A Proprietary Web? Blame the W3C
A recent post of mine about Firefox and my general view of corporations and organizations caused a bit of a stir. It even caught the attention of Asa Dotzler, a prominent Mozilla employee. In Mr. Dotzler’s rebuff of my post he said something that has really bothered me. He 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 exactly is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the web?
Standards behind the “free and open Web”
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this statement, but using a term like “free and open” is such utopian propaganda. After all how could you be against “free and open” right? A brief look at the web standards groups might illustrate the real root of the problem though.
The W3C (World-Wide-Web Consortium) is the main standards body for the web. To say that they have a reputation for being slow is an understatement; their last XHTML/HTML recommendation (XHTML 1.1) was in 2001. That was seven years ago, or almost eternity in Internet or dog years.
Eventually it got so bad that some people from Apple, Mozilla, and Opera forked off into their own group called WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) in 2004. They started, and are still working on, the draft of HTML 5 which has finally been adopted as the starting point for the W3C’s new HTML working group. Unfortunately, according to the WHATWG editor for HTML it doesn’t look like HTML 5 will be done until 2012; eight years after the WHATWG was formed, and eleven years after XHTML 1.1. That sounds like a rapid pace of innovation to me.
The real culprit
This may seem like a forgone conclusion to many of you after seeing the W3C’s development timetables, but the real reason Flash and Silverlight exist is because the “open web” people dropped the ball. HTML simply can handle what Flash and Silverlight can do. It has become increasingly stale for modern web development needs.
Here is some perspective, HTML5 has finally added a tag for handling video. Flash 6 came out with video support in 2002! Where is the HTML version of Line Rider? It is in Flash and Silverlight now. If you want to see something really interesting check out Hard Rock Cafe’s memorabilia page (Silverlight 2 required) and tell me if you’ve ever seen something like that with HTML. (Here are some other interesting examples)
I actually hate Flash, but I’m not going to blame Adobe for the fact that so many people and companies have decided to use it. It isn’t like Adobe is paying people on MySpace or bloggers to use Flash widgets. Youtube could have really only happened using Flash too.
AJAX to the rescue?
What about AJAX and all of those Web 2.0 sites though? They seem pretty sophisticated right? In short AJAX is a kludge of various technologies that were never intended to work together in this manner. It can work, but AJAX development is a pain. It gets even more complicated when you start to mix in other aspects of the “free and open” Web like SVG or CSS. It is anything but a cohesive set of technologies.
The real weak spot is in the development tools for “free and open” technologies. There are no AJAX development environments that can compare to the tools available for Flash and Silverlight, and the latter has only been out for one year. It is so bad that people made a big deal over a framework to make AJAX development a little easier.
Honey and Vinegar
I’m not against the idea of a “free and open” web, but obviously there is an increasing demand for a richer experience than that offered by the W3C’s dated technologies. After all there isn’t just one, but two major competitors to them.
If the web is going to steer clear of these proprietary environments the proponents of the standards will need to create the technologies that enable innovative new online experiences instead of just copying implementing features that have already been done before elsewhere. Complaining about the proprietary web won’t do anything, after all you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Comments
94 Responses to “A Proprietary Web? Blame the W3C”
Leave a Reply
-
Top Tech News Mashup- Eco shocker: Turbine Light concept uses wind to light highways
- Sony Ericsson answers your nagging X10 questions, 'newer version' of Android will come
- How would you change HTC's HD2?
- Sony Ericsson Aspen caught on video, loving life with WinMo 6.5.3
- Inhabitat's Week in Green: photovoltaics, footballs, and Greener Gadgets
Top Amazon Price Drops
-
Was: $399.95
Now: $249.88
-37.52%: Klipsch Synergy Quintet III Home Theater Speaker...
-
Was: $57.94
Now: $47.99-17.17%: SanDisk SDSDRX3-8192-A21 8GB Extreme III SDHC...
-
Was: $29.55
Now: $25.00-15.4%: D-Link DUB-H7 High Speed USB 2.0 7-Port Hub
-
Was: $104.99
Now: $91.99-12.38%: Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
-
Was: $75.58
Now: $66.38-12.17%: NC110T Pcie Gigabit Server Adapter
-
Was: $99.95
Now: $88.12-11.84%: Sennheiser PXC 250 Active Noise Canceling Headphones
- More Price Drops... (what's this?)
-
Please upgrade your browser
Footloose and fancy free eh? What ever would Richard S say?!?
;-)
The biggest problem that I see with the current state of Web standards is that JavaScript, which now powers much of the Web, has not been updated in any significant way in the past 10 years. It became an orphan. The problem with JavaScript is the lack of a proper run-time library. To write any significant AJAX application requires one to first build a bunch of run-time functions which should just be part of JavaScript.
Flash and recently Silverlight have now stepped in to fill this vacuum.
SVG had a video tag since at least 2004. But SVG is stalled in its development in large part because a major plugin developer (Adobe) and a major browser developer (Microsoft) are uninterested in it. So the slow evolution of web standards is a result, not a cause, of the big company’s wish to dominate the web.
