Forum Moderators: phranque
Please list reasons to support your decision for or against w3c. Here are mine:
I don't support W3C or their policies what so ever. It is also my understanding that less than 50% of webmasters agree with their technical specifications for controlling the web's infrastructure (though the percentage of members in THIS forum may not reflect that same number - we'll see). W3C has been around since 1994 and has a mere *350* members - an EXTREMELY small number given how many webmasters there are, technical organizations with a web presence, private investors available who would support their cause, etc. To me this says a lot about how people really feel about W3C. I also find it ironic that W3C, who has declared themselves the authority of web coding, has one of the suckiest-looking sites on the Internet - I mean seriously, I've seen better work from 12 year olds with GeoCities pages. At least that's my opinion on the site.
But these are only minor issues. As open as the Interent is, I am totally against any organization - governmental or private - trying to control any aspect of it. I think that the real "standards" are set by the BROWSER MANUFACTURERS, not some third party organization. Microsoft is a great example of this, as there are many things now possible on the web thanks to advances in Internet Explorer that were not possible before. Whether you happen to "like" those new features or not is relative, my point is that because independent browser manufacturers went above and beyond the "standards" set by W3C the capabilities of the web grew.
I believe that if the web had been under the full control of W3C that it would not be as functional as it is today. I also believe that if "everyone" - including browser manufacturers (specifically Microsoft) - were in compliance with W3C's standards, growth and continued development of the web would either cease to exist or an alternative would emerge.
It has been said by some that if every site were W3C compliant, the web would be changed "for the better" - while the geeks who think that having "pretty" code is more important than the final product will agree with that mindset, I think the rest of us are smart enough to realize that any organizational body that restricts/controls the freedom to innovate or go above and beyond the "standard" is an organization that should be SHUT DOWN, not supported.
How would you feel if you were told you couldn't supe up your car or build an additional room on to your house because "standards" prevented you deviating from the original specs? As an individual living in a free country I oppose any organization that infringes on my right to innovate or take what's given to me and expand upon it - W3C does this, and that's why I'm against their standards and everything they represent.
Some will say the web wouldn't be what it is today without W3C, and sure maybe I'll give you that - but their positive influence ended a long time ago. Today, WE - the webmasters and browser developers of the world - decide what direction to take the web from here, NOT W3C.
In 5 minutes, using notepad and my own php online editor, I had my entire site up to XHTML 1.1 Strict spec. Kind of proud, actually, as now I just have to remember to keep my <br />s instead of my lazy-man's <br> and I'll be laughing...
I think closing those one-off tags is the one error that will keep me screwing up... Who would think to close an INPUT? :P
Buy standards compliant Web sites [w3.org]
No ... I merely cited these as examples. I could care less if the validator thinks my pages are compliant or not, and sure I could update my site in 5 minutes to make it compliant if i wanted to since most of the non-compliant areas are in includes anyway. I simply refuse to.
The above types of comments are usually from those who can't figure out how to correct the errors. Please, you are welcome to post some of those errors and we'll be happy to assist you in correcting them. As you say, it shouldn't take more than five minutes and you'll be doing your deed in making the web a better place. ;)
I really think there is nothing to debate here: most webmasters who actually care about their site will make it standards compliant, and then there's digitalv.
If digitalv's logic wasn't so ridiculously self-contradicting I would have been tempted to support his position, with some reservations. But to me, a consistent preference for individual freedoms and rights can only lead you to opensource software and solutions as far as I can tell, read for example the peruvian open source MS debate [opensource.org].
If a person thinks organizations making decisions for you are bad, then you have to include all organizations, public and private, including Sun, MS, Adobe etc, but especially the ones with a monopoly or near monopoly position in the market. But even within this you need to have standards so things can communicate with each other, html is a standard, obviously, and somebody has to maintain that standard. The reason I would have almost agreed with digitalv is because the people who make up the w3c are far too connected to these organizations, and are making decisions that may be too oriented to the needs of those organizations, but that's a topic that is outside of this thread I'd say.
Just a very simple and very easily corrected error, but having missed it, they just threw away any SEO advantage that the site might have previously had.
My posts are not contradictory, I guess I'm just doing a poor job of making my point. I'm not saying bad code, errors, etc. should be ignored - that has nothing to do with "validation". I'm saying that the browser manufacturers should determine what code is acceptable, and if it works properly in the browser (not due to ERROR CORRECTION but due to the fact that it's a function supported by the browser) then why should any further validation be required? In fact I'm all for browsers dropping the error correction and putting up big boxes that say "There is a problem with your HTML code, fix it" instead of doing stuff like automatically closing tags and all of the other little annoyances that MSIE "fixes" for bad web pages.
