All I can say is that I think discussions on this list are of a very
closed,
almost defensive nature. But perhaps that is my own fault.
Your only fault, just like me, was to believe this was a serious place
for discussion. But it isn't: it is just a tool: feedback "praising"
the spec will be kept well safe, while feedback suggesting anything
that was not the idea of browser vendors gets buried in
side-discussions or simply ignored. In the end, feedback is not being
used to improve the spec, but to hide the fact that it is nothing else
than the tyrannical imposition of browser vendors upon the entire Web.
So once they go through and publish HTML5 as a recommendation or
standard, they will use all this filtered, non-representative
feedback, to claim that it was defined by the entire Web community.
But the truth is that browser vendors will do whatever they please,
just like they did before the W3C existed, only that they are now also
trying to attach it the "standard" tag.
Maybe I'm completely wrong on this but, since I joined this list few
months ago, I have seen absolutelly nothing that could make me think I
am.
I had my doubts when I heard browser vendors were going to do the next
standard. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, I had high hopes as
well. I read both the X/HTML5 and the XHTML2 spec over the past two months,
and if I was given a choice (but that is personal ofcourse) I would choose
XHTML2 without a second thought. Despite the fact that it (too) is very
inaccessible. At least it is less bloated and less stringent. The X/HTML
spec reads too much like a law and leave little or no room for the creative
designer minds that eventually need to work with it.
I am slowely but seriously contemplating organising the designer world and
creating our own standards. these browsers have been nothing but troubles
since the first day of the internet. First a "war", then it was slow and bad
implementation of standards, and now it is creating a new standard which is
unusable in a practical sense for designers. (and it won't guarantee anyone
that it will mean all browsers will be standards compliant, so what is the
point?) As a designer all I want is a standard that enables me to design and
to comply to usability, accessibility etc. without having to worry about UAs
breaking or doing things differently just because someone thought: "wow,
look we can do that...how gimmicky. Let us implement it".
Browser vendors should equally comply to standards and simply make browsers
user friendly. Neither designers nor UA manufacturers have any business of
writing specs!
Well, sorry for the rant, but this is just another sad example I think of
free market and free speech being abused.
