W3C's Role In the Growth of a Proprietary Web 228
Paul Ellis writes "Mozilla's Asa Dotzler has said 'It's really hard for me to believe that either [Microsoft or Adobe] have the free and open Web at heart when they're actively subverting it with closed technologies like Flash and Silverlight.' But are they really subverting it? Where is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the Web? This blog post makes the case that the W3C's glacial process should share in the blame for the growth of proprietary technologies."
Please (Score:5, Insightful)
Just keep in mind, there's nothing stopping web developers from using straight HTML, CSS, JPG, PNG and GIF for basic animation. If you need media, you can embed an mpeg or a simple wav file. If you need processing, you can do it as CGI/server-side, at the same time ensuring 100% browser compatibility and avoiding the hijacking the web-client's CPU. Don't blame Adobe or MS or Sun for providing closed or deeply complicated, uncontrollable technologies; blame yourself for using them.
Flash no more "subverts" the web than Photoshop "subverts" image processing, or the GPL subverts how software is published. You want to use these things, that's your choice. There are other options available that are just as useful, and in some cases, more so.
oh please (Score:1, Insightful)
The web without all this proprietary stuff would be so boring it would be unreal.
I really don't care who owns flash. All I care about is, can I watch it online and can I make my own content with it and own it. Thats yes and yes.
Problem solved.
As for W3C? They're out of date. They mutter about major players not using their standards, but the simple fact is, their version moves too slow. If we did things their way we'd have perfectly rendering web pages all the time, but the content they hosted would be so dull most consumers wouldn't be interested.
That's evident by the fact that not one of the major websites out there that I can think of (facebook, google, microsoft, and even the bbc to name a few) are fully W3C compliant. Add to this that barely anyone who clicks in gives a damn about this, and you have your answer.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Own it..? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who really owns something that you make in Flash? Just as when you write a document in Word, when you compose in a proprietary format, you hand the keys over to the vendor. You, and anybody who wants to view or edit what you've created, have to go through the One Software Company. And that's permanent; whatever DRM or platform decisions the company makes in the future will bind you as well.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
MS do stop web developers from using straight CSS. There are so many basic layout features that are not implemented or buggy that I understand why some developers go down the propitiatory route for the sake of a consistent look. And it wasn't that long ago when IE still couldn't display a PNG with an alpha channel.
70-75% of web users can't be wrong.
WTF? ItÂs free (as in beer). (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps the fundamentalist notion that _everything_ must be free (as in speech) is just too extreme for, hmmmm, real people?
Mod parent up... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy by the worst abuser.
W3C glacial process? (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it funny that someone (especially from Mozilla) blames the W3C for glacial process, when even Firefox 3 still doesn't have something as basic as box-shadow (with the "-moz" vendor prefix of course, since the spec is still a draft).
And Opera, which used to be the "latest" in W3C support (even draft), still doesn't support border-radius nor box-shadow in their latest version.
Like it or not, Safari is pushing W3C standards faster than Opera and Firefox combined.
As for Microsoft, they're still trying to kill the web in two ways: with extremely slow/buggy compliance with W3C standards and with proprietary crap like Silverlight.
Adobe has Flash and Air, which isn't really better except for the fact that at least they're trying to push their crap on many platforms, not only Windows.
Even Flash could be replaced on websites like YouTube if the browsers finally supported HTML 5's media tags.
Erm... (Score:2, Insightful)
So if users actually _use_ it, why put the blame on Adobe?
Perhaps the fundamentalist notion that _everything_ must be free (as in speech) is just too extreme for, hmmmm, real people?
Here's an idea! Let's just assume that it'll always be zero-cost. Let's further assume that it'll always be available on any platform that anyone might like, rather than pushing people towards platforms that the vendor likes.
Now that that's out of the way, I can feel confident putting my content into this format, knowing that I, the content creator, <sarcasm>am in control</sarcasm>.
Please Yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
Just keep in mind, there's nothing stopping web developers from using straight HTML, CSS, JPG, PNG and GIF for basic animation.
And what if they want something fancier than "basic animation"?
Flash no more "subverts" the web than Photoshop "subverts" image processing,
Apples and oranges. Images created in Photoshop don't need any special software to view. Content created in Flash does.
... or the GPL subverts how software is published.
On the contrary, GPL is meant to subvert proprietary software publishing. The difference is that the subversion is deliberate, and meant to open things up, as opposed to the closing off that Flash, which shuts things off, but only as a kind of side effect.
