molly.com » so how do we fix the web, really?
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q: what's this web site?
a: i'm molly e. holzschlag, and this web site shares my web development work and personal thoughts. think of it as a personality site. given that, one hopes i have an interesting enough personality to keep you entertained for at least a little while.
tuesday 19 june 2007so how do we fix the web, really?
here are thoughts i’ve been having since i wrote the post “html5 and xhtml 1.1 must stop for now.” there were many fine responses and discussion of various viewpoints, which of course was part of the point of the blog post in the first place.
we are, each of us, shaped by the experiences we have. it’s funny that skeptics would suggest that microsoft has me drinking too much kool-aid, or that the what wg has my ear, or that i just want to shake up the w3c. the truth is to some extent all these are accurate: i do maintain my defense of microsoft, i respect the what wg members and have talked to many of them in depth about this issue, and my esteemed colleagues at the w3c have certainly gained my respect and love over the years, if not my general distaste for the processes and in-fighting that’s historically shaped the organization.
as we are shaped by our experiences, i want to point out that mine are perhaps unique. i’m an independent developer who has worked the web since 1993, in it since 1988, and when i caught the standards bug i threw my time, money and passion into ensuring that i went out and shook hands with as many people as i could. i might talk a lot, but i do a lot of listening too, and i’ve had the tremendous good fortune to travel the world and speak with designers and developers in every possible work environment, with every conceivable skill sets, passions and needs.
fundamentally, i’ve always been an educator, not an evangelist. my agenda is pretty simple: help people live their lives and do their jobs better by doing my honest best to share ideas, solutions, perspectives, life experiences and to improve my life in kind with the sharing and collaboration that emerges out of those relationships.
as some folks know, i’ve been touring europe and presenting on web browsers, web standards, and css. here are some of the general and sobering situations i’m running across the deeper i go into under-represented countries when it comes to educational opportunities and resources.
let’s start with a visit to hungary. the conference attendees in budapest were made up of people from all over eastern and central europe. of approximately 200 attendees:
90% have been working with html (or xhtml) for five years or longer
15% have been working with css for three years or longer
75% are still using tables for layout
2% knew what the doctype switch was
no one expressed interest or concern in accessibility for the web
about 4-5 people were on par with advanced developers in the uk, us or australia
next, amsterdam. mostly dutch attendees. typically perceived as a more technically advanced country, of the some 200 folks i interacted with over 2 days:
90% have been working with html (or xhtml) for five years or longer
45% have been working with css for three years or longer
65% are using tables for layout
10% knew what a doctype switch was
no one expressed interest or concern about accessibility for the web
about 20 people were on par with advanced developers in the uk, us or australia
now, zurich. swiss and german attendees. smaller group, 50 - 75 or so:
90% have been working with html (or xhtml) for five years or longer
10% work with css at all
98% are using tables for layout
2 people knew about the doctype switch
1 person expressed a great interest in accessibility (he explained his mother has a disability and that’s why he got interested in the topic)
1 person actually asked me “is it really possible to use css to lay out sites?
okay, this is just an anecdotal sampling, but it reflects what i’ve seen in asia, too. we forget how elite we are, how privileged to even have the conversations that we do.
afternote, 20 june 2007: i have de-emphasized the word “elite” there. it wasn’t meant as a me-better-than you as a person. think about an elite force within the military. the point is that they are trained more specifically and can be more agile in their responses due to that training. that is what i mean, and i’m afraid some people are missing my point completely because of the heated feelings around that one word.
perhaps there is a better solution than pausing standards development. if so, i’d like to know what you think it might be. one thing is absolutely key and that is there is no way we are going to empower each other and create the web in the great vision it was intended to be if we do not address the critical issue of education. and stability. and these things take time. it requires far better orchestration than i personally have been able to figure out, and while the w3c, what wg, wasp and other groups have made numerous attempts to address some of these concerns, we have failed. we haven’t done a good job so far to create learning tools and truly assist the working web designer and developer become informed and better at what he or she can do. we haven’t done a good job sitting down at the table together and coming up with baseline strategies for user agents and tools.
how this should be accomplished, i don’t know. what i do know is that we have to find a way to mitigate this problem. we have to. i do know that complicating specifications isn’t the solution. trying to manage bugs and implementation problems across all user agents and rushing to make “new” specs adds pressure and confusion to software and browser developers, book authors, technical trainers and of course the designers and developers working on the front lines and having real challenges, not theoretical ones, every day.
so what would you make of this in light of what’s going on with browsers, specifications and implementation? how on earth can we expect the hard workers of the web, who tend to be highly motivated to be educated but have precious few resources to get well educated quickly and effectively? how to we strengthen the platform, catch the world up to current practices and continue innovation?
filed under: professional, policies, standards, software, web design and development, wasp, society, w3c, browsers, microsoft, ie7, innovation, accessibility, whatwg, molly asks you, community
posted by: molly | 4:47 am |
80 responses to “so how do we fix the web, really?”
jens grochtdreis says:
june 19th, 2007 at 5:28 am
seeing these short statistics it seems the more wrong to declare the webstandards-war won, as some people did last year after @media. there is still a long way to go. that#s why it is important, that wasp or our german webkrauts (http://webrauts.de) do advertising for webstandards.
yes, we are elite. and i definitely think the “old” discussion about “new professionals” and “new amateurs” is as important and as up-to-date as it was.
ingo chao says:
june 19th, 2007 at 5:46 am
“about x people were on par with advanced developers in the uk, us or australia”
but, while visiting old europe, did you notice that electricity supply and overall electrification makes progress? don’t give up hope, molly.
the day someone manages to invite me to such a conference circus does not come closer with this post.
mark says:
june 19th, 2007 at 5:51 am
i totally agree with you on the point, that many developers still code for the boundarys browsers gave us in 1999. to some extend or more this is still due to deficiencies in the css spec. or how do you explain to a table-jockey why he has do do real hacking voodoo to vertically align a tag or make a simple 3 column flexible layout, when it takes him 3 minutes and about 40 bytes of table code without the whole help-to-build-a-better-web-sermon?
katy lavallee says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:14 am
do you have statistics for the us, uk, and australia? i know there are a lot of people here in the us even who haven’t kept up with the changes in the industry. i’m curious if that’s a minority or a majority.
gary barber says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:29 am
molly i would like to see the numbers for the us/uk and au too as in reality i think we are really like the netherlands (taking into account the people that don’t attend conferences).
you know what it comes down to, and people are going to shoot at me for saying this.
simple its easier and faster and cheaper (more profit etc) for a web designer to work with tables in quirks mode. once you have a few rules worked out you can cut a site from design to launch in about two. three hours. do it in css with all the browsers, you be lucky if it’s ready by the end of the day. so if i was looking at the dollar value alone i would be saying “screw standards, screw accessibility etc”.
the tools we have are too good at table layout automation and not at css layout automation.
i know a lot of designers that work in this mode, they will not come along to web industry gatherings as they don’t see the point. why should they upset their status quo.
is the standards war won, sadly we have just had a few battles that is all.
alvin says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:33 am
post like this makes me realize i want to hug web educators like you.
while i dont necessary think halting spec development on latest web technologies is the way to go, but i agree that the web is broken and frankly i cant think of any good solution other than keep doing the great work you’ve been doing.
tino zijdel says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:51 am
new features are mostly aimed to provide simple solutions for common use-cases, i’d say that’s quite the opposite of adding complexity. besides that it doesn’t make sense to first finish implementing the current specifications of which we know are lacking or can’t be implemented in an interoperable way at all.