In fact, there is no chapter in the Bible that says that the only two options are W3C and totally proprietary. If Microsoft were truly frustrated with the W3Cs pace (and not its openness) it could just call up Adobe, Mozilla et. al. and start another standards body. But Microsoft and Adobe do not want to co-operate on Web technologies. They want to compete, and use their dominance of certain other industries as levers that will allow them to define the platform unilaterally.
I used to feel as you do, but Microsoft has made a REAL commitment to OpenAjax. They have contributed code and made the framework easy to use with any library as part of the open future plans
It makes a lot of sense for a “standards organization” to be slow. They sit back, watch which technologies are in use, and then co-opt them in a “standard” way, and hope they can convert everyone to the “standard”. The standard itself is no place to play around with javascript libraries, video tags, animation and sound. When you discover you’ve made a bad choice (*ahem* blink) going back and changing the standard is sufficiently painful for everyone that you want to avoid it.
That said, SVG can do many of the same things as flash, and everyone is ignoring it as hard as they can. MathML has been around for longer, and everyone is ignoring it too. Decoding video? Browsers make a crappy TV. I don’t want it in my browser and I think it makes sense for them to wait longer on this. The transition in general from “document” to “application” is one they should sit back and watch for a bit longer. The web as a set of documents is understandable and indexable. A set of pseudo-applications is not, and we should not be so willing to turn everything into an AJAX app or video player.
It is perfectly reasonable for companies to fill the gaps that the W3C’s slow process creates, but if they actually cared about web standards and openness, they would make their own contributions (Flash, Silverlight, etc.) open.
The reason the W3C is slow is not because it sits back and watches the landscape, waiting for it to solidify, but rather because it is a committee. It takes forever to get a bunch of people to agree on something as complicated and specific as a web standard that is supposed to be completely reliable.
I don’t think design by committee is a good way to go about it. There’s really no point, anyway. Sure, a design that isn’t filtered in this intense a manner may not be as “perfect” as the immense bloat that is XML and its various applications (XHTML, SVG, RSS, etc.), but it will be good enough.
I mentioned RSS – RSS is a de facto standard, not a W3C Recommendation, and as a result we have a little bit of mess involved with syndication: Atom, namely. We have two standards instead of one. This is hardly the end of the world, and natural selection is quickly favoring RSS over Atom.
If WHATWG had done its job correctly, we’d be on HTML 6 by now and nobody would be using IE7 due to it being horribly out of date. YouTube would be using the <video> tag instead of a Flash player and Silverlight probably wouldn’t exist.
But it became a victim of the same process bloat that plagues the W3C, and so we’re still stuck using proprietary technologies.
At present, it’s interesting to note that, thanks to the existence of Moonlight, a Mono implementation of Silverlight, Microsoft’s efforts in this space are presently more open than Adobe’s. I would like to see Adobe completely open up the Flash standard and go back to doing what they do best: making graphics and publications development tools, like their Flash IDE and Photoshop.
Of course, it’d be even better if we would just use SVG for what SVG was made for, but thanks to lack of support in IE, I don’t see that happening soon.
I recently found a plugin that runs 3D games in a box in a browser window, by which I mean full-featured hardware-accelerated shader-utilizing 3D games, and for a moment, I remembered my browser was capable of more than just divs and spans.
redundancy on third-to-last paragraph: “At present … presently” — duhr
Content created using the standards laid down by the W3C needs to have a reasonable life. Vinyl LP’s, CDs and MP3 represent boundaries where customers had to procure new tech and re-license the content that they already owned because the delivery platform changed. Mobile phones and portable Internet devices took 5 years to evolve. If the standards changed every year – we may not have been able to access web content through so many different means. Not everyone needs flash or AJAX. Wikipedia and Google do exceptionally well without them. Also the bigger picture thinking of the W3C gets lost in the noise. SVG, RDF, OWL and PNG are amazing platforms – and their capabilities are barely being used. Instead, MS, Adobe and others branch off into workstreams that can only benefit themselves.
You asked: How can you be against free and open right?
You never answered that question, perhaps because the answer is obvious: The profit motive as pursued by most corporations is diametrically opposed to free and open anything. Corporations hate a free and open web with the same zeal that they hate a free market, which is why they spend so much money bribing our politicians, getting their corporate lawyers installed as judges, buying up competitors, squashing small companies, engaging in price-fixing and facilitating the formation of interlocking directorships.
Richard Smith wrote:
> The problem with JavaScript is the lack of a
> proper run-time library. To write any
> significant AJAX application requires one to
> first build a bunch of run-time functions
> which should just be part of JavaScript.
>
> Flash and recently Silverlight have now stepped
> in to fill this vacuum.
There *are* relatively advanced Javascript libraries (such as jQuery), however. Even though they have to be interpreted, they soundly beat proprietary technologies in performance – probably because of the plugin load times. To say nothing of graceful degradation, of course, which is completely out of the question with Flash.
IE stinks and its marketshare sinks.
SVG usage rises and broadens:
see http://svg.startpagina.nl
Katie: RSS is, in fact, a mess. Last time I checked, there were at least half a dozen subtly incompatible variants created by three different organisations, with two seperate competing branches of the original format. Oh, and some software uses mixtures of different versions to get the features it wants. Plus, at least one important tag’s content is text in some versions and HTML in another, so you have to guess which it is. Wikipedia has the gory details.
