It seems like more and more, Google is leveraging their near-monopoly on web browsing to just skip the proposal process and do whatever they want without discussion.
Despite all the suggestions of "browser wars", they're actually very friendly and collaborative.
So far I think that's been a good think on balance because they are good technologies. But it is worrying how much power Google has in this space.
WebP is a file format and doesn't fall into the normal standardization process. Browsers implement support for new file formats at their own behest.
Where one actor can also start using the new "standard" overnight and break lots of services for people which are not using their browsers... You know what I mean. It's some kind of enforcing to have a monopoly.
You'll note that they're also willing to kill features which are not adopted, like PPAPI.
After adding whitelists for Google properties like Hangouts, of course.
> It is most likely that this will be added to other browsers like Firefox too.
> Microsoft’s new version of Edge is going to be based on Chromium, so this will be available on Edge too.
So, although some discussions with Firefox may have begun, it's clearly using the Microsoft decision to use Chromium as a way to force their standpoint. Note also the lack of mention of Safari.
This is the kind of stuff that should go thru a central committee because different browsers will react differently to what should be a simple url.
Browsers copy features from each other. If this is a useful feature, it would make its way to other browsers pretty soon.
By golly, that's the problem right there.
But the self contained system will have thousands of incompatible implementations, and the shared system will be easier to interact with and build on top of.
What this means is that a browser should standardize on things meant to be interfaces, and leave out all of the rest. Unfortunately, they didn't and now browser engines are huge and impossible to evolve except by adding more stuff.
Similarly, the value of programming languages is almost entirely in the interfaces they provide which allow you to develop code. Lisp provides almost none of that, and that is why it failed to become mainstream.
This is a bit of a misconception. One can still write Haskell98 whilst using a library that use a GHC-specific extension. The library doesn't (have to) force its consumers to use extensions too!
We're really far from IE6 era of complete stagnation.
And that is bad exactly why?
> Though existing HTML support for id and name attributes specifies the target element directly in the fragment, most other mime types make use of this x=y pattern in the fragment, such as Media Fragments (e.g. #track=audio&t=10,20), PDF (e.g. #page=12) or CSV (e.g. #row=4).
fragments is already there but most pages do not have a clickable ID attribute. If Chrome could automatically provide one I think it's more convenient than F12 a devtool for links.
That’s not really the point
For example, WebSQL died because there was only one implementation: implementations come before the standards.
In the W3C process, a Working Draft can be written before any implementations. Even a CR doesn't need to have been realised. To progress to PR and Recommendation, it needs to have implementations.
WHATWG is more descriptive, HTML 5 has been described as a collection of everything Hixie has seen somewhere on the web and thought cool.
Still, it's nothing new that browser vendors just add the things they think may be useful and see what sticks (which then eventually ends up in some standard at some point like asm.js/WebAssembly - or fizzles out like NaCl).
These days with vendor prefixes, polyfills and generally a focus on backward compatibility there's typically some care taken to not leave users of other browsers in the dust.
That's very different from past efforts like, for example, ActiveX which made a full (but undocumented) Win32 environment part of the web browser design.
It was good while it lasted.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#/media/File:Web_...
[2]: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/05/reconciling-mozillas-missi...
The web is a completely different place today. Everything renders consistently across the different browsers - even Edge for the most part. Javascript is a modern language now. Video/audio embeds were finally standardized. Layout tools are significantly better with flexbox and soon, grid.
The idea that we were at some web standards pinnacle in 2008-2012 is crazy to me. The pinnacle is now.
I don't think the point was that we were at a pinnacle in terms of standards quality, completeness, or user agent consistency. Rather I think the point – at least it for me – was that during those years it was more of a conversation, not Google choosing a direction and everyone else more or less forced to follow suit. We are certainly in a better spot today in terms of capability, I agree, but I'm not sure I'd agree that we're in a better spot in terms of collaboration.
Whether or not you agree is one thing, but I hope my point is clearer now anyways. :o)
My opinion is that the collaboration is probably the best it's ever been right now. The example I gave lower down in this thread is that when WebAssembly was introduced, the Chrome team decided to deprecate their own solution, PNaCl.
We're far from the days of ActiveX.
https://blog.chromium.org/2017/05/goodbye-pnacl-hello-webass...
Likewise!
WebAssembly is a very good counter example, but still my feeling – or fear, really – is that this is not in spite of Google's hegemony but because of it. Let's say they hadn't gotten on board with WebAssembly and instead doubled down on PNaCL or come up with a different competing proposal. Even if all other parties rallied around WebAssembly there's a very good chance the dominance of Google would make it stillborn. If it's not in Chrome, it's simply not worth bothering, purely due to its dominance.
I recognize though that this is a bit of a straw man argument, and one based more in my opionins and feelings in the matter rather than anything resembling objective truths. I suppose that's also why we'll have to agree to disagree. :o)
> We're far from the days of ActiveX.
Thankfully!
So yeah, standards please. And not Googley “Comments? What do you mean ‘comments’? We’ve already shipped this and we’re not changing it, so you better follow suit”-standards.
Nowhere in the standard "higher search ranking on google inc" is mentioned as a must have feature. Yet it is the only feature anyone care about when discussing adoption.
Regarding AMP, I appraised it from a speed perspective and found it partially effective, but only a bandaid fix. Addressing real site speed issues is the better approach.
https://blogs.bing.com/Webmaster-Blog/September-2018/Introdu...
They already started doing part of this plan btw - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=881410
While Chrome does useful stuff like this, Firefox progress in the web space is... eh... adding ads to the home page?
Maybe Firefox should've went with a proposal on how to add ads into the browser, or on how to send all of your URL history to a third party. :^)