furthermode i don’t really see the connection between having to finish existing implementations first and education of the less elite; just tell them how it is supposed to work and that it does work in all browsers except ie
ein elitäres grüppchen? « home is where the heart is says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:53 am
[…] ein elitäres grüppchen? 19 06 2007 molly ringwald (eine der präsentatorinnen auf der @media, der ich zuhören durfte) beschreibt in einem artikel die ergebnisse von (nicht representativen aber aufschlussreichen) umfragen, die sie im zuge ihrer präsentationen in europa durchgeführt hat. […]
arjan eising says:
june 19th, 2007 at 7:14 am
good to see that dutch people work quite well
andrew says:
june 19th, 2007 at 7:18 am
i have always strongly believed that broken software begets broken documents. as long as web browsers continue to allow incorrectly formed documents to render non-standards-compliant pages, then web developers will keep creating them.
i’m probably severely in the minority, but i think we don’t need any more html/xhtml or *tml… we need xml. if we had browsers that only parsed xml (allowing for use of an xhtml dtd), then people would not only have more freedom in design but would have to adhere to more rigid standards.
again, i know it’s not a popular sentiment, but it’s my dream.
roho says:
june 19th, 2007 at 7:37 am
i think the statistics are in one way disappointing as so many people still use the old school approach of layout with tables. on the other hand it’s good to know that the old school people are attending these conferences so something might stick.
all in all, you could be right about not calling too loud for newer versions of (x)html and css as the gap between the elitists and the main web developer population could be growing too wide to ever make the jump across if one wanted to.
sad though, but realistic.
milo van der leij says:
june 19th, 2007 at 7:42 am
you make a very good point, and it’s sobering to see the statistics that you mention.
however, i believe that most (at least 80%) of webdesign and web-development from the “non-elite” is done by mimicing and copying what the “elite” have done. there will always be a large group of people who simply do not read specifications, and instead just “view source” and learn from others’ work.
and that’s ok.
instead of pausing and letting the “elite” come up with “elegant” ways to do things like 3-column layouts and calendar widgets (which then get copied everywhere), i think we should move forward and give everyone the tools they want. the sooner everyone can copy/paste clear, standards-based code, rather than hacked-together custom scripts, the better.
and don’t forget, part of html5 is to define some of the behavior that is currently being implemented differently across browsers. taking the pain away of having to worry about different browsers should help everyone, not just the “elite”.
christos constandinou says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:13 am
i agree 100% with andrew, if we are a minority or considered, “elitist”, because we took the time to learn to code x/html, css, etc properly; all the more reason to enforce correct coding standards!
learning html and css does not take a lot of time and is not hard.
learning browser inconsistencies and ways around them to achieve a uniform design does take time, effort and can be very stressful.
however, experience is only achieved one way, through hard work over time, for anything you do, not just client side development.
if you want to be able to achieve “elitist” style greatness in your coding, then there are two things you can do:
1. learn the languages you are using and learn how different browsers render them, then practise, practise, practise; and/ or
2. get on browser vendors to support the languages the way they were meant to.
dumbing down the language into some type of internet “new speak” because most people are too lazy to take the time and effort to learn how to code properly is definitely not the solution!
why would you assume that browser vendors will render html 5/ css 3 in the same way as each other or any better than they currently do html 4/ xhtml 1/ css 2? they won’t!
probably for even longer than it’s taken to get us this far, we are taking a giant step backwards with html 5. it’s the reason why most people of intelligence have not bothered joining the working group. it’s a joke.
imagine the people writing java/ python/ perl/ whatever damn server side programming language you want, suddenly turning around and saying, “you know what? most people can’t program using our language, it’s too hard for them, maybe we should completely f**k it up for the people who can and turn it into something completely illogical.”
tino zijdel says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:22 am
christos:
“why would you assume that browser vendors will render html 5/ css 3 in the same way as each other or any better than they currently do html 4/ xhtml 1/ css 2? they won’t!”
why won’t they? there is a lot of collaboration already between browser vendors to align their implementations and new specifications such as html5 are mainly aimed at improving interoperability.
“probably for even longer than it’s taken to get us this far, we are taking a giant step backwards with html 5. it’s the reason why most people of intelligence have not bothered joining the working group. it’s a joke.”
why is html5 a step backwards? what makes it a joke? please give us some arguments. have you even read the current draft? did you follow the discussions on the public-html mailinglist?
thacker says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:33 am
chao wrote:
the day someone manages to invite me to such a conference circus does not come closer with this post.
holzschlag–
ask microsoft to issue a hasconference speaker’s invitation to ingo, please?
——————–
all this ‘elitist’ crap has me fuming. this elitism concept is part of the problem. but before i address that, if i even bother, i need to jab this tequila iv into my jugular and calm down a bit. pass the peyote, too, please.
molly says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:41 am
this is a direct quote from one of the very smart, very fun romanian developers i met while in hungary’s website, on the about page which offers some q&a:
“9. why are you using tables to implement this layout?
if you ask because you honestly believe i’d gain something from pure css, read on. if you ask because you like to nitpick and think that all websites absolutely must use pure css, please go away.
i use tables because i want the content column to be as big as possible and the sidebar column to be as small as needed, without using fixed widths or fixed margins, without faking columns with backgrounds, without having to deal with overflow issues, without having to worry about cross-browser compatibility and so on.
i know that div’s and css can be used to achieve a very similar-looking design. but i’m not a css guru so i can’t come up with the precise way to do that in 5 minutes. if i ever get a day with absolutely nothing else to do i promise i’ll look into converting to pure css, hell, i’ll try xhtml strict too. but i have other things to do until then and in the meantime tables work very well.”
christos constandinou says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:46 am
tino:
why won’t they? well why haven’t they already?
ff != msie != safari != opera != any other browser on any platform/ device.
what more do you want me to say? molly already outlined this in her previous article (http://www.molly.com/2007/06/14/defy-the-pedantic-semantic-html5-and-xhtml-11-must-stop-for-now/).
why build on top of something already broken so badly?
why is it backwards? why is it a joke? errr….
introduction of presentational elements back into structured mark-up when we should be using css for this.
continued use weakly structured code making browser rendering of html pages slower.
confusing use of section and heading tags.
lack of a role attribute (use of elements over the role attribute).
html 5 looks like it is taking a step away from its place as the model in an mvc pattern.
there is enough difficulty in getting assistive technologies to support current standards, let alone providing a useful way to support them (i.e. mods to user agent string). there seems to be a confusing message as to the future of mark-up on the web, this will not be helped by the gung-ho nature of html 5 specification.
more here: http://xhtml.com/en/future/x-html-5-versus-xhtml-2/#x5-uncool
gary barber says:
june 19th, 2007 at 8:56 am
from your comments - told you so. why should they change. the backward compatibility of the browsers has mad it such that there is no need to change, no incentive. and they are right it is easier to use tables. not smarter, just easier. and we all do tend to be a little lazy. the solution is not just education. it has to come from design tools vendors and the like. it has to come from browser vendors (if the tables didn’t render for layout what then). and finally from us, so have to educate as well as do. and promote web standards education in the tertiary learning centres too. so over time we will push the old school of table design out.
martijn ten napel says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:00 am
in defence of ‘old europe’: most of the front-runners working in the netherlands, germany, france or wherever in the eu have propably been to a confrenece on standards years ago and they don’t see a need to go again. i guess the sampling is rather skewed in that respect.
the upnote is that ‘old practice’ developers seem to feel a need these days to visite conferences they did not bother to go to before. that way you reach out to the right people.
megan says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:06 am
i tend to think of standards development as being quite separate from what designers are doing in the real world. the standards are forward thinking - and they have to be knowing how long it takes browser vendors to catch up. if we stop writing standards now, what will there be to implement in 5 years when they catch up to the current standards?
the numbers you posted here are quite interesting. as the operator of a mainstream webmaster forum i am seeing more and more participation from people who don’t come from english speaking countries (mostly from south and south-east asia in our case).