It makes no sense to fault the W3C for its speed when the W3C is pushing out specifications faster than browser vendors are implementing them. Writing specs faster is not going to help if browser vendors already can’t keep up! This seems like quite a simple concept to me, so I can’t understand people like you who do not get this.
Bullshit.
Just as your mozilla article.
Can’t believe slashdot linked me to this ****.
I am in total agreement with you on this. The W3C is so far behind the times. Not to mention they seem to be more about ideology than practical standards for web development, but that’s a whole other story. And it also probably has something to do with the 7 year time lag also.
I don’t mind silverlight as long as it is never required for use of a site as I’m sure MS wont be releasing a versions for simbian, iphone, palm browsers etc.
Flash is a pain in Linux as the plugins are so unstable they often crash the entire browser when it dies. and it cant be patched by people who live and breath linux, only by poor schmucks who normally write for Windows or Mac.
@Xanadu
Glad you enjoyed the post. :)
@John Howell
Actually, with Mono’s Moonlight you could see Silverlight used on non-MS platforms. I doubt you’ll ever see it on an iPhone though, but that won’t be Microsoft’s call. If Apple won’t take Flash, I’m sure they won’t take Silverlight.
@James
Maybe I should have been more specific in my post. The W3C obviously wasn’t developing the right standards that people (developers, users, web browser companies, etc) wanted in a timely fashion. The WHATWG wouldn’t have ever formed if that weren’t the case.
The W3C tried to push out XHTML on people, but apparently everyone wanted more of what HTML5 will offer, and the W3C finally gave in. If you just look at the canvas tag you can see that if a “standard” is developed that people want, many/most of the browsers will adopt it in a relatively timely fashion.
Thanks, Paul. I’m glad someone coming out calling a spade a spade.
Despite the beautiful “free and open” claim, W3C and WHATWG are hijacked by people from different organizations each with an agenda. Their roles are to make sure whatever comes out would benefit their own organization or, at the very least, wouldn’t hurt their own best interest. When you have a committee like that, meaningful progress is the last thing you expect.
I have been working on web apps for a while, and boy, am I fed up with HTML/JAVASCRIPT? I always have this feeling that I’m wasting time trying to achieve what the combo was not designed for, and it’s far beyond a tag, a tag and some svg can fix.
Now SilverLight and Flex come out to help. They are the steps towards the right direction and provide real good tools. It’s funny to read sour grapes reactions from other participants of W3C, especially from Mozilla whose Javascript is under direct squeeze.
The other day I read news about some Mozilla folks claiming HTML/Javascript can produce as interactive apps as the desktop ones. Well pal, you CANNOT. You don’t have a strong framework to match that of .Net, Java/Swing, Cocoa, QT and so on. Just to get a multithread running in Javascript, we have to use third party hacks FGS. That’s unacceptable, which is why we prefer SileverLight and maybe JavaFX in future. No, keep that Mozilla kool aid to yourself, thank you.
When the 1st misinformation fails, Mozilla offers one more spin: Fuding against SilverLight and Flex: “They have an agenda behind it!!” Right, we all know what they are up to. And we also know you guys have an agenda as well, which is to keep people in HTML/JAVASCRIPT despite their s*ckiness so that Mozilla remains relevant. Well after close look, we prefer Flex / SiverLight’s agenda to Mozilla’s b/c their ideas at least work.
Letting Adobe and/or Microsoft rule (what is suppose to be) the open web is a BAD thing! Microsoft has never been good at interoperability ever (take MS Office for Windows and Mac for example; I mean come on, OpenOffice trounces MS Office in this category). Adobe is improving on Flash, but it’s Linux version of Flash is always missing features compared to the same versions found on Windows and Mac. And Microsoft’s Silverlight will be BAD for everyone on the web because IMHO interoperability will most likely be a Windows-only affair and the Mac version will be purposefully broken (and is already pretty much broken since they only offer an Intel version leaving those millions of PowerPC Mac users in the dark). Mono’s Moonlight implementation will also be purposefully broken because Microsoft will see to that and I don’t care how many deals (or handshakes) they got going on with Novell. So in the end; all Silverlight roads are destined for the world of Microsoft Windows and shackling the open web to its backside.
I do agree that the W3C needs to step it up and move with the speed of innovation, but they’re not the only game in town. The WaSP group also has a hand in pushing web standards and maybe should help the W3C get more motivated and focused on the primary mission. It sounds like to me that these 2 standards groups should be mingling more often with a more focused mission to help stave off the creation of a proprietary web which will be introduced by either Adobe and/or Microsoft. We’re just now finally shaking off the proprietary mess that was created by MSIE’s worn out (un)welcome to the web with the grand help of Mozilla Firefox and its inroads to more browser (and mind) share. Let us not go back to a broken web of proprietary proportions!
Ahem…you cats might want to do some actual research on Adobe’s contribution to the Mozilla foundation and their push towards move towards open standards and open source:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/site/Home
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamarin_(JIT)
http://www.adobe.com/openscreenproject/
It’s also worth noting that Flash rose to prominence on the back of rich media playback capabilities. The audio and video codecs it licenses continue to be major factors in why it succeeds. Codec vendors don’t give a rats *** about free and open–they want their royalties.
