Mark,
On the whole it's a good read & I agree with a lot of what you are saying bit this section:
But unfortunately an article like yours is not read by them in the spirit in which you intended, it is read as a vindication of their position. "See, Andy Budd agrees with me".
So rather than seeing something like "at times, it may be necessary to
use a non standards based approach to achieve an outcome within certain
constraints, and that is ok" they see "all those standards zealots
really don't know about the real world so everything they say can
safely be ignored."
Then Dave Shea, and Nick Bradbury and others weigh in nominally agreeing, making it all like its all so reasonable and realistic and essentially you reinforce the context of the discussion about web standards.
..kind of scared me a little.
Could what you are saying be distilled into "Don't raise controversial & complicated issues in public because they might be misinterpreted by fools and used contrary to their original meaning"? That's how I'm reading it.
There is an irony there that I am not entirely at liberty to discuss unfortunately.
Probably the most important part of my response, certainly as I see it now is
"don't buy into the bogus notion of the web standards community being beset with holier than thou attitudes, and zealotry."
One of Andy's 10 questions answers reinforced this by the use of words like "fascist" (a fascist is a pretty nasty thing BTW) to describe some people (easily misunderstood as everyone) in the web standards community who might be overly zealous about whether or not a site validates. Not that I think even these creatures abound, and are certainly not part of the hard core of the web standards community.
Andy, Dave & Nick's comments will most likely be misunderstood or misrepresented by some, but I imagine they are going to help others. Regardless of whether people agree or disagree its about getting people to think about the issue and that has to be a good thing.
The problem is that all three, along with an increasing number of people who responded and replied to and wrote about the article used terms like "reasonable" and "balanced" and "objective" about it.
But the article and its followups have rarely been any of these. It uses a lot of judgmental language (words like zealot, purist, demonize).
However even this is beside the point. Andy has expressed an opinion, anyone and everyone is more than welcome to debate the ideas he's raised (as I know you have), but I thinks its rude to criticise the fact that he expressed the opinion in the first place. Argue the points but, please don't stifle the conversation itself.
I think we all have a responsibility to consider the consequences of our actions and words. Andy has opened a can of worms with this article. Was it worth opening? The can is not so much people using or not tables, frankly that is pretty much irrelevant. Some people will, increasingly others won't. In 5 years time or less this will be as controversial as whether font tags should be deprecated. The can of worms for me is this growing meme that standards advocates and developers are zealots, purists, live in ivory towers, etc. etc. etc
I think it is unwise for people of significant standing in the web development community to fuel those kinds of sentiments, even unwittingly.
I'm not trying to pick a fight - I mean the above in the most respectful way.
Mark, I guess I come across quite strongly, I tend not to beat about the bush. I certainly wasn't looking for a fight, but at the same time I was a bit cross with the subtext of the article.
There are enough people out there waiting to beat up on standards advocates and the community. Let's not do it to ourselves.
John
John Allsopp
:: westciv :: http://www.westciv.com/ software, courses, resources for a standards based web :: style master blog :: http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/ :: webessentials Sept 30 - October 1 2004 Sydney Australia
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