This is rather an old story. Back in 1995, back when Netscape was the biggest operator in a competitive browser market, they took a lot of flack for introducing non-standard features into HTML. And they didn't do it to "close off the market", they did it because they wanted to create web applications that weren't supported by existing standards, and weren't going to wait for W3C to bring the standards up to date.
Then we went through the whole thing all over with Microsoft and Internet Explorer. And because MS really was trying to control the marketplace, everybody ignored the role W3C was playing. And still plays.
Subvert? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh whatever. If you want to do everything in the kludgy, poorly-crafted alphabet soup hodge-podge of W3C standards, be my guest. Silverlight is too new to say, but the success of Flash is evidence of the failure of the open standards process to meet the needs of developers (and the businesses that employ them) in a timely fashion. Frankly, I suspect it will always be this way. The normal course of events is for private parties to develop new technologies and for standards committees to enshrine them in formal standards after the fact. Take for example C and C++ (or practically every other standardized programming language), which were standardized after they were successful languages. Having standards committees drive the process is the tail wagging the dog, and it's no wonder web technology is so far behind the curve that people get excited every time some feature as trivial as AJAX is added to browsers.
The fact of the matter is that it is still much harder to build a complex client-server application in a web browser than it is to use traditional desktop GUI tools. And given the pace of prior developments, the W3C isn't likely to change that while it still matters.
Re:Please (Score:3, Insightful)
IE has actually provided several critical technologies which have expanded and improved the capabilities of the environment, including XMLHttpRequest without which interactive apps today would be rather difficult. If anything these technologies have actually helped grab back some ground from flash for the browser. Now, if w3c does not recognise these valuable and very important APIs, thats the w3c's problem! Stop blaming Microsoft for taking initiative and implementing features that are badly needed because W3C is too stupid and slow. If w3c doesnt implement these features it only has itself to blame! There is NOTHING stopping w3c from including these APIs in its standards, and they are so useful there is no reason not to. I am actually not an admirer of IE due to its closed source nature, I use firefox, but without a doubt, IE has made several improvements that have been picked up by firefox that really have expanded the versatility of the web tremendously and that without them we would not be seeing todays interactive web apps. w3c is too slow and it is too ignorant of the importance in providing highly flexible mechanism that gives as much control and capability as possible to the web developer. So limiting oneself to the w3c standards would greatly damage and limit your apps capabilities.
anyone remember vrml? (Score:5, Insightful)
virtual reality markup language. didn't think so
a standards body should be slow, not out front, writing standards for things no one knows will be successful or not
in fact, the commercial players SHOULD get proprietary, aggresive technologies out there, seeking new markets. let them play and crash and burn
then, after something proves successful, the standards body plods along and picks it up and makes it canon
the idea that the standards body should get out front, leads to standards being written for things no one uses. the idea that commercial companies won't try to capitalize on owning the technology presumes that corporations are interested in not making money. let a company write nonstandard tech. its a gamble for them, and could hurt them. let them get hurt then, and make space for things like firefox
so the whole basis for the story here is preposterous: ok, we have different browsers and competing platforms and different standards and proprietary tech. big. fucking. deal. get your head out of your anal retentive ass and deal with it
oh it takes 10 hours to program a page that should take 10 minutes to program were everyone fascistically devoted to standards? well then you wouldn't have a job genius. you wouldn't be needed. the mess you have to deal with is proof you are needed. if it weren't messy, you'd be downsized and replaced by a perl script
people who whine and bitch and moan about standards and noncompliance are motivated by the same shrill cloying need as grammar nazis. and if you understand why grammar nazis are essentially useless, annoying, and just don't get it, you understand whats up those who are so shrill about standardsthe world is a messy place. get used to it
wav is not so simple; neither is sync (Score:4, Insightful)
there's nothing stopping web developers from using straight HTML, CSS, JPG, PNG and GIF for basic animation.
What should I use for vector animation? Windows Internet Explorer still doesn't work well with SVG+JS.
If you need media, you can embed an mpeg or a simple wav file.