The RIA angle is relatively new (last 4 years or so). There’s nothing inherent to RIA’s that browsers couldn’t provide (a great VM, a nice OOP language for the guts and pretty declarative language for the front end). Its just going to take years to standardize across vendors and platforms and will require millions of web developers to completely reboot their skills (often given as a reason for why browser vendors haven’t rapidly adopted the OOP features of ECMAScript).
In short its a nice little mess the W3C and the vendors have got themselves in and we should thank our lucky stars that we have blended capabilities (plugin + browser).
Brooks, way to point that out. Asa was complaining about Adobe trying to lock down the web and they donated Tamarin. You know that he knew that too.
[...] wonder that proprietary systems are gaining more and more ground over time. They are simply filling the vacuum of new technology left by the standards bodies. [...]
[...] Paul Ellis eloquently points out a few things I’ve become hoarse saying over the past year in his recent post A proprietary Web? Blame the W3C. [...]
But what about accessibility, disability discimination etc??
Also, what about IE? Even if the W3C released new standards every 2 years, IE wouldn’t support it and since the majority of internet users use IE why would you implement any of the new features in your code if they won’t work in the most used brower?
“HTML simply can handle what Flash and Silverlight can do. ”
HTML simply can’t handle…?
[...] This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant. Subscribe to TechConsumer: RSS / Email Sphere It 0 Comments Published on: [...]
>HTML simply can handle what Flash
>and Silverlight can do.
you meant “can’t”
So proprietary solutions from Adobe or Micorsoft may control internet? Let’s just assume it’s possible however exaggerating it sounds. Does it matter? No, because bottom-line the end users don’t care how close/open it is so long that stuff rocks. Last time I checked it’s an open, MERIT-BASED competition. It could be the open one to win out or the close one. You have to take both sides of it. If Flash, SilverLight or whatever wipes Javascript out, we just have to live with it. Shielding an lame technology with an “free and open” armor is not the right approach, let alone the obvious agenda behind it.
The W3C responsible for a proprietary web? Hogwash.
My response
What?
“but it’s Linux version of Flash is always missing features compared to the same versions found on Windows and Mac.”
Since mid 2007, the flash version has released for Windows, Linux and Mac at the same time from the same code base. It may not have your 64b yet (hearing the howls already), but it’s the same version on all.
and let me point out that the SWF specification is available with no restrictions. No it’s not the code, but with standards, you build from specs anyway.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf
Brooks, Paul etc.
Adding to Tamarin and Tamarin-tracing code donations, Adobe continues to provide engineering effort directly to the project.
We took the additional steps of making the Flex environment open source (MPL), have open sourced the bridges between Flex and Ajax, added open source remoting and messaging support with BlazeDS.
Thanks for the perspective Dave. I get so tired of people acting like any company that makes lots of money is inherently evil. It is such a magical view that being open-source means you are automatically doing things in a better way, for a better purpose, somehow…
[...] articolo interessante (A proprietary web? Blame the W3C), dove per altro si assesta un bel colpo ad AJAX, che viene spesso presentato come la soluzione [...]
You talk about the Hard Rock site, but the first we’re hit with is “Install…”
There is nothing in that site that couldn’t be implemented with specifications already released, including X/HTML, CSS, SVG, and JavaScript. Nothing. All of which are supported in Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
Now, who is really holding up the web? Who has been giving lip service to standards, while spending all of its time on proprietary technologies, such as Silverlight.
We’re all sorry you’re bored and feel held back because the W3C isn’t giving you something you seem to feel you’re missing. But since you’ve not provided specifics of any technology that we can show is provided by an open spec, I hope you’ll excuse the rest of us if we take what you say with a grain of salt.
typo, should be
“But since you’ve not provided specifics of any technology that we can’t show can be provided by an open spec, I hope you’ll excuse the rest of us if we take what you say with a grain of salt.”
BTW, I’m using a pre-intel Mac. Now, how far is Silverlight going to take us?
Shelly, you could not create the Hard Rock Memorabilia site with HTML, CSS, SVG, and Javascript. There is no way it could be the smooth and fluid, and also not peg your CPU out the whole time.
I have a $100 bill that says it can’t be done. It is yours if you can actually (as in, show me real pages/code) prove me wrong.
As for the pre-Intel Mac, in reality Silverlight is the last of your concerns since OS X isn’t going to be PPC anymore. I’m sure you could run Silverlight using Rosetta though. Microsoft does actually make a Mac version you know.
Well, once I look at the site I’ll be able to determine if what it accomplishes could be done with CSS, HTML, SVG, JavaScript, et al. And without pegging out one’s CPU.
Of course, I now have to find a way to see the site, since I’m using a pre-Intel Mac. Which, I may add, can process CSS, HTML, SVG, and JavaScript through any one of three browsers I can use.
I have other machines–the point I’m making is that I’ve already hit a wall just by using a machine to read this, a prefectly good machine, that Microsoft won’t support. As for the next version of the OSX not supporting PPC, heck, I’m still running Tiger on this machine — my Leopard machine is in the shop.
Keep your money, we’re already at work showing how open technologies can implement most, if not all, of what Flash and Silverlight implement. It’s amazing what you can do if you’re willing to try and you have a little imagination.