i think that continuing to reach out to these markets is key. what i’ve noticed is that a lot of the main stream web design help sites have gradually stopped reaching out to the less experienced designers. as the audience has matured, the sites mature. which is fine, but what we’ve ended up with is a lot of sites that cater to advanced audiences and few that do quality help for those who aren’t there yet.
my partner and i are working hard on a new, standards-based, quality help site for this audience (don’t worry, i’m not spamming a link!), as well as continuing to evangelize on our forum. that is where the masses are! after reading this post i think we will work harder at writing for an international audience.
oh, another thing we can all do is make sure to link to quality resources to try and push the older stuff out of the search rankings. the quality educational resources have to be out where the masses will find them - not on someone’s blog or a 3-year old ala article that they are never going to find. we all know where to find this stuff but the “working” designer obviously doesn’t.
megan says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
then, of course, there is the whole problem of reaching out to people who don’t speak english. how do we transfer our existing educational materials into so many other languages? translators needed??
allan stevens says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:18 am
“why won’t they? there is a lot of collaboration already between browser vendors to align their implementations and new specifications such as html5 are mainly aimed at improving interoperability.”
i consider myself to be a non-elitist ‘moms basement’ kind of web developer - and i’ve been doing it on and off since the days of ns4/ie4 (a long time in some people’s books, a short in others).
i make an effort to read the various specs, drafts and proposals when i can so that when i post on blogs like this, i have a vague idea as to what i’m talking about.
i also read a lot of posts by ‘elitist’ developers (including this blog) to get an idea of where things are headed and what the best practices are.
yea, i can be lazy and just keep doing table layouts, but clients are starting to pick up on this saying “but aren’t tables bad for accessiblity?” - so i’m busy trying to align my divs and read books by zeldman so i can stay in the business.
anyway, what i’ve learned from all the bits of reading, listening and this kind of general discussion is this simple principal that i live by:
separation between content (mark-up), style (css) and behaviour (js).
by ammending and encouraging the adoption of a spec that breaks these simple rules is a step backward, and a joke.
encourage the browser vendors to fix the current spec and render padding the same freakin way without me having to put _’s all through my css. encourage the damn browser vendors to fix damn safari so that it does padding-right right. f*ck that one really makes me angry.
next, bring out a revised content mark-up language that encourages semantic content and abstraction between the style i want and the behaviour i want.
i don’t want the damn browsers inconsistantly deciding how they should handle a damn ‘required’ attribute! i’ll handle that thank-you with my own logic/behaviour.
i also don’t want the damn browsers deciding on how to implement an ‘autofocus’ attribute - before page load? after page load? f*ck - i can just write 2 lines of js (in a separate file) that does this for me? why the hell do i want to remember yet another damn useless attribute that means nothing to the content?
let the mark-up be that - just damn mark-up that describes information. let me handle how it looks and behaves independantly of the damn content.
an article tag?? wtf? i run a recipie site - where is my ‘recipie’ tag?
and hey, if i’m missing a closing tag - tell me when i’m testing the damn page in the browser by displaying a mark-up error. and no - i don’t want to install some damn ff extension that does it - i use ie6.
just because i’m coding from my mom’s basement, doesn’t mean i don’t want to become ‘elitist’. i do! if you let me create more legacy mark-up/crap - i will, and we’ll be having the same argument 2 years down the track.
in short, i would like to see progress on something like xhtml2 - not the polishing of a turd (html4) to produce html5.
paul says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:25 am
i’m sorry, but using words like “elite” does nothing to get people to move or change.
it just comes across as “we’re so special and look at the rest of the inferior world”. i know that you didn’t mean it like this but this is how it comes across.
jennifer says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:53 am
while reading your post, i was reminded of maslow’s heirarchy of needs, that classic psychology theory that states people need food, water, and shelter before they can think about things like freedom of speech, civil liberties, and such. maybe the people in the other countries that you speak of have a harder time with other parts of their communities (i.e. infrastructure, access to education, etc.) than do some of the more privileged folks in the us, uk, and australia that limit their ability or interest in learning other ways of doing things. if table-layout works for them, and time is money, then what reason would they have to stop a good thing? sometimes when you’re working so hard to make ends meet, so to speak, you don’t have the time or the energy to look up and see what’s going on around you. i also agree with a previous comment that your data may be skewed slightly based on the demographic that is showing up to the conferences…
but, about the elitist argument - i was impressed by one commentor’s words in your previous post about halting progress simply because what we have is good enough or someone else needs to catch up (from katb: “imagine if vehicle (car/plane/train) improvement had been halted back in the 1920s.”). if we have people in this community that want to continually stretch the boundaries in order to try to make the future easier or better for me, then i want them to march on. i, for one, do not consider myself an advanced developer, but i try to keep up with the latest discussions in the field, i use css for layout, and i make a living for myself. if they all had to wait for me to catch up to them before they could proceed, then i’m afraid the world would all be stuck in limbo for quite a while. in the same way, i would not advocate halting all progress on new technologies while a less developed community “caught up” to where i am today. elitist? maybe. but what’s the alternative?
webphilosoph says:
june 19th, 2007 at 9:57 am
i just added a post in german above, but now, reading again, i found some claims to discuss
cite:/answer after ****
90% have been working with html (or xhtml) for five years or longer
*** you know what - i do mostly, and my pages (each single one!) do well in search engines. so why overwhelm myself with a publisher´s proigramm and php and other …?
======================
15% have been working with css for three years or longer
*** ok, i agree about some advantages, but i see as well the restrictions : all pages always look the same (might be usefull, but always?), and the effect is a continuously becoming identical layouts, designs…
plus: i am relkated to css, forever (yes, i understand, that manula coding creates a lot of useless formattings, for me, it allows having a broader variety of layout/designs, and possibility to “play” with new design-ideas (as being not a professional designer, that is obviously important)
======================
75% are still using tables for layout
*** mee too… easy, i can understand the structure withourt abstraction, and, see above: i can modify at any time
=========================
2% knew what the doctype switch was
*** oops… ask me something else
=================================================
no one expressed interest or concern in accessibility for the web
**** standards? or is that not a matter of targetet group?
maybe i do not target mac-users, maybe my group is not disabled (and the ydo not want to access my pages at all…) so why develop for mac, other reolutions, other sreensizes, other browsers, when i see in my weblog-statistics, that 95% or more use msie (now some more use firefox, inmdeed, but still not enough to invest time and money in this, which is writtennin each bible of webdevelopment, right?)
=====================================
regards
vasilis says:
june 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am
you forget to mention that in the netherlands you spoke on a microsoft promotion tour, where most of the speakers presented new software. your presentation was announced as ie7 and the web, or something similar, and was the only presentation about html/css. the reason why the numbers you present are a bit disappointing is because you didn’t speak on a web-seminar.
you should be honest when you start using percentages.
molly says:
june 19th, 2007 at 10:15 am
clarification re: netherlands event: devdays was going on at the same time, but i was part of remix, which is a *free* event that was co-located with devdays. remix is for web developers and designers, and i presented three total sessions “ie7 and web standards” (twice) and “thinking in css” once. that’s important to clear up - i can see how the devdays portion of that event would be seen in a different light. but that’s not what remix is, or what it’s about.
the numbers i present are anecdotal, which i clearly state. that means it’s my best guess based on audience polling. there is no desire here to point fingers at developers or designers, rather to point out what i’m experiencing as i do both microsoft and non-microsoft events across the world.
as for real stats world over, that would be a fascinating exercise, but one that i imagine would not only be costly, but very difficult to prove accurate. this is just my perspective, on my blog, formed from my experiences. thanks for the opportunity to clarify that. -m
nikkiana says:
june 19th, 2007 at 10:31 am
when i think about this issue, the first questions that come to my mind are a. who are the most important people in a team of web designers and developers to know standards? b. is it important for everyone to know standards?
