Reactions to story from Sam Ruby

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  [IMG]

  http://philwilson.org/feeds/memes.atom
  45 days ago in A geek commodity · Authority: 1

  The Acid3 TestHixie's Natural LogAnne?s WeblogThoughts From EricWeBreakStuffHixie's Natural LogHixie's Natural Log Opera and the Acid3 Test - Desktop Team - by Desktop TeamThoughts From EricWeBreakStuffHixie's Natural LogAsa Dotzler - Firefox and moreHixie's Natural Log Surfin Safari - Blog Archive WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public buildThoughts From EricWeBreakStuffSam Ruby Public Acid3 buildHixie's Natural LogAnne?s Weblog mail-trends - Google CodeAaron Johnsondel.icio.us/pip/readme IEBlog : Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers – Standards Highlights Part 2Sam RubyIEBlog Tantek's ThoughtsAdactioAdactioAndy Budd::Blogography Articles
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  Misstep

  http://realtech.burningbird.net/standards/misstep/
  49 days ago in Bb's RealTech · Authority: 100

  It's disappointing to read the stories on Acid3 today. The whole point of the Acid tests, at least originally, was a celebration of standards. A friendly competition between peers who have one thing in common: an open, strong commitment to standards. Standards need the champions, too. There is so much written about Microsoft's Silverlight, or Adobe's AIR–the spotlights are on, the parties are in full swing. No champagne corks are popped when a new standard is released. There is no cult figure dressed in black rolling them out on stage–no big man capering about, or pages and pages of press. Typically, there's a quiet announcement or two, and then we absorb the new without really taking the time to reflect how dull and chaotic this would be without those pesky, necessary standards. Years ago we had champions of standards. I remember the WaSP advocating sending emails to webmasters of sites that were not standard, telling them to update. They held a sword to Mozilla's throat, demanding standards now. They were pesky–but you had to admire their passion. Now, supporting standards is…quaint. A negotiation. A compromise between the needs of the real world and the silly idealists; celebrated with pieces of paper stuck in library books, like confetti left over from the party no one attended. A few days ago I wrote critically of Wordpress 2.5, primarily because of the generated markup for the new Gallery. Perhaps this is old fashioned, but I've always practiced the belief that when you test an application for release to the public, you test it in the most restrictive environment. The most restrictive environment for generated web content is strict XHTML. If a page markup works in a strict XHTML environment, it should work in all environments. Not only is Wordpress not tested in this environment, but the release was touted by two people who have been tightly bound to the standards movement in the past. Bound to and benefited from, the standards movement. Has success changed them both so much that they no longer even use standards as a measure for their own work? And now we have Acid3, and in the race to win this gold ring, changes are rushed into releases purely to meet the requirements of this test. Rather than a celebration of broader support for a standard like SVG, included in this test, we have the creator of the Acid3 test blast the specification, itself. What was the purpose of this test? To celebrate standards? Or to have a public pissing match that fractures the seeming unity behind standards? At a time when we need this unity the most? I can agree with Rob Sayre when he wrote: I was looking over the spreadsheet covering Mozilla’s Acid3 failures, and it struck me that very few of the fixes would substantially improve the Web or the browser. They are bugs and they will be fixed (except maybe SMIL… wtf?), but they don’t impact authors or users at all. Looks mostly like an opportunity for grandstanding about “commitment to standards.” I have no doubts that Mozilla/Firefox is dedicated to standards. I've seen this dedication for ten years. It doesn't have to 'prove' to me it's committed by passing a test. The new Firefox 3 does a wonderful job on my stuff, though I would really like text-shadow, if it's not too much trouble. And SVG animation, when you have the time? Opera mentions they reached 100/100, but the really important news is that rgba is going to be a part of the next browser. That means more to me than how it does on the test. I use rgba. And Opera doesn't have to prove it's committed to standards for me–I can see the results of its commitment in my own pages. WebKit, from which Safari is derived, mentions they reached 100/100 but the disquieting news is that a buggy implementation was rushed out seemingly just to pass this test first. WebKit does a beautiful job rendering my SVG, and supports text-shadow and a host of other technologies that may not seem terribly exciting but they are important to me. WebKit doesn't have to prove it's committed to standards–I know it's committed. To me, every browser that commits to a true and open support for standards is a winner, regardless of how they score on some test. It's the commitment that sets them apart as winners. The same for web applications–no matter how fancy the user interface, or how sophisticated or popular the application, it's the commitment to standards that should be the topmost criteria for judging the success, or not, of the application. Standards may not make great marketing, but they do make great products.

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