Hi All,
Firstly thankyou for contributing in this discussion, i know most of you are probably feeling "who is this clown, attacking W3C". This is not infact the case, I am merely trying to get an overall understanding of why and where bodies like the W3C will be in the future. In doing so i have illustrated what in my mind is a flaw, in that the W3C is made up of a few selected Elite, and the little guy you, me and every other developer out their has no voice on the subject matter of whether DOM should be refined or whether some obscure CSS property is retrofitted accordingly.
A few points have been made that Democracy in this case would be a fatal blow to the overall purpose of what the W3C represents. I find that a very hard thing to stomach and believe that a few would simply say that a vote would be a long drawn out exhausting process. To me if we can elect people within our society (in some countries) to run an entire country based on information we are given? Surely its not that much of a stretch in imagination to ask that we the ACTUAL development community have a say in the way standards are put forward to the world to follow? Its not a very large request?
At some point the W3C have to cast some kind of vote to go forward on something along those lines, and thats where I would love to see us contribute. I'm not for a total abolishment of the W3C, they serve a purpose well, but I feel we should either be a virtual member (ie we the people collectively make one vote at least) or we ultimatley decide the outcome based on what they have put forward? We aren't dealing with an amount of people who cast their vote because its the most popular at the time, we are a diverse amount of individuals who come from every known social background with a huge array of beliefs and vast amounts of life experience!
It is a radical idea that I know, but for me as a developer to take the W3C seriously, i need at least some sense of ownership, otherwise its just another collection of "windbags telling me how technology should be run " the "standards" way. I put it to you, a country today were to sit back and say to the people "yeah, we have decided that in order to best run the country, we will select a few of our so called elite, they will make the choices on how we we will be governed and you go about your lives, as democracy isn't as easy as it sounds and you'll just drag us back". <insert war here>
I've been making websites since i think 1996 or was it 1995, I've seen the HTML go from a very basic format into what it is now, some may have been around longer but the point is, i've seen it at its best, and I've seen it at its worst. I've seen browsers dictate the outcomes of many a "standard" and we are paying the price for it now. In years to come, i have serious doubt the W3C will in fact be a worthwile group? bold statement I know, but I say this as technology like FLEX and Microsofts AXML are trying their hardest to push the HTML browser out the door. Reason is its just too slow and way to many flavours out there, thus the standardss are required. I wonder now what impact it would have on the future of the Internet and products like this, if the concept above were to come true and we the developers did cast our vote? how much faster would things maybe done? How fast would technologies like XUL or similiar flavour evolve if their was a large majority shaping and moulding HTML to evolve in parrell with these languages.
Microsoft are one clear major player who have seen how HTML has mutated into this thinware deployment system, where you could write applications to do day to day tasks, with minimal payload and in many cases Operating System Independent. "Joel on Software" (google it) put in perspective that in many ways the browser could end up being the "virtual operating system" where you utilise the overall browser as your base framework, that runs many operations (whether they be applications or presentations). They appear to see this is a big advantage to an existing operating system, thus Longhorn products are born, allowing developers a standard, that be microsofts, way of developing thinware applications with minimal development time. HTML has served its purpose and it feels like it was the first prototype for what may in years to come be a more advanced protocol in the way we handle computer experiences.
For now, XHTML seems to be setup and evolved soley to bring order back to chaos, but its growing slowly in many ways and it's not accepting the fact that backward compatibility is a must. We are far too deep entrenched in TAG soup country. W3C have had the luxury of saying to the world "do it this way please" but they in now way are helping to enforce the standards they make? its more of a reference point and thats it, you hope your hard work can be used in years to come in a correct way simply because you adhered to XHTML validation rules, but all things indicate that unless their is some kind of enforcement it'll be a "nice concept" pile and thats it. I personally think if more people are involved in the W3C (how is another discussion) the overall push for products like FLEX,LongHorn or BrowserXYZ to accept "standards" will be there, and in return it will create many product and corporate money making potentials, which in turn will drive/fund our focus.
Its just a "food for thought" discussion, please don't assume that i'm just fighting the cause for the sake of it, i'm just questioning the purpose of having a W3C group. It seems like they make the decisions we try and live by them, but browser technologies do what they feel like.
People must have a sense of ownership in some small way or they won't fully embrace a concept, its just our nature as human beings to do so.
RE: DHTML
I've seen mentioned that DHTML the term is being wrongly used, but for me the term DHTML means adding Scripting behaviours around CSS/HTML. Point and case, www.bindows.net its made for IE/Mozilla but the purpose of this illustration is that its not just a case of "Form Validation" its much more. In this case you will see how these guys have taken HTML another step forward and made it behave like client-side technology. Granted in doing this its jusing a combination of "core" HTML controls, CSS & JavaScript but the end result is a sub-set language that SOE can use to churn out emulated client-top technology in a thinware environment. DHTML like FLASH imho has had a bad reputation and been put into the "oh its just a nice multimedia way of delivering stuff to screen..aka Skip Intro etc". In the past 2 years its gotten more imaginative then ever.
Barry Beatie mentioned CSS Behaviours, talk about standards and backward compatability. The one most important reason for having CSS Behaviours is it allows you to have a cluster of HTML elements (eg form), attach behaviours to it VIA CSS, have a rich UI experience whilst still being allowed to re-use that cluster of HTML elsewhere, and not dragging the JavaScript with it. To me THIS is DHTML.
Its an exhausting topic, and i'm happy has hell that its triggered such a response, the debate has been thin in somoe parts by a few but strong in aother. I'm not proposing that my idea is the only and best, i'm merely asking you all a question if need be show me why if you have the time. If you don't then I apologise and I'll look elsewhere for my answers? I just assumed this would be the forum for such discussion.
Regards Scott Barnes
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