my answer to a. is the most important people in the team to know standards are those who are going to be implementing the theme. if you’re a one (wo)man shop, that means you. if you’re working for a larger company that has several different web job descriptions and one of your responsibilities is implementing the theme, that means you. this is the group of people who needs to be targeted.
my answer to b is, ultimately, no. it’s not of essential importance for everyone to know standards. if your job is primarily designing, and you’re not the person that themes the end site and makes it go live, you don’t really need to know anything except this about standards…. sometimes your design won’t work out 100% to planned because of standards limitations… if you’re a developer who does more with the backend than with the theme, it certainly helps to know standards, but as long as you have someone who does know standards to check your work, you shouldn’t have to worry about it much.
pixelgraphix says:
june 19th, 2007 at 11:45 am
argumentation für webstandards in unternehmen
chris heilmann hat im wiki »the business case for web standards« argumente, gegenargumente, kritische themenschwerpunkte und tipps zum umgang mit typischen ansprechpartnern gesammelt, die helfen sollen, webstandards in unternehmen weiter zu verbreite…
jules says:
june 19th, 2007 at 11:53 am
i would like to speak about the pressures that affect us, namely, the powers-that-be.
i am currently involved in (not leading) a project for the redesign of our (government) web site. the design is being created by another department of the government and the only person who can approve the new design is our communications director. the design is imperfect (doesn’t incorporate the principles of bulletproof design per dan cederholm), incomplete (doesn’t include heading styles because apparently the page contents are too short for headings) and uses table-based layout. the director doesn’t want us to rework the code to produce the same design using css because that will take too long.
i would not consider myself a css/html professional at the same level as andy budd, dan cederholm, etc. but i am quite capable of reworking the template to use valid html and css for layout. therefore, i would be one of the “elite” but i am being held back by someone who doesn’t understand/care about this type of thing.
therefore, the statistics of my portfolio are skewed by outside influences and i wonder how many others have the same pressures.
thacker says:
june 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am
i am going to use holzschlag’s romanian developer’s comment for examples.
who is to say this developer’s layout strategy is wrong? it may very well fit project requirements and the demographics of its targeted audience. he has presented reasonable logic and it works for him. does that mean his content is “broken” because it is not standards compliant? no. does it cause interoperability problems in mainstream browsers? probably not. will there be issues with mobile devices? probably some. are there issues with accessibility? more than likely. his content and its design may work very well for its audience. does it mean that a new standard needs to be implemented to accommodate or “fix” this type of content. not in my view. will there be significant maintenance issues with this content as user agents change and as web visitors’ habits and expectations change. probably, but how much is anyone’s guess.
if this developer were to ask me how i would code such a project [presumption is made that its design has been thoroughly researched] and the basic logic behind those methods:
xhtml 1.1 strict with a mime type of application/xhtml+xml; asp.net platform; external css 2.1; only bare bones client-side javascript [usability non-dependent script]; barest minimum server-side javascript [only for true functional usability benefits as needed]; wcag priority 2 minimum [priority 3 could very likely be met]. note: multimedia requirements, if needed, would have to meet the accessibility standards along with interoperability. css for projection,screen; handheld and print. the css meyer reset or similar would be used.
the whys. xhtml requires regimentation. xml makes sense, e.g. adjusting a simple xml file for a recurring menu. css allows for specific design and layout delivery across the broadest spectrum of user agents, e.g. variables between browser print functions are minimized. the 1.1 dtd can be dropped back to a 1.0 transitional dtd on specific content pages to accommodate necessity of depreciated tags when needed, e.g. counter-reset; target=_blank. current minor differences in rendering design using css and standards vs tables — design is a visual aid in communication. minor variations between user agents in design will not impact the visual aid to the content’s communication. accessibility — device independence assists anyone, e.g. mouse blowout. future technologies — xml and accessibility p3 may very well provide the best way to implement auditory/verbal interaction between user and content.
is my method better than the romanian’s method? the end-user and market will make that decision. his content is no more “broken” and needs fixing than mine. does his vision and expertise along with mine need improved and stretched? absolutely.
are better developer tools needed? for some of us, absolutely. personally, i haven’t found a single developer/designer application that meets my criteria. i am still using allaire’s homesite, yeah and banging out asp.net code with it. go figure. is godaddy’s web site tonight app a piece of crap? for me, yes. for others, it is a godsend.
is more education needed? absolutely but not for the intent nor purpose of “conversion” but for providing options and the reasons/logic behind those options. will education succeed? only for those who have a need and desire to learn or until something forces it such as market pressure.
for the life of me, i cannot wrap my mind around the concept that “95% of the web is broken”, it needs fixed and someone has a divine duty to fix it. when someone finds a reason and a true need for cleaning up spilled milk and putting it back into the cow, educate me.
my opinions are right for me, my value system, what i do and for what i hope to do. it does not mean they are right for anyone else.
jens meiert says:
june 19th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
when did you ask these questions, molly? although i’m aware of the fact that we are “elitist”, i’m somewhat “shocked” by the numbers you present. we really need to do more for education and, above all, awareness …
ralph says:
june 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
i’m actually surprised the numbers of developers who responded that they were creating standards-compliant code is so high. in the trenches where i’ve been working most of my career, i’ve been the only person in any of my workgroups who has had any inkling of what standards are and how to develop sites that conform to them. most of the people i’ve worked with are happy to nest tables inside tables inside tables and then test their sites in ie6 and proclaim them done. i groan whenever anyone proclaims the standards war won. i’ve worked with a number of people over the years demonstrating the benefits to be gained by creating standards-compliant code and modern css practices. probably two of my co-workers got it. the rest nodded their heads and retreated to tables, break tags, inline font tags and paragraph tags as space creators at the earliest opportunity.
the browser wars of the mid and late 90s were a nightmare, and we’re still paying the price of the coding practices created then.
the effort to move to a standards-compliant, semantically coded web has had three prongs. the first was to convince the browser makers that it was in their best interest to support the standards as written. this has been a huge success. the second prong is to convince the tool makers to code their tools to create standards-compliant markup by default. there has been major progress made here, with tools like dreamweaver having made major strides and lightweight cmses used by hobbyists and small businesses trending toward creating standards-compliant code. (larger cmses typically used by enterprises are more problematic at this point, but things are better than they used to be.)
the third prong has been to convince the developer and education community to update their skills. this is a long, hard slog, one that has made progress to be sure, but a problem that may simply be intractable. the schools are turning out creators of killer web sites faster than we’ve been converting people to the one true way of standards. and this is where the fight is the farthest from its conclusion. we’ve gained air superiority, the navy has dramatically slowed the rate at which supply ships are being sunk, but the grunts on the ground are locked in trench warfare, and progress is being measured in inches (centimeters?).
when i look at the bookshelves at my local bookstore, it seems to me like the majority of books being written in the past three or four years on how to make web pages focus on doing so in standards-compliant ways. this may be one of the best ways to reach new people, and it gives me some hope for the long-term future. as for long-time developers, i’m not sure they can be reached. people who haven’t read a book on how to create web sites since david siegel’s era have no real interest in updating their skills when their jobs don’t require it. my hope is that over time, new developers will overwhelm them to the point of insignificance. call it the fifty year plan.
tino zijdel says:
june 19th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
christos: thanks for the link. as for your concerns about html5 ‘uncool’ features please read the interview with ian linked from there. ian there explains that a lot of these things are unfinished and up for discussion (some are already being heavily discussed on the mailing list).
i could go into more detail about these concerns but i would just be repeating what already has been said and argued in the public-html mailing list. i do think that it will be difficult or even impossible to eventually have full concensus on every item of the specification; at some point compromises have to be made. i do believe however that whatever outcome will be far better than what we need to work with today.
neil ford says:
june 19th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
jens
molly will have asked these questions in the last couple of weeks as she’s been on a remix tour of europe since @media 07 europe.
