Re:The evolution of the web, and a eulogy for XHTML2
by jefftk on Sunday October 27, 2019 @09:02AM
(#21369443)
Web development today is loads better than it was.
Then: if I wrote to the spec I would find the major browsers would all handle my page differently. Writing complex cross-browser pages was a constant pain involving IE-specific hacks (special CSS comments that only IE understood). The browsers were not interested in implementing the spec because it meant a ton of work for no benefit and existing pages would break, and the W3C had moved on to XHTML-only approaches.
Now: I can write to the spec and the major browsers (based on WebKit, Blink, EdgeHTML, and Gecko) will all do the same thing with my page. Spec violations are bugs, and are taken seriously by the browser vendors.
(Disclosure: I work for Google, though not on Chrome)
On the other hand, an independent standard organization (which, of course, the w3c isn't) would not have to follow a browser's vendor agenda. They'll ideally want to do what's right for the web.
To sum it up, I don't think having browser vendors set the standard is in the best interest of the web platform, especially when they are so unequally represented in actual usage (and we can debate about how we got ourselves in this situation).