Like AVI, WAVE is a container that can wrap any of several audio codecs, including MP3. Which codecs more sophisticated than straight PCM are supported in most web browsers? And how can I indicate to the majority of web browsers how a particular MPEG-1 file or WAVE file should be synchronized to JavaScript-mediated animation? I don't know of any web browsers that are compatible with SMIL.
devil's advocate: IE has kept the web sane (Score:1, Insightful)
If there's one thing that's preserving the one last ounce of content on the web rather than flash-whizz-Web-2.0 useless crap, it's that it's really hard to get such a site working in IE and everything else.
Frankly, there is nothing useful in HTML that hasn't already been supported by all mainstream browsers for 8+ years. If you believe otherwise, then either:
(1) You're not interested in delivering content, just eye candy;
(2) You're not actually using HTML to markup documents, but to write "web apps". In which case, you get everything you deserve for using crayons to build an automobile.
Re:The W3C? Glacial? (Score:3, Insightful)
CSS 3 is a family of specifications [w3.org], not a single specification. Some of those too are at candidate recommendation stage, ready for implementing, just like CSS 2.1.
In any case, what's your point? I mentioned CSS 2 because it was published by the W3C a decade ago and its features are still not available to most web developers because Internet Explorer doesn't support it. How is the fact that the W3C carried on and started working on CSS 3 relevant? It still means the bottleneck is Internet Explorer, miles behind the "glacial" W3C.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash accessibility has improved significantly in the past few years. However that doesn't mean that Flash designers always avail themselves of this technology. I suspect the type of designer who would happily use Flash for navigation is the type of designer who is unaware blind people use computers at all.
Re:oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
If we did things their way we'd have perfectly rendering web pages all the time, but the content they hosted would be so dull most consumers wouldn't be interested.
That's evident by the fact that not one of the major websites out there that I can think of (facebook, google, microsoft, and even the bbc to name a few) are fully W3C compliant.
Well, there are a couple things about "compliance" to consider. First, because browsers don't always implement the standards fully or properly, you might have to use hacks to get everything to display properly in all browsers. Current web designers have to know browsers' bugs as much as the standards, so many web pages can't comply with the standards and render properly at the same time. That doesn't mean the standards are at fault. The inability to follow standards on the web is largely traceable to a single company which refuses to make a compliant browser.
But also, the real issue of standards is not to force everything into compliance at all times. It's to give a standard way of doing things so that people can expect certain things to be consistent. The point of web standards is so that I, as a developer, can write a web page in accordance with a set of rules, and then have a reasonable expectation that the page will display properly. It makes it so I shouldn't really have to worry about what browser the end-user has installed, because they should all display the page (roughly) the same way. If you wish to violate the standards for some purpose, that's fine, but then you should familiarize yourself with how that violation will effect various platforms. But, in fact, there are even standards about how formats should handle violations of the standard, and so even the violation may be... well... according to the standard.
But none of this explains to me why the standards would make the *content* of web pages "dull". If the content is interesting, the web wouldn't generally be dull. Relying on presentation to make your content exciting doesn't speak well for your content, and on the Internet, content is king.
If anything, it seems like the Internet wouldn't exist as it does today if the HTML standard hadn't been so simple and open. It allowed anyone with half a brain to make webpages and display their content. The ease with which individuals can create content is essential for the P2P "community" nature of the web. If not for that, it would be like TV-- pushed from big companies who have the resources and expertise to make it work. Even expecting someone to buy expensive software (e.g. Adobe Flash) in order to develop content would hurt the web immensely. The barrier of entry is much lower when the only necessary equipment for making content is a text editor.
Re:anyone remember vrml? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the broken window fallacy. Work for the sake of work is not an accomplishment, it's an embarrassment.
I've actually replaced somebody's weekend work with VBScript. You're forgetting that somebody needs to write that script. If you are competent, you shouldn't be scared of unnecessary, repetitive, annoying work going away, you should welcome it.
Re:oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
The web without all this proprietary stuff would be so boring it would be unreal.
