Categories
HTML5

No (Content) Negotiation

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Virginia DeBolt provides a really nice grouping of links to writings related to the WHATWG. Among the writings are those related to accessibility, and there’s nothing I can add to this discussion that isn’t isn’t handled succinctly and completely by others.

I did want to jump into the discussion related to XHTML, though. Dean Edridge wrote a general note of dissatisfaction with the WHATWG effort, including perhaps too much influence by Apple, Opera, and Google. I could add to this list by saying that Microsoft’s non-involvement contributes an undue influence by Microsoft.

Edridge also started another thread, about XHTML5. He wrote:

I don’t think that support for XHTML5 should be optional. Specifying
that user-agents may support only one format, but supporting both is
“encouraged” is insufficient and will only lead to a lack of support for
XHTML5 like we had with XHTML1 [1]

We’ve been down this road before where support for application/xhtml+xml was only an “opt in” for user-agents. That’s the main reason we have less than 100 valid XHTML websites today. [2]
People wont be able to use XHTML5 if there’s no support for it.

Can this please be changed to:
[[
…..Implementations MUST support these two formats.
]]

I found it fascinating that so few sites are ‘pure’ XHTML. This site is now one. Last week I turned off site negotiation and serve up pages with the proper MIME type of “application/xhtml+xml”. This means, of course, this page isn’t viewable by IE, which wants to process the page as XML, rather than interpret it as XHTML.

What’s more interesting, though, is how much push back Edridge is getting on, what to me, is a very valid request. The responses have ranged from the ‘undue burden’ this places on devices like desktop widgets, to how Edridge should try to contain his passion–after all, some people are just raising issues.

What astonishes me, though, is how much this group is willing to bend over for companies that have the resources to make these changes, but it is is not convenient from a business perspective to do so. In other words, they can’t turn it into profit, so why spend time on the tech?

I integrate the use of SVG into my sites. I plan on more heavily integrating it into this site. I can do so because I made one fundamental design decision: this site supports released specifications, not specific browsers. SVG is the one and only graphics system capable of giving something like Flash–a proprietary technology–a run for its money. SVG with XHTML, ECMAScript, and CSS3, combined, could do amazing things regardless of whether you’re using a widget, cell phone, or browser on a computer. Why on earth would we deliberately sabotage this as a goal, just because it’s not convenient from a business perspective for some companies who are making enormous amounts of money, and who could easily encompass such effort without breaking a sweat?

Then the argument comes around to, the fact that there are few sites implementing XHTML tells us that people don’t want it. No, it tells us that tools aren’t doing a good job of ensuring XHTML compliant pages. That people don’t understand about content negotiation. That IE has effectively undermined XHTML while supposedly pretending to be a friend of the specification. This is a true chicken and egg story: which comes first? The demand for the technology which then generates support for the technology? Or support for the technology, which will generate demand?

Regardless of whether it’s XHTML, or accessibility, or support for SVG, a standards group has the responsibility to move a technology forward–not provide excuses for keeping it rigidly locked in place, while browser makers happily skip ahead using proprietary technologies.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh, but I’ve never seen a web specification group that is so happy to make a race for the bottom as the WHATWG group is.

Boggles.

update

I did like what the Opera Spec Wrangler had to say. And it is important to keep in mind that much of the work on these specs is done by volunteers. Having said this, though, I am seeing far too much willingness to say, “Oh, well we don’t want to burden the user agents so we’ll make this optional”.

Why even bother with a specification if it doesn’t move us forward? Just to make the web easier to process by a search engine? To give companies a “get out of standards” free card?

What is moving forward? Let’s build some real accessibility into the new markups. Let’s ensure that user agents can handle the specifications that have been released, including XHTML and SVG. Let’s do things right, rather than expediently.

Categories
HTML5 XHTML/HTML

Soft Strategy

Sam Ruby wroteJackass 2.5 is available exclusively on SilverLight and my first thought was, “Hey! IE 8 must be shipping!” Then I clicked the link and realized he was talking about a movie.

Sam brought up Jackass the movie because of an issue of the video element in the HTML5 specification, and whether user agents should, or should not, be required to support the “free” video compression technique, Ogg Theora. Interesting to see the inner workings of the group. Now what group was this?

Oh, yeah. HTML5. Anyway, Sam also writes:

Fundamentally, Microsoft’s strategy is sound. Ignore standards that you find inconvenient, and focus on producing and enabling the production of content people want. While my humble site can’t compete with the likes of Jackass 2.5, I do have a few people who follow my site. I’ve switched my front page to HTML5 despite the fact that this means that MSIE7 will therefore ignore virtually all CSS. ..Perhaps if a few more HTML5 advocates did the same, people would eventually take notice.

I was inspired to go to XHTML, in part, by Sam’s earlier fooling around with SVG and XHTML. So I’ll give HTML5 a shot.

In five, six years. Or so.