- neil.
being amber rhea » blog archive » links for 2007-06-19 says:
june 19th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
[…] molly.com » so how do we fix the web, really? “one thing is absolutely key and that is there is no way we are going to empower each other and create the web in the great vision it was intended to be if we do not address the critical issue of education. and stability. and these things take time.” (tags: webdev education work tech webdesign standards web important) […]
matt robin says:
june 19th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
once again molly - you’ve excellently conveyed the significance of getting web standards knowledge out there (and also soundly defended your position on all things related to how the web will move forwards/or how it will be fixed).
to some designers and developers in countries outside of north america, the uk, and parts of down under, the web probably doesn’t seem ‘broken’ at all (’fixing the web’ then becomes a subjective term perhaps - although completely right of course).
making sites with tables, not enquiring about accessibility - ignorance is bliss and they seem none the wiser for it…in truth it just seems like the great benefits of web standards aren’t getting promoted strongly enough in those areas and i’m sure those countries will catch up to the level set by ‘the elite’.
i strongly agree that we need to get everyone up to speed on the standards and best practices first before we (from the elite countries) get too caught-up in talk about wishlists for html 5, css 3, etc.
let’s not leave anyone behind…and yes, the web still needs fixing (big time!)
good article molly (as ever).
thacker says:
june 19th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
kids, enough is enough with the “elite” bullshit. elite is a facade, an illusion of control, a means at its extreme to rationalize that “my vision of god or my flag is better than yours so i am going to kill you.” what to hell makes you think you are better than anyone else. as a web content provider, you should be bending over and kissing your ass that even one individual feels that your content is worthy to even click through and feel honored that same individual, whom you will never meet, is reading your content by choice. take pride in that. if you happen to use standards to do that, so what, big deal. it is your job. self application of such adjectives is pure arrogance.
hans dreesen says:
june 19th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
i second thacker. especially on this:
“…will education succeed? only for those who have a need and desire to learn or until something forces it such as market pressure.”
isn’t market pressure the most important thing influencing the adoption of web standards? if you do not practice standards and/or accessibility, but a client comes in and demands them, you convert or lose the client, don’t you?
if the client doesn’t demand them, you choose.
of course, if the client then gets laughed at at the local golf club by his fellow company owners for not having a website that works on all browsers (including that new one everybody is talking about) and is way cheaper in maintenance, and he comes storming into your office fuming with rage and asking you why, you’re kinda stuck.
if your client is not a golfer, you still choose.
ingo chao says:
june 19th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
matt, the stressed term elite conflicts with efforts to educate us who are dumb, since it could easily be misinterpreted as arrogance. a belief in being elite out of a general feeling of superiority does more harm than good to the standardization movement that, like everything in this world, should be better made without missionary zeal. translation, and transfer of knowledge is needed in both directions.
wilco says:
june 20th, 2007 at 12:34 am
i’m not entirely sure of your above claim. in my work i see a lot of dutch websites pass accessibility checks. these are often big companies who have a reputation to uphold. but more and more these big companies are taking accessibility serious.
in reality this results in them having to use css for their design (priority aa) instead of tables.
i feel that the ‘big boys’ are doing it, and are paying attention more and more. which really is a good start because they are the way to go.
the most important reason i can think of that gets the results you state above is that is that it is so extremely easy to get reasonable results in web design. you can compare it to the popularity of php. there are a lot of coders out there who write really bad code. code that has many security wholes, is messy, is hard to expand upon, etc. this gives php the reputation of ‘unsafe’. but it really isn’t. it’s just too darn easy to learn the basics and get quick results without having to study all the specs and know all about security.
html/css has the same thing. you don’t need to know much to get results that to the untrained eye looks pretty good.
another thing we see on back end dev is that frameworks have started to change this. as these are getting popular more people are coming in contact with best practice coding. because these frameworks combine best practice and faster development people will more easily learn how to code safer, better, etc.
we need better tools, and a best practice we can all agree upon. as long as that’s not around and we’re all trying to find our own way to doing things faster this isn’t going to change much.
there is also the matter of education. i’m still studying, and web design is part of what i do. but there just aren’t enough teachers that know how to code a site. and that’s not just true for my own uni but for almost all of them in the netherlands.
we need better education, somehow. because people are graduating as web designer without ever having build a site in css.
kathy c. says:
june 20th, 2007 at 2:02 am
on client/hierarchy pressure, it’s more or less the same in commercial companies, or at least as far as my experience ranges (admittedly not that far, but hey…) and it’s not just a question of clients/superiors demanding tables or css because usually they don’t know or care about their existence, it’s also often a question of time.
on the last project i worked on, the boss wanted a whole online game site out in a week. it was a complicated project, and there was only 3 people working on it, me, a designer and a programmer. in one week it was to be done. my specifications for the project included css and html standards compliancy. that got scrapped.
“no time, can’t be bothered, must make money. fast.” when i tried to explain that botching a site for the sake of a few extra work days was not going to make money but loose it in the long run, causing the site to need repair work later and work up a lousy reputation because of shoddy code and looks, i got told to shut up.
when i asked the designer why he had f**ed up my origianl design by sticking randomly stolen animated gifs in the middle of the page, he said “haven’t got time, and i don’t care.”
the 2 week notice i gave ends with the month of june. i don’t want to work like that. i don’t want to become like that. life is too short to waste it on people who don’t care.
max design - standards based web design, development and training » some links for light reading (20/6/07) says:
june 20th, 2007 at 2:16 am
[…] so how do we fix the web, really? […]
di says:
june 20th, 2007 at 2:34 am
i wouldn’t dream of building a site these days using tables for layout, not if i want to add that site to my portfolio. yes i care about accessibility and the fact that people are surfing the web on many different devices, css helps with both of these things. i have to be honest though, generally it’s about not wanting to lose the “can i build this” game and use a table.
ton v. lankveld says:
june 20th, 2007 at 2:51 am
in my (limited) experience, the most effective way to promote web standards is by disguise them as problem solving or search engine optimalisation (seo) techniques.
i’m the most effective if a beginner/amateur (i’m an amateur myself) asks my help with a problem.
most of the time i can convince them to use style sheets for easy maintenance of their site. especially if they already use a web editor.
i promote the validators as tools to debug the (x)html or css files. a sneaky way to introduce doctype.
if i start talking about web standards, they soon got that “help, where is the nearest exit!” look in their eyes. web standards and good practices are hard to sell to beginners. most of them don’t even want hem for free. and i’m talking about the dutch here!
it’s sad but you’re right, nobody cares about accessibility. so i tell people these are seo techniques. again.
in my position i don’t try to win battles, just one backstreet fight at a time.
bruce says:
june 20th, 2007 at 3:04 am
i’m surprised that anyone is surprised by the figures molly quotes.they ring entirely true to me.
that’s why i love doing my public speaking to microsoft developers, local authority representatives etc who are hearing the accessibility/ standards message for the first time.
and allan
bruce says:
june 20th, 2007 at 3:06 am
… (damn forgot to close my link)
… i admire your passion and share your anger.
richard williams says:
june 20th, 2007 at 4:44 am
i’m with ton on this one. don’t talk standards/accessibility to clients. talk seo/sem and just tell them you use web standards to achieve better results for their bottom line. gets them thinking - it’s a money thing.
having said that, at the london wsg meeting in february mike davies spent about an hour explaining how standards and accessibility processes vastly improved legal and general’s roi from their website, and then got a whole heap of questions from corporate developers about what were the chances of being sued for not sticking to the accessibility rules. that was frustrating to hear! i guess part of the problem is people hear what they want to hear, which is a great shame.
secondly, why don’t we just drop words like elite and elitism and use words like minority, because let’s face it that’s what we are. just got to keep plugging away. education, education, education of both designers/developers and clients.
