W3c - an embarrassment for front-end | Hacker News Reader

W3c - an embarrassment for front-end

onderhond.com

16 pointsonderhond12 comments

“How unreasonable is it to demand a certain degree of professionalism from the w3c? All I want is to point people to the w3c when they have any intentions of finding out more about html, css, javascript, accessibility or whatever other front-end related topic, without feeling embarrassed to do so or without putting those people off before they even started?”

So the problem is that the w3c is obtuse and hard to use as a lay person, but also that their most recent moves to improve their image do nothing for improving the author's sales pitch for standards-based web technologies, which, let's be honest, is not really their job[1]

To be fair, the w3c is a bit obtuse, but it's also not an educational outreach organization, it's a standards body that makes recommendations (and the recommendations are actually targeted towards browser implementers first, and end-users second). I don't think the author or his clients are really their target audience.

[1]: http://www.w3.org/Help/#compliant

I agree with you, the W3C mainly wrote specifications for implementors (which is why as a front end person you must read the spec and 'read' the implementation of it in the browser) and the role of talking to authors was left to those who write books. But the W3C has made efforts with the HTML5 specs to speak directly to web authors [1] and is now engaged in this badge outreach. So, while I find most of the original post to be a bit garbled and unfocused I think that if the W3C is now going to be speaking to authors it does need a little bit of a tidy up, perhaps a small garden of documents for authors that easily navigable with some more verbose explanations of what and where these documents sit in the master plan. Also a little bit of history wouldn't go amiss, the W3C didn't write the HTML5 spec, it co-opted it from the WHATWG after admitting that XHML2 wasn't going to fly. I think it's important to understand the history and understand the relationship between bodies like the W3C and WHATWG etc, browsers vendors and the author. The W3C has it's place, but it's not as important as most authors think it to be.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-author-view/

Whatever the w3c would like to be, there is a different reality, namely what people perceive them to be. Client, back-end programmers and other non-front-end people alike look to the w3c when it comes to front-end. And seeing they've just launched a community site built around a silly logo, I'm sure they are a tad more than a simple standards body.

If they are not happy with their public image, it's up to them to make it clear (and not through a few paragraphs on their oh-so-usable site).

What a miserable, pointlessly negative article. It's not a terrible site, it's not up to you to judge their casual approach, and it's not like you're paying them money. Why didn't you spend the time writing this article running around a park or even coding websites?

Lighten up, man.

Most of Antwerp's parks are a bit disappointing for such an otherwise marvellous city, I'm afraid.

Yellow text on brown: an embarrassment for front-end.

For slightly more serious critique, the only mention of 'video' is in the heading that says 'HTML5 Video.' The author misunderstands non-profit organizations as a place where people don't get paid. The assertion that 'the general perception of the logo is less than positive' is made with no numbers backing it up. Many dislike it, but many also like it. And complaining about CSS3 being part of 'HTML5' is the worst kind of pedantry.

It's quite funny to criticize a html-guy on worrying about semantics ... seriously, it's the core of html and the core of my every day job.

If you want a more detailed explanation, check the "sad semantics" section here: http://www.onderhond.com/blog/work/html5-meet-world-irony

Seriously, I'm an "HTML guy" too. But you're missing the forest for the trees. Yes, in an idealized world, "HTML5+CSS3+JS" would be a more accurate name, but I wouldn't care if it was called Jesus Christ if that's what made people actually want and adopt web standards.

See your comment above about 'the way that they are' and 'the way that people perceive them to be,' and apply it to HTML5 itself rather than the WHATWG.

Can someone please explain to me whom exactly it harms to use "HTML5" as an umbrella term for new tags, CSS3 and new Javascript features?

I mean, many of those tags aren't even useful without hooks to manipulate them. What's the point of a <canvas> when you don't have JS bindings to draw on it?

What do you do, when you need to talk about the HTML5, not about it and related stuff? <canvas>, as important as it is, is only a piece of HTML5 markup additions.

Pedants.

The sort of people who take issue when CSS3 is included in HTML5 are the same sort of people who'd whine about less vs fewer, or pounce on someone for not using the subjunctive case for a counterfactual. There is no place for dogmatic prescriptivism in rational discourse.

As an aside, I really like the HTML5 logo.

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