Really? Why. The vast majority of what Flash can do is standardized in SVG, SMIL and many other standards that Adobe and Microsoft studiously ignore. What do you do on the Web that is so exciting that it cannot be accomplished with SVG and SMIL? Of course there are things that Flash can do but SVG cannot and vice versa. But in general, all of the major Web app categories would be served just fine with SVG et. al.
then lets put it this way (Score:3, Insightful)
new tech is an act of creation. it is try, and fail, try , and fail. corporations are motivated by profit to try, and fail. no one, NO ONE can get out in front of this messy process of new technology creation and write standards for it, because no one is omniscient about what isn't even in existence yet
the fallout of course is competing technologies as various companies get the hang of it. once upon a time, there were competing electrical grids, competing rail tie size, competing shoe sizes, etc. now, all that is standard. because it is about who wins the war of new tech creation. but during and shortly after the acts of creation, there is a mess to deal with, a babylon, and that's just part of the process. its inevitable, and its not by design or in the control of anyone to stop it
in other words, i understand your criticism of what you think my point of view is. but you aren't actually criticizing my point of view. you think it is possible to write standards for things that don't yet exist, and think i oppose it out of indolence, or something. no, i'm saying it is inevitable, this babylon, not superior
the mess is just part of what you have to deal with for being on the trailing edge of tech creation. it sorts itself out in the end. in the meantime, there is incoherence and pain. and you can't do anything about it. its inevitable
so just accept it. not because i'm messy, but because tech creation is messy. i'm not trying to convert you to my inferior point of view. i'm trying to tell you reality is inferior to your pristine standards. you're not rejecting me, you're rejecting reality. don't shoot the messenger
Re:Please (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the sound of silence. There is absolutely no reason that the web should be turned into an application deployment platform, and doing so completely undermines the purpose and nature of the web. The reason that search engines work is that websites, as created with HTML, can easily be indexed and understood by computers. Hypertext is about linking documents -- DOCUMENTS -- together. Things like forms make sense in that context: a form is a document, right? CSS makes sense too: it formats documents. Documents sometimes have images in them; PNG or SVG make sense for that.
Now, where does Flash fit into that? Flash is an application runtime environment, and is really good for multimedia programs. Why would you ever want to embed an program in a document? An program is neither a document nor a part of a document. It doesn't make sense from the hypertext perspective, and that creates glaring problems. When a website is created using Flash, or Silverlight, or Java, or any other application runtime embedded in it, it becomes impossible to index, links stop making sense, sometimes the "back" button doesn't take you to the previous view of the application, sometimes it does, etc. It would make more sense if your Flash website had a hyperlink to a Flash program, which would be opened by the runtime in a separate window -- without a back button, a forward button, or an "up" button (as some browsers have), without the confusing and paradigm breaking nature of embedding applets.
Re:Please (Score:3, Insightful)
I leave Flash uninstalled. I keep a second browser set up for multimedia, but I rarely use it.
For the most part Flash is a trojan that delivers ads and slows down the damn web.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
And there is no need for more than a few computers in the entire world, or more than 640k of RAM, etc...
Who are you to say that the web isn't the right place for complex applications or a place for application deployments? The history of the web may have been to serve up text documents and markup, but it's pretty clear we have moved way beyond that now as I sit here downloading music, streaming a movie, and writing a web application that will replace a desktop application.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
That's only true if you are talking about web site operators. If you are a user, you are forced to to use whatever the web sites you use demands, or go without. No flash? No Youtube.
The cost of a lack of standardization falls on the user. It's not the web sites that have a mish mash of proprietary technologies installed, its the user. Any stability or security costs from this situation are borne by the user.
Really,there isn't much justification for Flash any longer. Really,the biggest value it has is that it's a legal way to obtain patented video codecs.
Re:Audio compression and synchronization? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which codec did you use for the WAVE audio? And how did you synchronize it to the GIF animation?
I don't remember what codec, LAME maybe. The audio was cut down to 11k samples per second, eight bits, and only about fifteen seconds long because most people were on dialup. It wasn't synchronized at all, but oddly it seemed to be.
Not everybody can afford to test in every possible environment.
If nobody ever had, Microsoft would have been forced to use standards. But using CSS is the problem here, since that's the standard Microsoft won't adhere to. If you use CSS you need to code for both Windows and standards.
Another thing webmasters do wrong is not understanding that you can't control exectly what your site is going to look like on every monitor at every resolution. Absolute positioning is begging for too much white space on some monitors and horizontal scrolls on others. Example, rather than <width 600 px> you should use <width 80%>.
CSS's usefulness is supposed to be so if you change your site's look you only have to change the style sheet rather than all pages. However, webmasters mistakenly use it to turn a markup language into a layout language, and as I said, layout only works when you can control screen size and resolution.
A site big enough that it can slashdot other sites should definitely be testing on all platforms.
