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On Nov 12, 2003, at 11:27 AM, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>
> 3. Standards are still valuable but we have to
> learn to listen and time their emergence. Rich
> client experimentation has gone on since at least
> the early nineties using the same family of design
> approach as has been later used in XUL and XAML.
> XUL and XAML validate that early work and among
> all of these, are confirmation of TimBL's principle
> of independent invention for it. That means it is time
> to begin or renew serious and legitimate standards
> work but with the understanding that the software
> companies will not slow down their development
> efforts.
I agree with the sentiment, but don't think it applies here. We *know*
that HTML is very limited for UI purposes, and that there is a lot of
innovation going on to fill in the gaps. That is the premise behind
XForms, XHTML 2.x, SVG (to some extent), and CSS. What strikes me is
how little Microsoft has supported these efforts in their products. An
IE 7 with XForms, SVG, and CSS compliance would alleviate a lot of
these problems, and serious MS participation in XHTML to focus that
effort on what they see as real customer needs would help too. But
there are no signs of that happening, so the protestations about how
limited the standard stuff is seem hollow.
Maybe this is all about geeks running wild and doing Cool Stuff
without regard to the network effect that drives the Internet, figuring
that the rest of the world can catch up at its own pace. The
alternative hypothesis that it is about market strategists running wild
and figuring that it's time to move to step 3 in "embrace, extend,
extinguish" can't be dismissed, however. What's more, I see virtually
no effort to offer evidence and arguments to alleviate such concerns.
> This is BrowserWarsRedux unless we
> are wise and patient and determined to do the
> right thing.
Uh, no, the browser wars are over. Microsoft won. This is the
Occupation Force specifying that the roads and bridges must be rebuilt
in a manner that accommodates their heavy equipment. <duck>
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