ok finally, i’d like to see front end developers specialising and getting recognition for their contribution to the end product. as mike davies said in his talk (or words to the effect) what’s the point of a brilliant front end design and a fantastic back end implementation if the front end doesn’t work for the user. sorry to rant on…
keith says:
june 20th, 2007 at 7:16 am
i agree and disagree in the sense that i applaud the suggestion that html development should stop until the web-world actually learns how to use it - its a good a valid point. but, as has been said, to arrest the development of html might be akin to arresting the development of the car to the model-t because people didn’t stick to the road. an extreme example perhaps but one which highlights the need for continued development in any field. i feel that html and css must continue to develop and be developed - my concern is about those who are doing the development. if we can be optimistic and suggested that 5% of web designers understand and adhere to web-standards (and as i write i think that figure might be way too high) then it might be forgiveable to assume that of those contributing to html development, we’d be lucky to find 10% representing the views and concerns of standards evangelists. my figures could be totally wrong of course. i do, however, think it’s a positive that there’s so much interest in html at the moment and its also a positive that there’s momentum to develop it. perhaps html5.0 will actually bring us an opportunity to educate those html 4.01 practitioners who have refused to amend their working practices? i don’t know, i’m thinking out loud and deleting most it lol, but i can’t help feeling that the development of a new html incarnation would provide a must larger platform to evangelise standards than any we might have should development be arrested.
trace says:
june 20th, 2007 at 7:42 am
i’d like to see some sort of licensing process and/or professional organization that grants membership and a trademarked title to those web professionals who can pass a test and who adhere to certain standards in their work.
then, in a similar way as the wasp raised awareness of standards among us industry professionals, a branded movement could emerge to educate the general public (especially those who are considering hiring web professionals) on their importance.
this would not have to conflict with the beautiful fact that anyone can publish (assuming a few minimum technological requirements) nor that the self-taught can succeed. but in terms of our profession, it might position the standards-savvy as “having the right stuff” which might in turn encourage more people to become more standards-savvy.
thacker says:
june 20th, 2007 at 7:46 am
i am not so sure that molly in fact means to stop innovation in so much as she means that a little breathing space is needed for things to catch up a little. the entire industry may be suffering a little bit of the alvin toffler “future shock”. shelly powers, as listed by molly, has presented some compelling logic in her blog.
jorge laranjo says:
june 20th, 2007 at 7:55 am
molly, we aren’t elite. we are the standard. the rest is lazy and don’t bother with accessibility nor usability. standards are, for that kind of people, something from the “hippies”.
here in portugal the use of standards is a long way from being a “standard” itself.
gurukarm says:
june 20th, 2007 at 9:39 am
molly, thank you for this sentence in particular: “we haven’t done a good job so far to create learning tools and truly assist the working web designer and developer become informed and better at what he or she can do.”
i have looked and looked for classes (college-type, semester-long) in css and standards-based in my area (eastern ma, us), or even on the web, fruitlessly. i have been told by several colleagues than none such exist.
for me, learning in that type of setting works best. i don’t find trying to learn through reading books or websites on css sufficient; i need someone to help me figure out why something doesn’t work when i find that it doesn’t, even if i followed the book’s instructions to the letter (or think i did!), or how to set an ie hack for some behavior i haven’t seen before, etc etc.
over the years i’ve cobbled together a lot of learning, and still don’t know nearly enough. so when those tools you mention are created, please let me know! a mentor program, perhaps, would be a nice start…
molly says:
june 20th, 2007 at 9:44 am
the word elite seems to have caused a great deal of consternation. please don’t misread me! i am not saying anyone is a better /person/ than anyone else because of a given skill. and anyone who has ever met me has to know that’s simply the truth.
let me clarify a little more, but this is the last i’m going to post on this thread for now.
the problem is worldwide and my “stats” aren’t stats merely the experience i’m having at a variety of events across the globe where my focus is on standards. when i say under-represented countries, what i mean is those countries that have far less easy access to major conferences, well translated and localized books and resources, and so on. most standards blogs are in english. does that mean we all have to speak english to live in the world?
also, the word elite apparently has really negative connotations at this point. elite means the best at something - doing it to the superior practice if you will. in that case, this is an elite versus non-elite issue. there are real problems of access to information in this world, and it is, in my opinion and experience, very cruel and unfair to just wave anyone off the playing field if they had the encouragement.
what i meant was to say that the fact we can even have this sort of conversation makes us very privileged and in a vast minority. vast.
that is not an insult toward anyone. it’s a very real, very valid concern about the gap between education and practice, how those play into the creation and evolution of a solid foundation, and how moving forward too quickly has repeatedly shown throughout history to be problematic. lots of innovative things break, you know.
so i hope you will understand my use of the term and what i really meant, which was elite in the most literal sense.
bottom line, standards are simply not the way the majority of people work the web, and with all the advancements in ria, i fear we’re building a platform with a very poor foundation.
kenny m. says:
june 20th, 2007 at 10:43 am
tino said about html 5: “i do believe however that whatever outcome will be far better than what we need to work with today.”
why, because the same people who made a mess of the web (the browser vendors) are writing the html 5 spec?
given who is writing the html 5 spec and the illogical decisions made to date (like only letting wysiwyg editor create the font tag), i think things will only get worse.
thacker says:
june 20th, 2007 at 11:55 am
molly–
maybe the foundation is there? maybe the web is not broken? maybe the web is, instead, fragmented by two basic segments, standards and non-standards, each with its own individual segments. each serves a purpose and each has its own entry costs, both hard costs and educational costs. the ria platforms are dependent upon the standards segment and have their own entry costs. accessibility falls into the same category.
maybe the web or its foundation doesn’t need to be homogeneous to move forward? maybe the beauty [at times, the horror, too] of the internet is that it reflects life.
tino zijdel says:
june 20th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
kenny m.: “why, because the same people who made a mess of the web (the browser vendors) are writing the html 5 spec? […]”
that is simply not true; the current w3c html wg has almost 400 participants of which the vast majority is not affiliated to any browser vendor. also browser vendors have a standing agreement to let only 1 representative have a vote on formal questionnaires.
the whatwg html5 draft has been chosen (by vote) to be a starting point for the new specification, but everything in that document is up for review and discussion. on the other side you do need input from the very people that have experience with implementing specifications; a specification that cannot or will not be implemented is practically worthless. most browservendors also have a very good understanding of the actual problems and needs of every day users and developpers. their vision is mostly practical, but that is exactly what we need right now: practical solutions to practical problems. re-shaping the web into something else is something that is just not feasible right now.
kenny m. says:
june 20th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
tino zijdel said “re-shaping the web into something else is something that is just not feasible right now.”
why? if not now, when?
tino zijdel says:
june 20th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
kenny m.: “why? if not now, when?”
i don’t know, maybe you have some ideas?
some facts:
- when a new technology doesn’t offer any immediate advantages compared to the current situation it doesn’t stand a change
- people won’t install software that is incapable of rendering content marked up in some older version of html (so backwards compatibility is and will always be a significant factor)
- new technology requires changes throughout the complete chain: author education, tools and software, useragents, search-engines, everything. not something that can be accomplished within short terms. when anything is lacking in that chain people will just stick to the old situation.
i don’t believe that f.i. xml is the killer-app; i think it is very feasible to mix html-applications with xml-applications. i also think that for a mark-up language strict error-handling is not appropriate nor necessary.
kenny m. says:
june 20th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
tino zijdel said “i don’t know, maybe you have some ideas?”
since we are answering a question with a question, let me ask you this. what kind of web do you want to have 15 years from now? how will you want to search the web? what kind of applications will you want to build?
html 5 will take 15 years to fully implement. and html 5 is pretty much html 4 with a few extra tags. will you be happy if 15 years from now all you can do on the web is what html 4 (plus a few extra tags) offers?