Shelley, wait so you hadn’t even checked out what it looks like and you are claiming it could be done with SVG/CSS/HTML/Javascript?? Trust me, when you see it you will realize that it can’t be done.
Why exactly do you think Microsoft has an obligation to make Silverlight for an old Mac architecture? Apple (or someone else) could always work on Moonlight to make it work on a Mac. Of course Apple probably wouldn’t waste/spend their time on PPC either.
Mac’s in general have a single-digit market share, and PPC is only a portion of that even. BTW, Silverlight 1 does work on PPC for sure, and Silverlight 2 is still a beta.
Are you talking about the zoom in and out, scroll, with the artificial bounce? And semi-opaque item description? Is that the cool stuff you’re talking about or did I miss something? (I also have a Dell and opened it in IE8.)
Speaking of which, Microsoft didn’t see fit to implement the CSS3 opacity attribute, implemented by the other three browsers. It also didn’t implement its old proprietary approach, meaning that IE8 doesn’t support opacity at all.
Oh, except if you use Silverlight, of course.
Yes, you could do that kind of a fluid transition from a zoomed out low-res image to the very detailed zoomed in images. It doesn’t look like anything complex, but it is beyond Javascript’s abilities that’s for sure.
As for opacity in IE8, it is still on Beta 1 “Developer Preview”. I wouldn’t say that anything is written in stone for it. It wouldn’t surprise me if “opacity: 0.5; ” works in one of the next betas.
Back to Silverlight and Flash though, they aren’t exactly closed really. You can get the specs and make your own version. So it really boils down to Apple/Mozilla/Opera arguing with Microsoft/Adobe over who’s specs will power the non-existent “free and open web”.
OK, just wanted to make sure that we were looking at the same example. You don’t think image zooming can be done with JS? Like the zooming or scrolling with, say, Google maps?
As for IE8 opacity, we’ll see what we see in IE8 beta 2.
It really boils down to Apple, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, and Adobe (as well as several other companies), as compared to Microsoft, only, or Adobe, Only. Remember that MS and Adobe are also part of the open standards efforts. And don’t put Adobe and MS together — these two companies do not cooperate with each other.
As for getting the specs and reverse engineering…why? We have specs.
[...] a case study in putting your faith in the wrong idols, you can’t do better than posts like this which “blame the W3C” (via Molly). Blaming the W3C for not pushing the web forward is both humorously off-target and [...]
Shelley, you proved my point exactly. How smooth is the zooming on Google maps? Answer: incredibly not smooth actually. Zooming using javascript is so choppy and slow that on Live Maps (I recently switched from Google Maps) I turn off zooming animations in the options.
The Hard Rock site? Yeah anyone can stick up a sign on a grey background saying ‘Silverlight required’.
Easy.
As for the rest of your post: rubbish. Internet Explorer is the one holding us back. Take CSS2 for example, over ten years ago it was ratified, still not supported by IE.
Paul, Google Maps is the most popular graphics application in the world, based on a database of thousands of images of different resolutions (including satellite and map). The “choppiness” you experience is less due to JS and more to the fact that this is a real world application with enormous demands on it.
As it is, there’s a reason it’s the most popular graphics application in use today–usefulness. Usefulness not dependent on any proprietary technology (though Google is experimenting with a Silverlight version of canvas, since Microsoft is also dropping support for its own VML).
The real difference between the applications, other than the Hard Rock has a much smaller image base? You don’t get the bounce. But the bounce has been added to Ajax drop down menus and other applications for some time now.
Can I re-create this application? Yes. Let me finish my current book, and I’ll create a working example. I was just expecting something more from your excitement–the ability to visualize the objects in 3D or some such thing.
In the meantime, I want to show you something, at CodeDread. It’s an SVG application that uses declarative elements to management animation, and a JavaScript library to emulate these elements for browsers that don’t support SMIL. SMIL is still not as widespread as we like, but it’s use is growing. Try the page with Opera, Safari, or Firefox. Move the slider around.
This is just an experiment of Jeff’s, but if you show most people, I bet they’ll think it’s Flash. Or Silverlight.
We’ve only begun to barely touch on the surface of what we can do, with the technologies built right into browsers. Working on different machines and different environments, including my old pre-Intel Mac.
Why don’t more people play with this? Why not more development of tools? Because Microsoft won’t implement SVG and XHTML in IE. That’s it, end of story, the whole truth.
The entire world of open source technology is being held back because Microsoft company puts more time into Silverlight, it’s own proprietary specification, rather than just implementing the same functionality in an open spec.
And then you say, it’s the W3C’s fault?
jibbidy:
“The Hard Rock site? Yeah anyone can stick up a sign on a grey background saying ‘Silverlight required’.
Easy.”
Lord, that cracked me up.
Shelly, that link to CodeDread you sent me to uses all vector graphics. I want to see something with raster/bitmap graphics (ala Google Maps or Hard Rock). Scaling vector is a totally different story, and a lot of images are not in a vector format.
I don’t know why I can’t admit that it is literally impossible for Google Maps to be as smooth using Javascript as the Hard Rock site is using Silverlight (a beta version no less), or even using Flash. Both Google Maps and Hard Rock have to fetch images from a database at various sizes over a similarly high latency network connection. Javascript just doesn’t have any sort of bitmap manipulation abilities like you can program for Silverlight or Flash.
