democracy.
Posted by Philip Chalmers on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment4]
In case you thought I was over-critical, check out Eric Meyer's comments.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/articles/webrev/199802c.html:
* On CSS learning curve - "... whenever somebody at one of the Big Two browser shops gets it into their heads to add a new HTML-type tag-- do BLINK or MARQUEE ring any bells?-- it doesn't take a lot of effort to figure out how to add that code."
* "Some sections are ambiguous and confusing, and even those of us who are supposed to be CSS gurus get it mixed up from time to time."
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/98/38/index1a.html: The W3C wrong-foots browser-makers and Web site developers by changing specs at the last minute.
Posted by Philip Chalmers on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment5]
I don't follow the argument that their specifications are too complicated. They're remarkably simple, and maintaining a site presented with CSS is far easier than table based pages with presentation elements. Of course, there will be people who only want to publish, and not be bothered by the technical aspects, which is a reasonable expectation. There should be more pressure on the manufacturers of WYSIWYG editors to create standards compliant tools to facilitate this.
I think the W3C have done a fantastic job, but there have definitely been instances when the industry has felt let down by them. The most notable occasion was the publication of draft of XHTML 2. Jeffrey Zeldman, Mark Pilgrim, and other high profile developers were quite vocal about it.
Posted by Trevor on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment6]
I think the W3C serves the community very well.
Gez said:
And therein lays the problem. As with any standards organisation, the W3C define standards - not provide learning materials. They have several mechanisms in place to allow everyone to have their say and are steered by the major players in the industry.
Posted by Len on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment7]
"I think the W3C serves the community very well."
and
"and are steered by the major players in the industry."
Are not compatible a large amount of the time IMO and definitley not in this instance.
Posted by Kev on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment8]
Who would you like to see steering a standards body? Hobbyists? No one?
The membership covers a wide range of industries.
Posted by Len on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment9]
"Who would you like to see steering a standards body? Hobbyists? No one?
The membership covers a wide range of industries"
I'm sure it does, that wasn't the point you made and I responded to. You said it was steered by the 'major players' in the industry, you weren't commenting on how diverse their industries were. Unfortunately, the web is not the playground of the 'major players'. Who decides who is a major player? Is it judged on number of employees, or financial clout, or a recognisable brand? All of the above? None?
W3C is, as has already been pointed out, a monopolistic body which is controlled by, in your words, the 'major players'. Does this sound like a healthy situation to you?
Posted by Kev on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment10]
In standards definition the heavy technical work has to be done by experts, as Len suggests.
But the review process needs to include as many prospective users as possible - in this case Web designers / developers. That means:
* It must be as easy as possible to understand the specs.
* Specs must be sub-settable, i.e. it must be possible to review parts of a spec. That probably means the design has to be modular.
* W3C needs a process which actively seeks external reviewers, tracks how many there are for each section of a spec, calls for more if there are too few for some modules, etc.
All of these are normal features of a customer-oriented operation.
Posted by Philip Chalmers on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment11]
No, of course not. To be honest, I don't view them as monopolistic, but see your point as they have no competition. If they did have competition, it would be a far worse scenario as there would be competing standards. You don't have to be a major player to become part of the W3C, but it's nice to see there are some there. Some of them definitely aren't major players.
It would be interesting to know how much of the opinions expressed on the public lists are actually fed back.
Posted by Len on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment12]
"You don't have to be a major player to become part of the W3C, but it's nice to see there are some there. Some of them definitely aren't major players."
Good to know, but it obviously isn't working in practice. If we have a situation whereby a lot of designers/developers who were evangelising standards to their colleagues are so appalled by a new standard that its instigation will be either ignored or cause people to revert to bad coding practices then whats the point of having it?
My point is that the message isn't getting to the right (or right amount of, or the right diversity of) people. If W3C seriously want to influence designers/developers to a point where standards are included as a matter of course then they *have* to start getting their act together and making pro-active approaches to the design/development commuity as well as marketers, copywriters, SEO specialists- anyone with any interest in the web. Its simply not good enough to only base/test standards on the few people who know about W3C or can use their archaic and user unfriendly site.
Posted by Kev on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment13]
At last someone mention what I've been furious about:
Philip Chalmers writes:
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THE W3C IS MAKING WEB DEVELOPMENT TOO DIFFICULT
They publish drafts and standards in a format which may be OK for compiler writers but is not much good for anyone else. Even big software companies find them difficult to understand (e.g. box model, mouse position). When W3C publish on the Web they don't even provide links to glossaries and cross-references.
***********************************************************************
I have wasted money on dozens of programming books and read many free tutorials websites and read the W3C HTML spec etc etc I know loads of different languages (many I didnt need to know) but I've always been enraged by the almost delibarate attempt TO STOP NEW COMERS LEARNING ABOUT COMPUTERS...
Computer books are rubbish they ALWAYS have huge errors and free tutorials websites have better information than books - so dont buy books unless its a book to get you started ie create and save yout HTML page....
Back to the main point - I too think W3C suck (Im being polite here) their language to describe specs is illogical and just wrong.
I read HTML specs etc from start to finish and they talk rubbish alot of their stuff is BAD ENGLISH - I would love to get and Professer in English to study W3C language and point out how CRAP they are...
Quick example the W3C talks about some element attributes being "required" ie you MUST put a value although the value can just be "" sometimes.......instead of speaking in normal decent Enlgish they talk about "the default value....blah blah " - if I enter a value how can it be default?? "default" means something that exists before you do anything...
eg. <form action="" > .... </form> is one
if I enter action="myURL" then I tampered with the value/attribute how can it be default.........I could give 100's of more examples.... Im not complaining about the complexity - I dont like the STUPID language style they use
In Ending - all I can think is that the W3C is doing this so that only a select bumchum group of people can learn the web development etc
Bit like a cult - but all the greedy big companies run it
If stupid W3C and the moron that ass lick it continue to exclude people from learning HTML etc then the internet will become VERY boring....
I know people agree with me - shame I dont think the W3C will change for the good
THE SAME OLD STORY - GREEDY COMPUTER INDUSTRY NOT WANTING PEOPLE TO LEARN SO THEY CAN CONTROL AND SCREW US FOR MORE BILLIONS OF POUNDS!
Posted by Qaseem on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment14]
Qaseem,
I find your message entirely offensive with no substance to back up your incoherent, and ironically, grammatically inadequate rant. Your message completely typifies the blame culture we live in; if you don't understand something, it must be everyone else's fault!
The W3C define standards; they do not provide learning material. If you've been reading the HTML specification to teach yourself markup, you've started at the wrong place. If you don't know where to start, seek advice from someone who could point you to the correct resource, whether that's a book, online tutorial, college course, or whatever.
Posted by Gez on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment15]
I could have responded and confounded certain ass lickers/morons here but I would probably have got my post removed and got killed or something...
thats what happens when you dare to speak againts God errr sorry I meant W3C or Microsoft.. democracy within limits lol
if anyone here thinks I am bad they can FUCK OFF!!
Posted by Qaseem on
[performance-approach-w3c.php#comment16]
Judging by your outbursts so far, I would be amazed if you could confound anyone. If you do have a point, get someone to help you articulate it, and I'll happily discuss it with you.
Where does Microsoft come into this? From what I can gather so far, you find all resources on computing too difficult to comprehend, and it's not your fault; it's the bad grammar of the authors. The topic here is about the performance and approach of the W3C; it's not about Microsoft.
Posted by Gez on