lee carré says:
june 20th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
in stort my own personal view is that it all has to start at the most basic level, in the education institutions.
tutors recognising interest from or talent in a student, and offering to guide them along the path of doing things the “right way”.
start by getting schools, colleges, and universities up to speed, then educated developers should follow nicely, leaving just the existing ones who need to be re-educated about best-pracices.
constantly trying to “fix” the masses of people flooding out of institutions who don’t even know about css without actually fixing the cause of this first won’t enable the cause to progress very far.
and that’s all i have to say about that.
sean mccarty says:
june 20th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
this has been an interesting discussion, and i feel inclined to add my own two cents. of course, i can only speak from my own experience as a software engineer, but i don’t think my experience has been all that different than any other developer. my career has been built on my ability to adapt to emerging technologies and standards. none of the technologies i am now, or have recently been, working with are more than a few years old. honestly, they have hardly had a chance to mature until now. unfortunately, hind-site being what it is, there were many things implemented early on in all these technologies that were either insufficient, inappropriate, or inflexible. but with each new version, changes were made that improved their usefulness and weeded out the initial weaknesses. in short, the creators, builders, and architects of all technologies (apps, languages, and tools included) use deprecation to manage and remove undesirable elements. in my mind, the question that needs answered is how to enforce deprecation accross the entire web.
the reason we have standards bodies is so someone could actually take ownership of such issues as “forward-thinking” development of new tech and deprecation of older tech. perhaps we’ve been focusing too much on whether or not to continue to push the technologies in question forward. to me that’s a given. we must! but i’ve not seen very much in the way of proposing ways to manage the change.
the other issue to be dealt with is time. tools and education are great, but insufficient if those in the field will not take the time to learn them. it’s not that learning anything about css, xhtml, or any other web-based technology is all that difficult. i think it has more to do with how long people perceive it would take to learn and adapt. in the past year i’ve had to learn two different scripting languages, two frameworks, xhtml, and css! prior to that i only had a cursory knowledge of both xhtml and css, because the positions i had did not warrant spending the time to learn, let alone implement them, even though i was generally enthusiastic about standards. the last organization i worked for changed all that for me, however, because we made a conscious decision to be a standards compliant development organization. until other people make that choice progress will probably be slow.
so, if we could find a way to effectively enforce deprecation accross the web, and give the industry more reason to adapt, then i think we might see some real change. until then, i’m afraid we’ll only see more of the same old thing.
btw, has anyone else had any difficulty finding good web content using their cell phone? i wonder how many sites actually lose traffic because internet-enabled cell phone users can’t view or navigate their content. hmmmm.
karl dubost, w3c says:
june 20th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
hmmm lots of interesting comments in this thread.
there are facts that we need to take into account, i think i’m better to write yet another weblog post about it because it will be too long here.
escape - ein blindwerk blog » argumentation für webstandards in unternehmen says:
june 21st, 2007 at 2:22 am
[…] so how do we fix the web, really? […]
melianor says:
june 21st, 2007 at 2:32 am
the personal experience you share in terms of percentages is shaking. but i would like to say, that i have the feeling that this is at least changing, as platforms like wasp are starting to emerge and be more active than they have been before.
if this has to take off, than we need more people like you molly to go out and talk. this will not be accomplished by coding like it should be. this has to spread. the developer community should stage more events, not only in the us, but also in europe, like the webinale or similiar.
christoph says:
june 21st, 2007 at 12:53 pm
i wonder about the numbers you present for the event in switzerland - i think nobody has been there. there are quite a lot of standardistas in the web worker scene here - but probably few of them have realized that ms is holding a web standards event (at least i didn’t).
tino zijdel says:
june 21st, 2007 at 3:26 pm
kenny: “since we are answering a question with a question, let me ask you this. what kind of web do you want to have 15 years from now? how will you want to search the web? what kind of applications will you want to build?”
15 years is an eternity when it comes to the internet, that’s a timespan almost as long as it’s very existance. basically when you look at what we have accomplished the past 15 years i’d say the sky is the limit. i am no visionair so 15 years is a little bit too much for me to grab
“html 5 will take 15 years to fully implement. and html 5 is pretty much html 4 with a few extra tags. will you be happy if 15 years from now all you can do on the web is what html 4 (plus a few extra tags) offers?”
html5 won’t take 15 years to implement - at least not for most browservendors; it should be feasible to have full conforming implementations in say 3 years and partial implementations even before that (some features are already supported in some browsers today, eg canvas and web forms 2.0). html5 isn’t html4 + some extra elements; it aims to redefine the language itself (making it no longer an sgml application) in order to provide a solid basis upon which we can built and extend other technologies for say the next 15 years (web forms is a good example).
andrew sidwell says:
june 21st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
kenny: “and html 5 is pretty much html 4 with a few extra tags.”
i’d like to add on that. html 5 specifies a parsing algorithm which deterministically handles virtually all existing web content in a reasonable fashion. this means that unlike preeviously, where one has to reverse-engineer a browser to parse real web content, anyone can construct a dom with relative ease and consistency.
if you say it doesn’t matter because people should be writing valid markup, then you’ve lost touch with reality. first, people make mistakes. second, i would hate it if i looked at a badly-spelt and badly-written piece of prose and instead got a “badly written!” error where the paper should be. i want to be able to read things even when someone screwed up along the line; don’t you?
helen says:
june 22nd, 2007 at 5:52 am
truly speaking, i’m neither shocked, nor perplexed with the stats provided. i view the reason for that in incredible speed the web is developing with - something new is launched every day. you mentioned that we lack tools to help designers in their work - i say we have way too many, and it is hard to keep catching up. that’s one we only have a couple of hundreds world-wide famous designers.
on the other hand i agree with melionor that the situations is changing due to the fact that more and more designers go out and speak, organize conferences, etc. 5 years ago a designer would be the one sitting at the computer and investing his ideas in his client’s project. now, designers tend to write then down and share, as now more and more of them work in networks than individually.
prof_bab says:
june 23rd, 2007 at 1:54 am
i’m sorry that i never took the time to read all of the comments.
i am very enthusiastic about html 5.
we have a chance of participating in the “fixing” of the specs. if something is terribly wrong, then someone will surely stop and rethink the process.
as for now, fixing is a very important concept.
i belive that these things should be considered (besides broken browsers and the more technical stuff):
- specification limitations
ex:
how do you convince someone to stop using tables for layout if the whole thing of vertically aligning something takes loads of work on css?
admit it. creating a layout with tables is far easier. i’m not saying that i use tables for layout. i’m just saying that i’ve never convinced someone to “migrate” to css for that.
- less tools, more code
some designers don’t know anything about html, css, javascript etc. nothing, not even a bit. still, they are creating and publishing documents very often using tools. i’m not saying that tools are evil and they should all die in flames, but how do i convince my mom for example to stop using ms word to create a simple html file? it’s really disturbing to know there are people that don’t even know html code even exists .
ok i think i went too far with non-coders using html, but i think that people should know that html is there to help, not to create ambiguity.
so far, people just don’t care what code they should write, how many broken browsers exist out there, or how much code they should write if their tools just do the job. from some of the folks’ point of view, html 5 is just a new concern, not a feature. it’s something that they “should take care of” before they write their documents. that is disturbing. so this is why anyone uses tools.
i am a code junkie and so i’ve never used tools besides notepad or similar text editors.
the main idea is that html shoud try to at least convince folks to take a peek from time to time at the specs.