Oh no, Paul. You can’t change the rules, raster/vector, vector/raster. Besides, what do you think Flash is?
One can embed a raster image within SVG, and one can use JS to resize it–what do you think flash does with ActionScript.
One can also use SMIL to transform raster images, and since the effect is declarative, it should be just as smooth as Flash when it comes to zoom.
You asked about effect, you can’t quibble about that each tool doesn’t handle the effects in the exact same way.
And you’re comparing the performance issues between a Hard Rock cafe site, with a huge silverlight filter in the front, and Google maps?!
As for zooming rasters, create an elastic HTML column and set any images to 100% within that column. Resize the page and watch the images zoom in and out, smooth as a baby’s butt. And without any script.
PS what do you think Silverlight does with rasters? Magically transform pixels when you zoom? The Hard Rock cafe has a big image that zooms out pixelated, and then pulls in the external larger image once the zoom finishes. It also most likely caches the images when the page loads to make the animation smoother, at the cost of upfront bandwidth.
You can do that with the canvas element. SVG. SMIL. Heck, HTML and JS. CSS.
Paul, you are wasting time educating a bunch of denials. Whoever thinks Google Maps (or whatever JS rendered junk) provides the same smoothness as SilverLight does Hard Rock is a nut.
Klimzk, wasting people’s time is in the eye of the beholder. Hey, if he wants Silverlight only sites, more power to him.
Klimzk, yeah it did start to feel like wasting time. The funny thing is though, I don’t want a proprietary web. It is like I can’t talk about the deficiencies of the W3C stuff and the strong parts of Adobe/Microsoft’s stuff without seeming like I want all sites to run with Flash/Silverlight.
[...] a case study in putting your faith in the wrong idols, you can’t do better than posts like this which “blame the W3C” (via Molly). Blaming the W3C for not pushing the web forward is both humorously off-target and [...]
Except even W3C glacial speed is way too fast for Microsoft.
It took 12 years from publishing CSS2 spec to Microsoft implementing it (CSS2 reached REC in 1996, and IE8 seems to finally get most of it).
Now Microsoft is lagging behind in Acid3 which is limited to W3C specs before 2004/5.
If W3C produced specs any faster, they all would go straight into shelves for fantasy literature.
My last thoughts on your post and the issue.
If companys coomit to Free Standards and specifications, and not to proprietary tech., then thoes Free Standards can evolve at greater speeds. But does companys are only interested in evolution as much as it can lock their costumers and help them avoid compete based on merith and costumer satisfaction.
“But does”, should be “But thoes…
If IE supported SVG then with the hopefully soon approaching JS4 we would be in no need of Flash or Silverlight (which I just don’t use on pages or as a client).
So it just simply is not the W3C’s fault at all.
[...] was inspired after reading this post to express my feelings on committees like the W3C [...]
[...] A Proprietary Web? Blame the W3C [...]
Sorry,was going to be my last word but I spent some time checking out “Deep zoom”.
This is based on Microsoft’s proprietary photo format, which competes with JPEG2000. The same effect should be doable with JPEG2000. It’s not a Silverlight thing at all. It’s not even really related to “animation”. You’re mixing your technologies when you talk about “smooth”.
If you wanted to demonstrate how much better the web would be if the W3C wasn’t so slow, this was probably about the worst example you could use, because it is based on nothing but locked-in technologies. Unless, you’re in the habit of making bald-faced pronouncements, in order to get attention, in which case, you were quite successful.
Shelley, I was going to just let you have the last word, but you had to make one more comment…
Here is a great overview of what DeepZoom is (via MSDN no less). Choice quote from the page “DeepZoom is an implementation that exposes some of the SeaDragon technology to Silverlight.” Sounds very Silverlight to me.
The Wikipedia stub on it is actually not bad either.
As best as I can tell, it is it’s own technology and isn’t specifically tied to HD Photo (their JPEG2000 competitor). BTW, what is wrong with HD Photo? Even JPEG is thinking about standardizing it as JPEG XR. Just because Microsoft creates it doesn’t mean it is bad. How about we judge software based on its merits regardless of its creator?
Some other DeepZoom examples:
http://deepzoom.soulclients.com/VE/ (compare this to the smoothness/fluidity of Google Maps)
http://www.deepzoomobama.com/
[...] Holzshlag’s response in A Proprietary Web in Deed and Fact? to a post from Paul Ellis titled A Proprietary Web? Blame the W3C. In response to Paul’s article directly I’d agree to a point, yes Rich Internat [...]
The Aptana IDE is quite good for AJAX development.
I was taught that javascript is a security flaw, so anything javascript related is always a problem with me on the web.
Another problem is I have web developers not conforming to standards and having sites accessible for the blind, deaf, disabled.
My problem with Flash & Silverlight (which I presume is like Flash) is it doesn’t come stock standard with your browser and two, outside of the US there are still a lot of ppl on 56k dial up and flash is constantly being used on websites these days without regard to these people.
Down with most flash related things.
And when is someone going to open source a flash like product?
Paul, unless a lot has changed in a year, the Seadragon project was based, in part, on Windows Media Photo format, which is now HD Photo, and Deep Zoom is based, at least in part, on Seadragon.
