In an eloquent radio interview for National Public Radio (NPR), Paul Ford of ftrain describes the evolution of Web standards.
What's especially interesting is that Paul uses descriptions of human language as a metaphor for the merging of various Web standards. He carries the metaphor through very well, and as a result describes the standards issue in a very non-judgemental, realistic way.
This is an alternative way to get the message out. Matt Robinsion developed the Wish You Were Here pages : a small site designed to advocate modern web design practice, with tips for web designers. Tips are arranged or grouped in categories from Design(Making your site attractive and usable.), to Coding(markup)(Writing better HTML and CSS), to Content(Improving your site content).
“Elegant, flexible designs, easier maintenance and lower bandwidth costs. Don't you wish you were here? Look through these postcards for coding, design and content tips for your own sites, and if one of the sites you visit regularly doesn't measure up, why not show them you care by emailing them the URL of an applicable card?” Matt Robinson on the page
On the front of accessibility, one may like to pass out the link or cards from another website. The WAI Quick Tips Reference can be quite helpful to many. The cards or list contain 10 key accessibility tips and the printed version will fit inside a wallet and are available for free.
Quoted in a recent ZDnet article:
“[Now that Microsoft has announced the end of standalone versions of Internet Explorer,] people will think, ‘are the applications I'm writing for the browser browser-agnostic, or are they IE applications—which makes them Windows applications?’ If I want an application to run on a Linux desktop or Macintosh desktop, maybe the way to do that is to ensure it runs on Mozilla, Safari and the other main browsers.” —Michael Silver, Gartner Group research vice president
“The bottom line is that consumer-facing Web sites have been remiss in supporting the latest standards, and unresponsive to the needs of many users. It's time to reassess that approach, and Microsoft's decision is a good spur to doing just that.” —James Governor, RedMonk principal analyst
Amen.
Bucking the trend towards browser-neutral, standards-based web development, Buy.com's new music site, BuyMusic.com, requires Internet Explorer for Windows.
Browser-specific development. How quaint. Did I miss the time-warp back to 1995?
A few of articles to help put the AOL announcement into perspective:
C|Net has a summary of the AOL and Mozilla Foundation announcements. The story contains a couple of factual glitches. First, the AOL-Microsoft settlement didn't guarantee AOL would use IE; it guaranteed that AOL could use IE royalty-free for the next seven years. AOL and everyone else can do so already; the settlement just guarantees Microsoft won't start charging AOL royalties until 2010 at least. Second, the Mozilla project didn't switch their focus from the monolithic suite to Firebird (née Phoenix) to achieve platform-independence or better support for Web standards. Both have been project goals from the first. The switch was aimed at simplifying and speeding development.
The Register adds some historical perspective, and a few not-entirely-undeserved barbs at the Mozilla project.
Wired takes a much more upbeat view in their article. A word of caution regarding the OneStat browser statistics cited in the article: Those figures represent browser usage observed by OneStat's clients, not a statistically valid sample of the entire Web audience. Individual sites often see very different browser usage patterns than those reported by OneStat.
Also worth a look is Peter-Paul Koch's Browser Wars II. Koch gets a couple things wrong, though. He says Microsoft may have no choice but to discontinue upgrades for the standalone IE/Win: its Trident rendering engine may be so heavily patched that further improvements are impossible. Maybe, but Microsoft has an outstanding alternative in the form of the Tasman engine that powers IE Mac and is already being moved to other platforms. Second, Koch says IE Mac is dead. It isn't. The free version of IE Mac is dead. A new version of the- browser-formerly-known-as-IE-Mac is available (for a monthly fee) as MSN for Macintosh.
Finally, Ralph Mellor posited that Mozilla's ties to AOL Time Warner may have been a bad thing. He makes an interesting point, but he's forgetting one thing: the Netscape brand. Browsers aren't typically chosen by people who care about things like independence and technical superiority. Browsers are chosen by end users. As Geoffrey Moore points out in Crossing the Chasm, end users don't understand tech and don't want to. They choose technology based on what they think is safe. Well-known brands appear safe because so many other people are using them. Aside from IE, the only browser brand with any recognition outside Web developer circles is Netscape. With the Netscape browser dead people—including some Web developers—may conclude there is no viable alternative to IE. Worse, many may decide that Web standards are synonymous with 'works in IE/Win'.
It's up to us (and you) to ensure that doesn't happen.
Though Mozilla lives on, the Netscape-branded browser is well and truly dead (or 'in maintenance mode', as the PR wonks call it).
Eulogies and opinions are popping up around the Web. Already weighing in are standards and design maven Jeffrey Zeldman, CSS Guru and Netscape evangelist Eric Meyer, tech industry pundit Dan Gillmor, Netscape developer Daniel Glazman, Web designers Douglas Bowman and Bryan Bell, dozens of ex-Netscape employees and others. The MetaFilter and Slashdot communities are talking it over, too.
At this point news is still sketchy, but the bottom line is that AOL is dismantling Netscape and laying off or “redeploying” the Netscape engineers who were working on Mozilla. Coordination of Mozilla development will continue through the Mozilla Foundation...
Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.
