W3C Releases Drafts For DOM L2 And More 150
TobiasSodergren writes "People at W3C seem to have had a busy Friday, according to their website.
They have released no less than 4 working drafts
(Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide,
the QA Working group - Introduction,
Process and Operational Guidelines,
Specification Guidelines)
and 2 proposed recommendations:
XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0
and HTML DOM 2.
Does the this mean that one can expect browsers to behave in a predictable manner when
playing around with HTML documents? Hope is the last thing to leave optimistic people, right?"
doesn't matter... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
When there was 1 standard (HTML), browsers didn't behave predictably.
Now there are more, there is more scope for implemetations to have their quirks, not less.
Standards are large and complicated descriptions of expected behaviour. Each implementor may have a slightly different interpretation. Different implementations will have their strengths and weaknesses which make different parts of the standard easier or harder to implement fully and/or correctly. There may even be reasons why an implementor may choose to ignore part of a standard (perhaps it is difficult and he believes that users don't want or need that functionality yet).
Unfortunately, standards are an ideal to aim for, not a description of reality.
The W3C is a joke (Score:2, Insightful)
Has any company yet written a complete CSS1 implementation? A complete working version of DOM0? Yet here we are toiling away on XHTML and CSS3(!) and DOM Level 2. And they don't even seem to give a rat's ass if anyone actually follows the rules.
From what I hear about CSS3, it's going to be such a massive specification that no company (save Microsoft, if they actually gave a damn) would possibly be able to implement it.
What are we doing? The W3C puts out specifications that by the year become less and less relevant because their possible implementation date grows further and further remote. We'll see CSS3 arrive but will we ever see it in action? Or will it be supplanted by CSS4 and 5 which we will also never see? In the meantime we see developers actually building websites entirely out of Flash because there's one reference implementation (one version, period) and it just works. Is that the future we want?
It's time to hold these clowns accountable. Make them do some real work: make them create a working version of their spec. Make them brand one developer's work as a reference. Make them do something to prove that these standards are more than just empty clouds of words!
Re:doesn't matter... (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a student computer lab for a fairly large university, about 28,000 students. You wouldn't *believe* the problems I have to deal with because of stupid, and I stress stupid, professors using stuff like MSword/powerpoint for their class notes and webpages.
I'll give you a few examples. Powerpoint is the most common for posting class notes. All good and fine because thanks to OpenOffice even a linux box can read pp slides just fine. The problem is printing them. Since we have only dot matrix printers (long story...) if the professor uses too weird a color scheme the slides don't print worth a damm, even with 'print only black/white' option checked. Problem #1.
The bigger problem is when they use MSword to post syllabi, notes, etc. Students have a problem viewing them at home for whatever reason (most likely they are using an old version of word) and they have to come back to campus to look at this stuff. It is insane. I always direct them to install OpenOffice but sometimes they might only have a modem so it isn't really an option. And if you talk to these professors about only posting stuff in MSWord they get defensive and say such things like 'everyone uses it' and other to the like. Try pointing out that just clicking 'save as rich text format' will cover 99% of the stuff they publish just doesn't work. Sigh. It is becoming a real problem. Same with webpages - what standards, microsoft is a stanard, I'm sure this would work fine if you would use a *microsoft* browser, etc, etc.
Not that all professors are dumb, a lot use things like rich text format and try to stay away from word but alot don't. It is a major headache to some students, and for me. And don't even get me started about how IE handles word documents - has the nasty tendancy to embed them within the current frame which causes havoc with printing, saving, etc - at least for your average student.
Seriously, more teachers need to be educated on thigns like open formats. For instance, it wouldn't be that hard to devolp a campus-wide XML format and a nice little front-end for making syllabus's, class notes, outlines, etc available to all faculty. That way you could ensure that everyone had equal access to the documents instead of forcing students to use MS products.
Does anyone ever... (Score:2, Insightful)
Standards can be made, don't expect that people will ever follow them.
-- AcquaCow
Re:Yea, bash MS some more... (Score:2, Insightful)
There are some sites that are absolutely committed to IE and use evil tech like VBscript. Mostly, sites are optimized to IE's idiosyncracies. Since there's no W3 standard on rendering broken, non-compliant code, IE made it render a particular way while Netscape rendered it a particular way. With proper, compliant code, the pages look close enough or at least don't entirely die when you load them. And of all those non-compliant tools, I typically only see iframe, spacer, and bgsound being used.
But as IE market share grew, lazy/ignorant web designers (which includes Frontpage users) started to test only for IE. When MS destroyed Netscape, most web designers stopped testing for alternative browsers. So Microsoft indirectly caused mass W3C noncompliance.
I think the problem with your post is that you confuse standards with features. CSS support is a feature. An analogy: the DMV license application form in my state comes with a voter registration form attached. DMVs aren't required to attach forms; it's just an added bonus to promote voting. But, the voter registration form has to be standard. If my DMV office created a "SDMV voter registration form" that had extra questions like political ideology and sexual preference, any other DMV would wonder what the hell the DMV branch was thinking when they made the form.
It does seem that Mozilla is a lot more willing than the old Netscape and Opera to render broken, non-standard HTML pages, although IE will still render the mind-bogglingly broken things.
With Mozilla 1.1, I have seen _no_ pages that only work in IE ( excluding those using Evil MS Tech (tm) ), and a minority (usually made by non-professionals) that totally screw up the rendering.
Re:Yea, bash MS some more... (Score:4, Insightful)
Shock horror! Browser released in 1996 fails to support latest web standards!
If you want to bash Netscape, aim at Netscape 6 or 7 (both of which have superb standards compliance thanks to the Mozilla project). Netscape 4 simply isn't relevant any more, and hasn't been for several years. It's only big companies and institutions who don't want the hassle of upgrading their site-wide PCs that are keeping it alive, and with any luck even they will give it up soon.
Re:doesn't matter... (Score:1, Insightful)
It is not only Web development (Score:1, Insightful)
OWL is about information retrieval, and 'XML-Signature XPath Filter' is about document signing.
The DOM stuff, is no more only a Dynamic HTML stuff. DOM is important because it is being actively used to manage XML documents, and previous specifications are very clumpsy because they are a compromise between previous brosers specific market standards.
Maybe, it is a need to develop some simple DOM stuff from scratch instead of adding levels over a compromise approach. And again, as said above, give a reference implementation, to start with.
Vokimon
Standards *DO* work. (Score:5, Insightful)
MSDN clearly marks out which functions are standard to and which version of HTML/DOM they are complying to.
Mozilla is almost de-facto compliant because that's the only thing they have to work from and they don't have an agenda like interoperation with MS Office/Front Page.
Standards compliance does work, it's the lazy/inept authors of web pages that are to blame for faulty product resulting from an ad-hoc approach to web page development.
Then again, like the saying goes: "A bad workman always blames his tools..."
Re:Eh? (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe WOL really was right!