This brings in another component: JPEG compression techniques. So when you say that the equivalent of Hard Rock couldn’t be created with the W3C’s JavaSccript, SVG, CSS, and HTML, you _might_ be correct, but it couldn’t be created with the equivalent (client-side script and XAML) functionality in Silverlight, either.
The point is, you’re condemning open source client-side technologies (which you mislabeled as W3C technologies) for not being capable of creating smooth animations, but you’re using an example that isn’t based solely on client-side technologies.
I suppose you could condemn the W3C, ECMA, and JPEG for not delivering all the specifications necessary to re-create this effect, but I believe they have. However, not all of the specifications have been implemented in all browsers. I don’t think it’s fair to blame these organizations if not all browsers implement all the released specifications. Wouldn’t you agree?
So I have to return to your original complaint: where did the W3C fail?
As for HD Photo, that’s fine that MS wants to give royalty free use of HD Photo to JPEG. However, Microsoft also maintains ownership of the spec, which means that any use of the spec is at the sufferance of Microsoft; any innovation that could come from outside of Microsoft is forbidden. I, for one, would not like to use an image format controlled only by one company.
PS The infrastructure behind Silverlight has been in works for years. I believe XAML was released in 2003. So, your statement about Silverlight only being out a year is isn’t entirely accurate. Existing technologies packaged under a new name have been out a year, true; but not the technologies, themselves.
We can go back and forth on this issue, but I think we’re talking cross-purpose. I have no problems with Silverlight per se, and probably would even enjoy playing with the technologies if, and big if, Microsoft had spent at least a portion of the same effort ensuring a standards-compliant browser. There’s no excuses for Microsoft’s lack of standards implementation, because the pieces are in place to support SVG, X/HTML, JavaScript, the DOM, and CSS as easily as the company supports Silverlight. Microsoft choosing not to implement existing standards (whether fully, as with XHTML and SVG, or partially, as with the DOM and JavaScript) is not the W3C’s fault–put the fault squarely where it belongs.
Sorry, typo “There are not excuses”
Sheesh, and again, “There are no excuses”
@ Paul – have you ever heard of maps.google.com? It uses only HTML/CSS/JS on the client , and (in my opinion) is a lot more impressive than any Silverlight gadget I’ve seen.
Well Peavy, if you think Google maps is better than try the link Paul posted: http://deepzoom.soulclients.com/VE
Google’s stuff is coarse. If you drag it around or zoom in/out quickly, its refresh couldn’t keep up. More over, while SilverLight’s offers a free Deep Zoom composer to design / host your own zooming service on any image. Google doesn’t offer their server imaging control to you. Even if they do in future, it’s probably limited to hosting everything on their servers.
The w3c exists to stymie the growth in web development.
Years and years ago, I wrote a fun website called “the We Want Weed Consortium”. Even back then, I realised that the W3C works very slowly for the things that matter, and very quickly for the things that are completely useless.
Unfortunately, the ‘birthday card’ was mercilessly spammed… but enjoy the site.
The web became boring. Real companies stepped up to fill the gap. The standards were left behind.
Big whoop.
Sing another verse of kumbayah and wait for the mammals to evolve into vegans, or go out and get the meat and take it back to your caves, but there is a rising tide of companies who are tired of being caught in the cross-fire of the wars on Microsoft or any other company that decides to fill a market need with a workable product. And those who did create workable standards but were stomped because Apple, IBM, Google and Adobe ignored them can’t be expected to cry for the W3C now.
Just to mention, your closing comment is incorrect.
http://xkcd.com/357/
But a great article and very interesting comments.
I agree, and have been taught, that JavaScript is a security hole. But I’ve also been taught that Flash is the same. Microsoft has never made a secure program, so all in all, I’ll just hope for the best.
I stand corrected. I knew I should have consulted XKCD on the matter first. :)
[...] developers do happily bivouac in them, building some fairly compelling stuff. Some even argue that these proprietary platforms push the envelope more than what the web can do by itself, given the stagnancy of standards [...]
[...] developers do happily bivouac in them, building some fairly compelling stuff. Some even argue that these proprietary platforms push the envelope more than what the web can do by itself, given the stagnancy of standards [...]
Hear, hear. I recently started blogging at the above link about what a new thin client might look like. I address some of your concerns about standards and proprietary technologies in the second post. Any ideas and feedback would be appreciated.
[...] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by sinatauchiha on 2008-07-22 A Proprietary Web? Blame the W3C http://pseudosavant.com/blog/2008/07/08/a-proprietary-web-blame-the-w3c/ – bookmarked by 1 members [...]
Your argument’s premise is fatally flawed in it’s distinction between Microsoft/Adobe/Closed and W3C/WHATWG/Open.
The reality it that Microsoft is a member of the W3C and have done everything they possibly can to slow W3C progress to a crawl. The perfect example is Microsoft’s refusal to continue innovating with their browser and their inability to simply implement the fundamental standards of which they were a party to developing with the W3C.
First Microsoft illegally killed the browser market and monopolised it until Mozilla found a revenue model (Search preferences) and development style (FOSS) to hit back.
