

HTML5 Sucks. - zobzu

Oh yes, sucks it does. Under the cover of standardization, it brought us the exact opposite.<p>HTML5 has been used as a shiny wrapper, that would lead you to believe it was a  standard, and the right thing to do and use.<p>But HTML5 is not a finished spec, and might never it. Every month or week, another company  submits a new implementation of a web related technology in to make it into the HTML5 spec.
And every other company makes a different implementation.<p>What we end up with, is a gazillion of -webkit or -moz tags in CSS.<p>What we end up with, is a gazillion of javascript functions that work only with one browser engine, and javascript interface libraries on top in order to attempt to make things easier.<p>What we end up with, are 2 competing audio format implementations.<p>This could go on for a long, long while.<p>Oh and the winner? The one who will have the most influence on the w3 spec authors of course. But not the standards. Not the users. Not us.<p>For the sake of brevity, I'm only talking about HTML5, but this issue is also present with non-HTML specs such as SPDY, Dart, Native-code, and others. Those could be gold, if those were actual, discussed and accepted standards, so that the web could work the same everywhere, for everyone. Sadly, not the case.<p>Back to square 1 Mr web - please.
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mooism2
The -webkit- and -moz- prefixes are there for stuff that's not standardised
yet. They're experiments, maybe they'll be standardised as is (sans prefix),
maybe the behaviour will be tweaked and tried out in the wild some more.

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zobzu
Yeah, which is exactly part of what the rant is about in fact. It happens to
be around for ages, and ages. In released products.

Well guess what - that's non-standard then!

So I'm browsing around and half the features don't work in Chrome because
they're made for Firefox.

Then I browse around and half the features don't work (and usually entire
sites!) in Firefox, because they're made for Chrome.

Tell me how that's good. Tell me how that's different from "Best viewed on IE
and 1024x786".

Again, in the covert of HTML5 - or "just experiments" (which is another name
for the same issue), the web is non-standard.

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mooism2
Of course the experiments are in released products. How else are we to find
out whether proposed features are useful to designers or not?

Really you're ranting about poor web designers who don't understand that
different web browsers behave differently, particularly w.r.t. newer features
and especially w.r.t. unstandardised features. Do you really think poor web
designers would stop designing mobile sites specifically for the iphone's
screen dimensions and start taking the plethora of android devices into
account if only they were restricted to html4 and css1?

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tauv
C'mon dude, it's a bit chicken and egg.

What's the alternative? One singularity sits hidden in the dark to build a
standardised format to be distributed and used by all with no debate or
experimentation? or a infinite implementations of the same ideas each
supported in their own way.

And your title, html5 sucks? its not really a problem of html5, html 4, xhtml,
css, javascript, java pretty much anything that isn't controlled by a single
entity is going to be hit with this issue.

~~~
zobzu
HTML5 is the main transport for non-standardization today, hence the title. I
think it fits.

The post is meant for debate.

I'm pretty much certain that everyone can agree that the web is currently non-
standard, because its easy to demonstrate:

As I said in my other post, browse it with Chrome, then with Firefox, you
can't view the same sites. Try to play Plink, linked from HN, in Firefox, or
IE, or Opera. Nope. The reverse is also true. Heck most of us made websites
and have used js libraries just because it simplifies the process. Most of use
used -moz /-webkit for CSS3 stuff a year or two ago, and we still need them
today.

I do not claim to have a solution. If the engineers building up tons of new
awesome tech for the web are more aware about this issue, we might make it
better together. Heck, in the past we were finishing the technology drafts and
going onto the next version.

HTML5 has been in the works for years and I'm not quite sure it will _ever_
get a "finished" stamp.

And I hope no one will propose "simple, kill Firefox, IE, Opera and lets all
use Webkit!" :p

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sdfgwergsd
This person obviously didn't live through they great Netscrape IE war.