Mistakes and errors are separate issues from FUNCTIONAL code that doesn't "validate" by W3C standards.
WebmasterWorld is of course going to be on the side of W3C/compliancy - I knew this when I made the post. It's the militaristic attitude of the "standards geeks" that just gets on my nerves day after day. I mean seriously it reminds of me religious nuts who won't leave you alone until you switch to their flavor of Jesus.
The standards are voluntary, I get that. My site is not "compliant" but it IS error-free. I'm in the top 3 results in Google for nearly all of my keywords - and the two sites above me ALSO aren't compliant. Funny how the we rank higher in Google than the "compliant" sites. For someone to come along and say that validation gives ANY benefit what so ever and those who don't validate are missing out on something I have to laugh. I have no doubt that if I "validated" my code, my position in Google would DROP down to where all of the W3C-lovers in my industry are: Page 2.
So when some clown starts suggesting crap like "Google should give a boost to pages that validate" it ticks me off. The fact is that validation doesn't matter - CONTENT is what matters. As long as the page works, is error free, and you and your customers are getting the web experience you expect when you visit the site it doesn't really matter whether a site "validates" by W3C's standards or not. The attitude of most WebmasterWorld members suggests a forced migration - that everyone's pages should HAVE to validate or face some negative penalty. The responses I've received to my original post in this thread certainly confirm this suspicion, and that's something I'm against. I posted this question for people to cite reasons as to why they were for or against W3C's practices and standards - not for morons to insult me, as some of you have.
If the browsers want to start weeding out old code, I'm OK with that and will change my code when that day comes ... but as long as the browsers continue to support the flavor of HTML I use, I'll continue to use it regardless of whether W3C likes it or not.
I guess my problem isn't so much with W3C after all ... it's with the people on this board who put them on a pedastal,worship their standards as if they were a deity, and insult those who do not agree with them.
My posts are not contradictory, I guess I'm just doing a poor job of making my point. I'm not saying bad code, errors, etc. should be ignored - that has nothing to do with "validation"
that is only one sentence I know, but how would you know there was "bad code, errors, etc." if there wasn't some sort of benchmark? and yes I'm afraid it has everything to do with validation.. you are matching against some kind of "standards" benchmark in order to prove/disprove validation
it's a fact of life that we (all) need something to standardise against whether High school exams, peers, self made bodies.. it doesn't really matter (unless you write them) you kinda have to follow the rules of the "game" no matter..
personally I still can't understand the fervour behind football (soccer) myself but there is obviously unspoken rules that I don't know about.. :)
Your post was brave, perhaps everyone is getting a little cynical?
Suzy
I guess my problem isn't so much with W3C after all ... it's with the people on this board who put them on a pedastal,worship their standards as if they were a deity, and insult those who do not agree with them.
digitalv, this is what I thought was behind your post, this quasi-religious attitude you've observed is annoying, as are most quasi-religious attitudes, it's in my opinion one of the major weaknesses of webmasterworld, but maybe also one of its strengths, since when somebody has a near religious attitude towards [fill in appropriate web technology/standards/css etc] they tend to know that tiny part of things extremely well, since they see it as a near divine entity. Why anyone would want to have a near religious attitude about something as boring and trivial as web standards is another question, of course.
As a sort of side note, I picked up an old O'Reilly 'the whole world wide web' book, from 92, and the author actually noted the near religious nature of newsgroups, even back then, so I guess it's just how things work with anonymous digital communications.
I've read some of your google posts, you obviously know how to make the web work for you, I suspect better than a lot of people here if your posts are reasonably honest, and to me that's really all that matters, in fact, I'm pretty much certain you could teach me a lot in that area.
<edit - added>
The fact is that validation doesn't matter - CONTENT is what matters. As long as the page works, is error free, and you and your customers are getting the web experience you expect when you visit the site it doesn't really matter whether a site "validates" by W3C's standards or not.
I think this is a pretty important point. I have to say I pretty much completely agree with you, even though I tend to use error free html, because it's easier to debug, and I like it, but that's a personal preference that I don't think carries any further significance.
I've argued this point as well, many times. For example, XHTML 1.1 restricts what you can do, it offers nothing extra, it's a pain to work with, and has no advantages whatsoever that I can see, except meeting some arbitrary 'standard'. Mattur has posted repeatedly on that topic, and is the guy who made me start really wondering what all the fuss was about. XHTML is not XML, and never will be, since a single error would make your document not parse, like forgetting to change & to &.