Categories
HTML5 XHTML/HTML

Marathon 2.0

I must admit to being confused about Molly Holzschlag’s recent posts, including the latest. Today she writes, in clarification of her post where she calls for a moratorium on new standards work:

Perhaps there is a better solution than pausing standards development. If so, I’d like to know what you think it might be. One thing is absolutely key and that is there is no way we are going to empower each other and create the Web in the great vision it was intended to be if we do not address the critical issue of education. And stability. And these things take time. It requires far better orchestration than I personally have been able to figure out, and while the W3C, WHAT WG, WaSP and other groups have made numerous attempts to address some of these concerns, we have failed. We haven’t done a good job so far to create learning tools and truly assist the working web designer and developer become informed and better at what he or she can do. We haven’t done a good job sitting down at the table together and coming up with baseline strategies for user agents and tools.

I don’t keep up with the daily effort of the WHAT WG group, because I’m not really a designer by trade. I do keep up with specifications once they’re released, and am acutely aware of the necessity of valid markup, and not using worst practices (I promise to stop using STRIKE, for instance). I’m also aware of accessibility issues, though I find it frustrating how little we can do since many screen readers just aren’t capable of dealing with dynamic web pages.

I do try to keep up with the JavaScript effort. Mozilla is usually very good about providing readable documentation of new advances, and though it is typically ahead of the game, at least I’m aware of what’s coming down with the road. The same with what’s happening with CSS, PHP, RDF, and other technologies and/or specifications I use in my development.

If there are perceived barriers in acquiring the necessary knowledge to work with the newer specification, it can be because people heavily involved with some of these efforts can come across as arrogant, impatient, and even intolerant–the ‘elitist’ that Molly refers to. Over time, though, such ‘elitism’ usually gets worn away. I used to think the people associated with RDF were elitist, but I’ve watched in the last few years as folks interested in RDF/OWL/semantic web fall over their own feet rushing to increase understanding of, and access to, the concepts, specifications, and implementations. Express even a mild interest in RDF and *whoosh*, like the debris left by a flood, you’ll be inundated with helpful suggestions and encouragement.

Issues of arrogance and elitism aside, the concept of halting effort on specifications while waiting for the rest of the world to catch up just doesn’t make sense. Yes, it can be overwhelming at times–CSS, HTML, XHTML, XML, RDF, DOM, ECMASCript, PHP, Ruby, etc, etc etc. So much to absorb, so little time. But that’s not going to change by halting work on improving and extending specifications.

We do need to have more consistency among the user agents, such as the browsers. But we have browsers now that don’t implement, properly, specifications that have been around for years. In fact, it is because of this that we have this alphabet soup, as we try to remember which browser handles which piece of which HTML specification, correctly. Don’t even get me started on how user agents handle JavaScript. Or CSS.

I don’t know much about the intimate details of the HTML5 process, other than the whole point of the effort was to bring about a common point on which we could all intersect–authors and developers in what we use, user agents in how the implement the the specifications. Once this place of mutual agreement is then reached, we can continue to move forward, each at our own pace. It doesn’t make sense, though, for all to stop moving forward because some developer in Evansville, Illinois, or Budapest, Hungary, is still holding on to their tables.

Consider a marathon. In marathons, all the participants have to agree on the rules, and have to make sure they’re following the same course. But once the rules are defined and the course is laid out, then it’s up to the individual participants to do what’s necessary to complete the course. Some people put in more time and training and they complete the marathon sooner than others who can’t put as much time in, or who perhaps don’t have the same level of physical conditioning. Most of the people that participate, though, don’t care that they aren’t first or second or even in the first hundred. Most people have their own personal goals, and many are happy just to finish.

Think, then, how all participants would react if those putting on, say, the Boston Marathon, were to tell the participants that those in the front needed to slow down, or stop, so that those in the back could catch up?

The web is like a marathon. The specifications define the rules, and the implementations define the course. It is up to the individuals to determine how fast they want to run the course.

Molly says, because a developer in Evansville, Illinois or Budapest, Hungary is still using HTML tables for layout that the web is ‘broken’. I think what she’s really saying, though, is that the web works too well. There is a bewildering wealth of technology we can pick and choose from, and it can be both intimidating and exhausting trying to stay aware of all of it, much less stay proficient in any of it. It also seems like we’re surrounded by people who know it all.

They don’t, though. No one knows it all. The same as no one runner wins every marathon. None of us can know it all, and none of us can afford to be intimidated by those who seem to know it best.

No matter what we do with web specifications and new technologies, there will always be those who push to be first; the expert, the most knowledgeable–the ‘leader’ if you will. Then there is the rest of us, doing our best. This state of affairs is not broken, it’s just the way it is. It’s OK, too, because we don’t need to finish the race at the same time. What we web developers and designers need is what the marathon runners need–a set of rules by which we all participate, and a consistent course on which to run.

And here I got all this way without once mentioning Microsoft and IE.