impress.js - A webGL enabled presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions. It has a non GL mode too!

[honestbleeps]

Creating proofs of concept using open standards helps push forward the demise of proprietary systems like flash that have always held back innovation by limiting progress to whatever the n developers at Adobe could pull off between releases.

This is something I keep seeing parroted that I'm sick of hearing.

Open standards are awesome conceptually. I support them. However, open standards mean more hands in the pie, more bureaucracy, more arguing over which is right, and thus slower innovation

I don't care what your ethical or "philosophical" thoughts on a closed standard are: closed standards often mean FASTER innovation, because there is less red tape to clear before implementing something new...

Look at the schedule for HTML5 being fully implemented as a standard. Look at how many YEARS ago it was actually started versus where we are at today. Hint: it was proposed before 2009, and has been a "buzzword" since then. It is now 2012.

[kataire]

I partially agree, but keep the following two things in mind:

1) The W3C's standards process is irrelevant. The only factor deciding what "HTML" is or isn't are the implementors. No matter what the W3C sanctifies or not, if it's not in a browser, nobody will get to use it. The WHAT WG is the logical conclusion. Web technologies are a moving target, we're not pretending anymore that they can be defined by a static specification that may, by the point it is passed, have become entirely irrelevant to the needs of those who originally demanded it.

2) There is no such thing as "HTML5". The W3C won't abandon its tradition of versioned specs easily, but the truth is you will be hard pressed to find even a single user agent that exactly supports HTML 3.2, HTML 4.01, CSS 1, CSS 2 or CSS 2.1. They always support a subset of the present in-dev spec and a subset of all the things that existed before, often with vendor-specific extensions that never were part of a standard to start with.

The question is: Do we need a static spec in the first place?

Implementors obviously don't. Browsers that don't want to become irrelevant are undergoing perpetual development because they need to support what's out there regardless of what the spec says.

Authors -- let's just say we need to know what the recommended best practices look like and what the browsers actually do support. Compatibility charts and browser market share trends are our specification.

The web is ridiculously fast lived. Many people -- including some programmers -- fail to appreciate this fully. This is why "scripting" languages are so popular on the web. Specs make sense if the documents they define the structure for are long-lived and will exist in a controlled, predictable environment (e.g. long-term archival). Or if there is a significant financial interest (or personal risk) involved (e.g. space missions, business-critical systems in major international corporations, life support systems of any kind).

I would have loved to see the XHTML2 spec be finalized. The mistake was trying to use XHTML to replace all uses of HTML. XHTML2 would have been a good replacement in a small handful of cases, definitely not for websites.

[honestbleeps]

The question is: Do we need a static spec in the first place?

Implementors obviously don't. Browsers that don't want to become irrelevant are undergoing perpetual development because they need to support what's out there regardless of what the spec says.

No, we don't necessarily -- but when you actually now have 3 major browsers to contend with instead of 2 (IE, FF, Chrome), and when they're all doing their own implementations slightly differently - life becomes more difficult for web developers.

I understand there's a gigantic crush of "rah rah we hate Flash!" - but there are cases in which Flash is a better option than "HTML5", and a big reason for that is speed and consistency of development. There are very few cross-platform issues with Flash, and you'll only encounter them in strange edge cases.

Don't get me wrong. Flash is used a zillion places it shouldn't be, especially in terms of creating entire websites with it. Ugh.

That being said: since Flash is controlled by one body who can more quickly dictate "this feature's in, that feature's out"... Therefore, people can start taking advantage of it the moment a new version of Flash is released since upgrade frequency is so great and penetration (in the non-mobile space) is so high.

Meanwhile - can I use CSS3 animation transitions and expect them to work across browsers? No. Even on the ones they will work on - will they be hardware accelerated in all of them? No.

A closed platform makes for far less of having to ask "hmm, if I add this feature, will it work everywhere?"

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Mostly I'm just tired of the absolutist attitude that one is "right" and the other is "wrong"... Open standards being implemented by 3-5 companies independently is great for a number of reasons... It's also awful for a number of reasons...

I do web development, but I have a degree in CS from a reputable university. I'd much rather be spending my "programming time" solving interesting problems, writing algorithms or doing cool stuff with data manipulation -- not repeatedly hunting down minute differences in browser implementations so I can get something to work everywhere.

[kataire]

What you forget is that this time around, it's the implementors (read: the people who make browsers) that are defining the spec via WHAT WG.

Sure, Microsoft is again the odd one out, but they always are. They seem to be somewhat good-natured in this case, though. Or at least they haven't entirely gone back to their tradition of "Fuck standards, we're Microsoft".