And you can go beyond this: despite claims made here, often, the fact is that if you start surfing at random, ignoring css/geek type sites like mine, just clicking links from one random site to another, the odds are it will be a long time before you find a page that actually validates, uses a doctype declaration correctly, or at all. And every one of those pages is going to give its users the information they were looking for.
Bad code, at all levels, has to do with validation in every way.
There are many types of bad code:
- Using tags that do not exist, like <blink> in some browsers, or are misspelt, such as <tblae>.
- Typos with malformed tags such as <table or /td> etc.
- Nesting errors (wrong order of open/close), like <table><td><tr> and so on.
- Using attributes that are not supported, like <p background="red">
- Using attribute values that are not supported, <table width="blue">
Some of these are simple typos by the page designer, while others are down to the usage of proprietory standards not supported by another browser from a rival maker. Running the page through a validator finds all these errors, so you can fix them. Viewing the page in a browser may not necessarily actually find any of those errors.
>> I'm saying that the browser manufacturers should determine what code is acceptable, and if it works properly in the browser (not due to ERROR CORRECTION but due to the fact that it's a function supported by the browser) then why should any further validation be required? <<
Hmm "Works in "the" browser"? Which browser? and how do you verify it? Have I really got to run all 150 browsers out there, and try the site on every micro-version point release? Maybe I only have to try the top ten? Aaaarrrgghhh! Utter madness. The HTML validator at w3.org instantly tells me that the page code conforms to the core rules of HTML coding, in one easy move.
>> In fact I'm all for browsers dropping the error correction and putting up big boxes that say "There is a problem with your HTML code, fix it" instead of doing stuff like automatically closing tags and all of the other little annoyances that MSIE "fixes" for bad web pages. <<
Great idea. I design in Mozilla, and quick test in IE, but then I get to hear that people using Opera just get to see a big "This site does not comply" message on their screen. Have I really got to run all 150 browsers out there, and try the site on every micro-version point release? Maybe I only have to try the top ten? Aaaarrrgghhh! Utter madness. The HTML validator at w3.org instantly tells me that the page code conforms to the core rules of HTML coding, in one easy move.
My 6-step design process: Design it. Code it. Spellcheck it. Validate it. Publish it. Forget it.
W3C happens to be the authority on what is "proper" on the Web. Not by legal arrangements, but by mutual understanding and unspoken agreements. Wouldn't the web be much better if all pages validated and used proper markup? The fact that most pages currently don't is really besides the point... It's like saying: "Everyone else is dishonest -- they lie and steal and cheat on their loved ones... so, you see, honesty is really not important". Honesty is important to me, and that's why I choose to be honest, no matter what everyone else decides to do. I also think the Web would be better if everyone followed the same set of standards. That's why I choose to do it. I fight for what I believe in, and strive to be an example. That's why I feel strongly about CSS too.
Taking a stand for something always takes courage. Just floating with the masses is no big deal. It requires nothing. I stand for Web standards, and they give me freedom. It's my choice, and directed by no one but myself. The masses can do nothing to affect the way I think. Sure, someone will argue that I'm under the will and power of W3C. But that's not true. If you choose to do something, you are the one in charge over that decision.
Standards are growing faster than we realize. The accessibility and standards awareness is here to stay. There will be a boom where those actively standing on the W3C side will come out ahead, and everyone else will struggle hopelessly to catch up.
Standards = freedom, time, money, future
bjork: I thought I could organize freedom... how scandinavian of me...
I always liked that line, being a scandinavian myself I saw the truth in it, and the mistake it points out.
I guess my problem isn't so much with W3C after all ... it's with the people on this board who put them on a pedastal,worship their standards as if they were a deity, and insult those who do not agree with them.
Browser makers are free to make their own language, but it's more benificial to them, and everyone on the internet if they simply don't, and let the W3 do it.
IMHO, the W3C - or some other global authority - should not only govern standards, but also be responsible for authoring the core browser engine too.
No more browser incompatibility hassles, coupled with the crucial side-benefit of "forcing" contributors to understand the challenges of actually implementing what they're proposing... and hopefully articulating it more colourfully to the masses too!
In recent years we've seen yet more browsers occupying our testing routines and quite frankly I'm tired of it - The browser engine is now at a point of critical mass and importance that it's become a utility.
I'm not suggesting that IE etal disappear but, just as now, they compete (and charge) on features... a bit like the IE-engine-based browsers do today, except ALL browsers would be W3C-engine-based (or similar other body) browsers instead.
The originator of this thread is quite wrong though to dismiss the "ideology" of what the W3C stands for and in doing so is totally missing the point; the web is popping up in different guises on different devices in different situations.