Re:anyone remember vrml? (Score:3, Insightful)
then, after something proves successful, the standards body plods along and picks it up and makes it canon
Hm, nice idea! Let's begin with issuing open standards for such successful (in terms of marketshare) technologies as SMB, BluRay, Flash, doc/xls/ppt and so on. What do you mean 'no way'? Ah, the proprietors do not want to make a de facto standard a de jure one by opening it up... I should have known.
Bells and whistles and nothing more (Score:4, Insightful)
Just imagine how much less information we would have on the web if we weren't able to make sprites and words fly around like a bad theme park movie. HTML simply is no good at sharing knowledge.
Re:Please (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you played a wav file in the background, and had a few simplistic gifs respond to cursor position, and you think this qualifies as "Web 2.0"?
And you refuse to acess the content of professional web designers, because they use a technology which allows them to do their job faster, easier and better than what you suggest?
Have you ever thought about the limitations of your approach?
Re:Please (Score:2, Insightful)
What, exactly, does XMLHTTPRequest have to do with MSIE? It's implemented entirely on the server side. Full credit to Microsoft for inventing this, but the fact that they did has exactly nothing to do with Internet Explorer.
The W3C is an industry consortium. If it doesn't move quickly enough, it's because the industry members (like Microsoft, Adobe et alia) don't want it to.
Using the W3C's inefficiencies to defend its own membership is, er, not entirely useful. What bears discussing is why the W3C hasn't been successful in getting movement on important standards. That would help us understand the dynamics of the industry - who's playing nice and who's not.
Re:Please (Score:3, Insightful)
My hopes from flash after the adobe buyout were to see a version that was simply a
I'd love to see a more open framework for richer content delivery (like I described above)... maybe specify support for javascript, svg, ogg-theora/vorbis, mp4/m4v and mp3 formats... somewhat of a balance of open, and relatively wide availability for client creation... I know not everyone likes javascript, but flash's use is similar, and it's widely known, and made for similar uses.
At least flash is getting better on Linux, and if Moonlight(Silverlight) gets off the ground both should be widely available. Flash is a nice animation tool, and silverlight supports a lot of different languages for development. It isn't *THAT* bad.
Re:that's what government is for (Score:2, Insightful)
So what you are saying is that the ideal way to handle this situation is to let all the cool kids go around wooing users with their awsum proprietary technologies, and that when they, the makers, are sufficiently entrenched in their monopolistic positions and we, the consumers and the users, are sufficiently screwed and without any real choice of products and vendors, we should rely on the ability of big supranational bodies to coerce the big boys into opening their standards?
You are saying that that is preferable over consensus and understanding, over standards composed by all the relevant actors (and some more ;)?
Nah, besides, how are we supposed to say then that Firefox has better rendering than IE, how will Safari fans slash their Opera and Firefox counterparts :)
Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, and YouTube (Score:3, Insightful)
And the reason why a website needs to have complex animations or applications is...
Perhaps a web site exists for the sole purpose of exhibiting complex animations to the public. Examples include Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, and YouTube. How would you have built these sites differently?
it's about text vs binary content (Score:3, Insightful)
Apples vs oranges comparison, or in this case, text vs binary. HTML is an open, text-based representation of document layout and text content. Flash also, as one of its many features, provides document layout and text content. The difference is that HTML is easily parsed and understood by *many* consumers; Flash has mainly one consumer at the client, and SWF content is not very easily parsed and understood outside of Adobe's plugin.
So Flash is opaque, relative to HTML. Yes, yes, there are some parsers, and Adobe has very recently committed to working with search engine companies to assist them in developing parsers. But look how long it took! The fact that Adobe has to actually assist a company the size of Google is a byproduct of the SWF format's opacity (and proprietary-ness.)
It boils down to text versus image data -- Flash deals in both. A website built around Flash is going to look more opaque to a consumer that wants to digest text, such as a crawler. Browsers entirely outsource dealing with Flash to plugins.
W3C is an organization supporting a distributed information system, the World Wide Web. In this realm, machine-readable information is king, while arbitrary binary content, such as the image, audio, video and motion data found in a SWF, is not easily understood by machines. The SWF format is primarily suited for human consumption - our computers mostly are capable of only playing them back for humans to view. That has much less value in an open information system, next to text.
That may be why the W3C is slow to pursue technologies similar to Flash. On the other hand, visual technologies like SVG and VRML are expressed with machine-readable text-based markup. More easily machine-consumed, therefore more support from W3C.