Or this could all simply indicate that the W3C is being very sensible and not trying to push standards beyond what people are actually doing or want to do.
Perhaps to some extent. But then you end up in a situation such as the MSIE / Netscape browser war where multiple features are introduced, with each party wanting their own extensions included into the spec. Which ever is most popular wins, but leaves a number of developers / users out in the cold.
Until 802.11x came along, very few people used wireless computer networks, similarly with GSM for mobile phones. Perhaps the W3C should trail blaze in the same manner. Indeed html and xml were 'new' (if tidied up sgml) and presented many new opportunities.
The example you give of Flash is an interesting one... but SVG has also come a long way and is a similarly complex technology.
Indeed it has. And I've used SVG for a few experiments, to get a feel for it. The spec looks good and very powerful. Now if only someone would implement it. Opera, Safari and Firefox are all developing their SVG support, however it is slow going. Opera appears to be furthest along, with Firefox 2 supporting a sub-set of the spec and Safari having limited support in nightly builds. One of the most powerful features of SVG imho is the ability to mix xml namespaces using the foreignObject in SVG. Which Safari supports, but does little else, Opera doesn't support and Mozilla (1.8? Firefox 3) will / does in nightlys.
This is why I suggested that perhaps the W3C should look at developing a standards based browser, to push other browser developers to support new standards less than five years after they are released...
Don't get me wrong - I have great respect for the W3C, and to some extent their task is impossible. But it does need a shake up, because it's not quite working at the moment.
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