We webmasters are not making these advancemements, the real world is and what's more, they're slicing up our demographics... in other words, the same people that want to come to your sites may not be able to because it isn't "compliant". As more and more of these devices roll-out, more and more of your audience become marginalised.
I want my sites to be available, period. I want a standards-body to build and govern the core browser engine and mark-up language such that current and future browsing devices render my sites output without me having to test (and hack) for each one - give the reponsibility of the core browser-engine to a unitary body and let the browers manufacturers dress it up for each of their own markets.
[edited by: TheWhippinpost at 11:26 pm (utc) on May 10, 2004]
About the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) [w3.org]
The World Wide Web Consortium was created in October 1994 to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its interoperability. W3C has around 350 Member organizations from all over the world and has earned international recognition for its contributions to the growth of the Web.
I don't really see a "quasi-religious" attitude at all around here. Sensible people make use of ANY tool which advances their goals.
Personally, I don't give a rat's ass about google, page rank, etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseam. That's NOT my "holy grail", regardless that I spend a good deal of time making sure my pages/sites validate to current standards. However, I do find that it makes a particular kind of sense for mega-engines like google, yahoo etc. to REQUIRE valid html before listing a site. And that validity of course would have to be reaffirmed whenever w3c tweaked the standards. That's only logical, and besides, it's by way of being good business as well. After all, if you can't bother to write valid html, who's to ensure that your product isn't a death-trap f'rinstance?
[And do NOT whine "they're two different things" at me! No, they are NOT. Quality in that part of one's business which produces one's product for sale to the world at large should reflect, and be reflected BY, quality in ALL parts of the site which provides the world at large the ability to order one's product - presumably providing one the wherewithal to live long and prosper. Ouch.... *sigh*]
Do standards have iconic status?
Probably not, otherwise they wouldn't be open to non-compliance.
Do standards not matter because content does?
I'm not even going to debate this. One has nothing to do with the other.
I'm still confused as to what you're actually cross about. You insist that you don't care about standards compliance, but the fact that proprietary tags in your code cause the validator to fail your code seems to bother you enormously. You don't come across as someone who doesn't care.
I'm sure that representatives of Netscape and MSIE on the W3C board have argued for the inclusion of each and every one of those proprietary tags in the official spec. Some of them have been accepted (frames), some haven't been. You appear to be saying that every tag ever invented by a browser manufacturer ought to be included in the spec?
If this process was adopted, then we would get back to a situation where lots of pages don't work in lots of browsers and in the end everyone gives up and uses IE. I really don't think this is good for anyone.
If not W3C standards, what is going to prevent MSIE from absolutely dominating the web? Will Macromedia be your chosen saviour?
Heh, why are some people so passionate about a friggin web browser? If all browsers were fully standards compliant, as you seem to hope they were, then they would all be EXACTLY THE SAME - so what difference would it make as to whether you had a choice or not?
Don't twist my words or take what I just said at anything other than face value - I am of course "pro-choice" on this matter - but if all browsers were identical and did not deviate from W3C standards then what difference would it make which one you used?
If all browsers were fully standards compliant, as you seem to hope they were, then they would all be EXACTLY THE SAME
Not quite. They would all display pages the same way, but there's more to a browser than simply how it displays a page.
I use Mozilla Firefox because of increased security, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing and nifty extensions like Flash click-to-view. As it matures, it is only going to become faster.
If all the rendering engines produce the same result, browsers have to differentiate themselves with better features. It is also good to see a race to develop new features like support for SVG and other up coming techs.
...Twist my words! ...Take what I just said ...[and give it a nice big twist!] ... [on Mario, I couldn't beat] b...owser... [the Olsens mightlook] identical [but it's all a conspiracy, and if you question me further, I'll tell you how Chef Boyarde is involved]... [if I keep bashing] W3C standards [and then complaining about people insulting me, I'll probably just ending up getting insulted more.]
Methinks thou doth protest too much. Were you simply opening a topic for discussion (and there's actually NOTHING WRONG with promoting REASONED DISCUSSION on this particular can-o-worms!), you would not have phrased your posts as brands for the burning - flame wars seem to have been your entire point; and "don't feed the troll" posts notwithstanding, you HAVE caused some quite caustic responses even from those who normally represent the "voices of reason and tranquility".
So what IS your agenda here, other than to provoke some fairly acidic posts in response to same from you - giving YOU the apparent "right" to call foul?
This is one of those situations/causes/cases where I tend to believe that the originator (you, digitalv) got hisser hands slapped for something by an "authoritative figure" somewhere, and chose to take out hisser spleen on some fairly innocent folks (the rest of us herein....) who of course do NOT react well to attack-mode - and why should we? This is by definition a set of fora based on the provision of help to those who need it.