Secondly (and there is some timeline crossover) Microsoft sat on it’s hairy behemoth arse and refused to correct even the smallest flaws in the standards compliance of IE6.
The W3C is slow because Microsoft and others put corporate interests above those of the open web itself.
This is simple divide and conquer tactics and if we don’t recognise this, we will not move forward.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule
As web developers we have the last say in what platform we develop in. So don’t point to the big guys. New kids will come in and hop on flash or silver light with no clue what a w3c is:P Posting new sites everyday. There is Content Management Systems that offer redundant code for cross browser experience. For those that are “tired of html/javascript”. Microsoft screw the pooch on adding w3c standards to their browser. There implementation of java javascript html and DOM are frustrating to most of us who try and provide support to the non ms empire. Microsoft makes good and bad products. Microsoft started as a client on this posix enviroment and Mac joined after. Microsoft leverages itself into new markets with its client. Look at the server market and you can see the ruthless tactics of microsoft.
Anyways treat Microsoft like Microsoft treats everything else add another layer for Microsoft clients to conform to standards. Non Microsoft browsers will always be quicker. Rather then coding a webpage for 2 DOM’s IE and W3C use something like IE7 , dojo, etc. javascript library.
Or better yet make a nice grey page that says Download Firefox 3.
[...] Re: ANN: RealThinClient components looking for a new owner "Kevin Powick" <nospam> wrote in message news:xn0fshkwi81sohs000… http://pseudosavant.com/blog/2008/07…blame-the-w3c/ [...]
@ Richard M. Smith’s JavaScript comment:
What scripting language do you think Flash and Silverlight use? Yeah, that’s JavaScript, based on ECMA standard. And consequently, Adobe and Mozilla are collaborating on the next JavaScript (ActionScript) engine that will be used for Flash, Acrobat, and Firefox as well as other technologies.
@ Article
I really like your article, but I think there are some items perhaps not fully in line with perspective on things.
W3C vs WHATWG (HTML5)…
The WHATWG was born not out problems with the timetables, but rather some serious contention in W3Cs XHTML2 standard. As far as I recall, XHTML2 required 5-7 different mark-up languages, broke prior standards, and ignored natural evolution of technologies, like JavaScript, in favor of XML substitute. Implementers of web technologies (Apple, Opera, Mozilla) just said “Hell No” essentially to XHTML2.
While I think XML and XML based languages are a blessing compared to prior closed technologies, some XML standards like XHTML2 were questionable IMHO. It seemed to me that W3C was focused on proving theories without any practical connection to implementing the technologies or market realities. As another disconnect example, W3C’s XSD was quite grotesquely complex as well, and 3rd parties made things like RELAX-NG as simple alternatives.
AJAX a Kludge?
I really doubt that AJAX is a kludge, especially because there are many popular toolkits out there, and Microsoft fully supports it, and is going head-to-head with their Volta for .NET, as opposed to Google’s GWT for Java. Many Web 2.0 sites like World of Warcraft Armory, Digg and Flickr support related technologies (i.e. XML and JSON streams, which are used with AJAX clients).
To say a toolkit is needed to make AJAX easier is misrepresentation and maybe misunderstanding of the technology. Flash and Silverlight use toolkits, and future versions of Silverlight even uses one of these AJAX toolkits (jQuery I think it is).
Lastly, AJAX is not really much of a technology, but rather a technique, and its ideas are incorporated into Silverlight, and can be incorporated into Flash as well (possibly with technologies like Flex or OpenLaszlo).
My 2 cents on things:
On area HTML and related web technologies do not address well is scalable media suited for cellphones, PDAs, Gameboys, etc. There’s WML/WAP technologies, but these are different than HTML, and require server side application to tailor custom content or down-render HTML content to WML (e.g. in-house tools or commercial solutions like OpenWave)
Flash and Silverlight others (JavaFX) and address that market, and thus may be contenders for the next mobile market standard. Without tight integration of technologies (which would need SVG for scalable graphics and animation), I don’t see how current web solutions will survive.
Ultimately though, it depends on the toolkits. Flash offers a solution to animators (artists types), and Silverlight has solutions for web authors, animators, and developers. JavaFX system looks promising, but does not seem as flexible + intuitive as Flash Studio or Microsoft offerings.
The problem with JavaScript is the lack of a proper run-time library. To write any significant AJAX application requires one to first build a bunch of run-time functions which should just be part of JavaScript.
Too much time..
need more understanding to say a toolkit is needed to make AJAX easier is misrepresentation and maybe misunderstanding of the technology.
http://www.kasskooye.net
The WHATWG was born not out problems with the timetables, but rather some serious contention in W3Cs XHTML2 standard.
Smallbama
I really doubt that AJAX is a kludge, especially because there are many popular toolkits out there, and Microsoft fully supports it, and is going head-to-head with their Volta for .NET, as opposed to Google’s GWT for Java. Many Web 2.0 sites like World of Warcraft Armory, Digg and Flickr support related technologies (i.e. XML and JSON streams, which are used with AJAX clients).
There is nothing in that site that couldn’t be implemented with specifications already released, including X/HTML, CSS, SVG, and JavaScript. Nothing. All of which are supported in Firefox, Opera, and Safari.
Zambezi Home & House home improvement, appliances, and furniture information.