Maybe you should go play "ninja-turtle eats/beats the eastern empire" or whatever game fits that scenario these days.... [obvious corollary to that statement is the phrase "leaving the rest of us to get on with business and the REAL world without children trolling for gob-smackers (defined as 'attention of some sort even negative')".... - and YES that was fairly nasty.... but then, I am NOT REALLY a nice person per se, so that probably should be considered almost exemplary considering the circumstances and the individual posting....]
When you start thinking that your approach is the only possible right way, you're getting very close to a religious viewpoint, but why anyone would want to have a religious attitude towards something as incredibly boring and dry as web standards is beyond me. It's like being passionate about your hammer or screwdriver, sure you want them to work reliably, and fit the screws you buy at the hardware store, but that's as far as I'd go.
Just to check, I went to one of the biggest sites on the internet, amazon, no character encoding, 492 errors on the home page. Amazon is working fine, page displays fine. They are using another approach to doing webwork, it's a different approach than the members of this forum are using and advocate. It's ok for people to use different approaches, as long as they work for the end users, who should be who you worry about anyway.
Browser makers choose which standards to implement, based I suspect largely on the limitations of what they can do within the existing architecture of their code, then they hit walls and have to redo it all, like Gecko, like IE 7 will probably do, like Opera 7 did. That's ok too to me, then I choose which one I want to use, which is also ok, and things pretty much work fine. The suggestion that the W3C try to create a rendering engine is funny, hopefully it was meant as a joke, actually I think that joke already exists, and is called Amaya.
microsoft.com does not validate
ebay.com does not validate
google.com does not validate
yahoo.com does not validate
amazon.com does not validate
1and1.com does not validate
overture.com does not validate
aol.com does not validate
business.com does not validate
All of the URLs I posted above have been immensely successful on the web. In fact, of the 10 sites I looked up, 9 of them are above and only one of them (DMOZ.org) validated. I would much rather be in the same category as those sites, than in the same category as YOURS - anyone who tells me that sites that don't validate are duds or are doing something wrong should seriously re-consider the importance they place on validation.
Have a good evening :)
Most people have said that standards shouldn't be bashed, not that any non-standards-compliant site will not succeed.
Incidentally, I use IE too. Perhaps you should deal with it.
why are some people so passionate about a friggin web browser
This issue goes waaay beyond the browser...
example.com doesn't validate
That's because those sites were started back when no one cared about accessibility and validation, because the browser differences were just that hard to deal with. And, CSS support was so poor, and it was impossible to do anything but write horrible CSS.
Besides... google.com, yahoo.com, and overture.com partially validate [jigsaw.w3.org]. However, validation goes beyond writing proper HTML and CSS. It goes beyond browser support and compatibility. It's all about providing the best possible foundation for a problem free environment where accessibility and usability is important. That's why you should validate your pages -- not because W3C says so. I could care less if your markup is all that pretty, or whether your CSS is absolutely error free. I wish they were, but all I care about is whether they are user optimized. Do you ensure that as many as possible can access your web pages, or do you discriminate against search engines, those with disabilities, alternate browsing devices, etc.?
It's up to the consumer what browser they want to use. If all of the sudden everybody switched from MSIE to Opera then I'd probably change some things on my website.
Until then I'm catering to 95% of my audience and attempting not to break 4.5% of the remaining browsers. The remaining .5% aren't worth bothering with. This decision has nothing to do with W3C, but rather the consumer.
Let the consumer set the standard.
The suggestion that the W3C try to create a rendering engine is funny, hopefully it was meant as a joke, actually I think that joke already exists, and is called Amaya.
Well I was careful to say, 'or some other body', but no, it wasn't a joke. If the W3C aint up to it, so be it but it does raise the question in my mind as to whether they should be holding the position they are.
Amaya is a cumbersome browser but that's not to say that the engine itself couldn't be used.
Sorry encyclo ..but things got slow now there's fewer earthquakes from "G" ....n' a good troll is worth it's weight in ..
All of the URLs I posted above have been immensely successful on the web. In fact, of the 10 sites I looked up, 9 of them are above and only one of them (DMOZ.org) validated. I would much rather be in the same category as those sites, than in the same category as YOURS - anyone who tells me that sites that don't validate are duds or are doing something wrong should seriously re-consider the importance they place on validation.
Still, saying that just because they don't validate means that you shouldn't either is a ridicules argument in and of itself. In fact, it is the very herd mentality that you have spoken out against. There are many good technical reasons why a site should try to validate to the W3C, many of which have been given in this thread.