- doing stuff in n ways
ok, so another thing is the concept of doing stuff in many ways. that’s not even close to nice.
ex:
the -tag-may-be-missing idea is beyond weak… it’s horrible.
i think that we need a very very very very strict way of doing things, because for now, you can write various versions of the same-rendered document and that’s not very nice.
on the other hand, while strictness is very good, high tollerance for errors is also very good.
on this matter i cannot agree most with andrew sidwell.
think at this for a moment:
your mom is creating her own first webpage because she is very enthusiastic about the technology. of course, she is making errors while learning but, heck, she just wants the page done for now. learning takes time, and she doesn’t want to use a tool anymore because she feels limited. it would be bothering to actually see errors visually showing up in the page saying “the author doesn’t know how to code html”. that is also weak.
so, i belive error tollerance is a must. and, an error console should be included in the browsers for this matter. or, if someone was interested in writing *good* code, they would shurely use a validator (or similar mean of checking errors).
so the main idea is that
html shouldn’t be made for pro coders only
html should have a strict specification (so people should learn one and the same thing) (but don’t forget about error tollerance - people make errors even if something is strict)
the new html spec should resolve old and stupid layout issues and should have a “implementers, please read this spec thoroughly before… implementing so width means the same thing on your browsers” section just to remind people that create our browsers that specifications aren’t basic guidelines for element behaviour.
jermayn parker says:
june 24th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
wow i did not realise just how ‘advanced’ we in australia, uk, usa etc are…
is it really like this everywhere else?
david says:
june 25th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
i wouldn’t describe the web as being divided into two types: standardistas and non-standardistas. in my experience, i would describe it as: ‘those who hand code’ and ‘those who use helper design software(eg. dreamweaver)’. those who hand code are always looking to develop best practice websites.
to me there are basically two arguments that count when moving over to standad based design.
1. in the next few years the it industry is going to be flooded with out-sourced web design labour from developing markets such as china and india. not keeping up with best practice will put your career in jeopardy. why? because the small client design market will not hold up against this competition. while, large firms, who are becoming more aware of the legal and market implications of operating inaccessable websites, will not commission work from firms that do not use current industry practices. this later point is becoming a reality here in australia after the sydney olympic ticketing website debacle.
2. creating well-formed, standards based markup fundamentally improves site architecture. my new web application framework demands strict xhtml or xml compliance which, allows me to construct a site in a fraction of the time it takes using any other method i have come across. my core engine is fully scalable, extremely flexible and very secure. best yet, the code base(php) is about one tenth the size of the smallest web application engine i have been involved in developing or designing on.
the second reason alone is the only argument i ever have to use when an ignorant tablista tells me that his job is easy if he just used a table instead. these people do not get it. we don’t design websites now, we develop web applications. standards are not for the clients, they are for us to enhance our own productivity and create higher quality, lower maintainance web applications.
let me repeat this one point. web standards are created by us, for us, so that we can build the web bigger, faster and better than what we did in the past.
if you make the argument that tables are a more productive way to design a website, you are wrong. and, you should do two things. 1. learn more about server-side scripting and the impact that current design approaches have on a web application’s code base. 2. learn how to use css properly before your job gets out-sourced to a team of indians who can use dreamweaver.
bloggeries says:
june 26th, 2007 at 11:32 am
i agree that people are too limited by the boundaries of browers in 1999. albeit the majority of people creating websites and blogs today are not aware of new techniques let alone the concept of validating. if 95% of sites aren’t validating perhaps se’s could give higher relevance to properly built sites. this is just a thought of course; i can’t believe i only found this blog today. definately bookmarked and if you wish to add to my directory molly please do. just don’t paying and i”ll approve.
jonathan van rij says:
june 27th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
the great gab between div’s and table’s
i just read a blog from molly holzschlag about fixing the gab we have within the web-development/design
joao pereira says:
june 29th, 2007 at 7:34 am
well i gess this mean that there is too many people doing web project that absolutly do not know what is web. fix teh people than their will be no more need to fix the web.
usability and accessibility the foreign legion of web design! says:
july 1st, 2007 at 8:11 pm
[…] the first was by molly, in her article “so how do we fix the web, really” she raised some stats that surprised me. these stats are the ‘best’ of the 3-5 different countries she gathered from. amsterdam. mostly dutch attendees. typically perceived as a more technically advanced country, of the some 200 folks i interacted with over 2 days: […]
zastavit inovaci webu? » poznámky pro později says:
july 3rd, 2007 at 7:11 am
[…] molly svůj požadavek, který byl diskutován, kritizován a odmítán, později odůvodnila nedostatečnou znalostí současných tvůrců webů. podle jejích zkušeností tvůrci stále ještě ve velké míře používají tabulkové rozvržení a naopak příliš nekamarádí s css. problém vidí v procesu vzdělávání, které nefunguje dostatečně, a ve stabilitě webových technologií. […]
reda says:
july 5th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
1 - html at its beginning was not made to handle what we’re using it for today. when it started it was about pages with text and hyperlinks and images. almost raw. now its about applications serving information, where presentation is important.
then came css. no need to argue, css is a savior (enabling us to work in a clean manner, though we know the overhead it’s gonna add when testing in different browsers). but sometimes i think of it (css)only as patch to html.
sometimes it seems to me that html is just a subset of what it should be. or in other word it’s like building websites with docbook. i hope it explains what i mean.
in one sentence : the use of the web has changed and the core of the standard is still the same.
so what…well all of the ideas and suggestions in the above comments are really interesting.
i’m no savvy but here’s my 2cents :
everybody is talking about web2.0 (though a lot can’t really define it clearly) why not build the web2.0 and make a rupture with the old web :
1 - start with a new rock solid foundation, a standard thats not an evolution but a revolution to html where the core would be semantic (which implicitly would enable accesibility).
2 - build a browser that emplements it and doesn’t care about html x.x or xhtml x.x thus givin up the whole web 1.0 (some kind of mozaic for web2.0 )
well, how do you want it to live and be adopted ? when the web started, its users were only a tiny community but it rapidly got adopted by the public because it showed - as a technology - a real value. real value that’s the point.
if we could come up with a new standard, conceived independently of any backward compatibility, focusing solely on what the new web needs and engineered in an future proof fashion. it’s evident that it would have - as a standard - a real value.
it sure would be a horrible/terrible/historical/radical rupture and shift. but poor little me thinks it’s worth it.
some commented things like “moms and grandmas making pages in word”
in the old web amateurs used to publish pages
in the new web they publish an article a recipe a blog post a datasheet.
in the old web amateurs used frontpage and thelike to create pages
in the new web they use blog systems and the like to create content.
in the old web offline tools were used by amateurs
in the new web online tools are used by amateurs
in the old web people created web pages for web pages
in the new web people set up there web sites to express themselves
in the old web people thought the web was that blue e on their ms windows desktop
in the new web people start to see that they have the choice. for now most of them choose other browsers just for choosing, being different, later they’ll start looking for the value before choosing.
in the old web professionals were abusing poor html, forcing it to do what it wasn’t supposed to do.
in the hypothetical new web iml (the new std ) answers the needs of the proffesionals.
in the old web google has had to do a lot of magic to make search result efficient.
in the new web social bookmarking came to the rescue.
in the hypothetical newer that new web semantic is king and google and other deliver the right search result.
in the hypothetical web, organisations like dublin core play a major role.
ok maybe i should stop my crap and get some sleep why? because i don’t even have a single web page online, and i keep talking about the web. :s
prof_bab says:
july 12th, 2007 at 9:34 am
:) i kind of agree with you
but… you can’t just say - throw away your all of your html documents. the revolution is coming new standards are meant to replace your old stuff.
why? because there are billions of html files out there that use the non-perfect standards. as far as i’m concerned, an amateur can currently do the things you mentioned (at least part of them) (generating content i mean).
i think a non-backward-compatible solution is out of the question. it’s kind of selfish
i would prefer new and improved backward-compatible tech. i belive that browser rendering diffrences should be treated first. not to mention the very diffrent host environments. i belive this is the big problem
i personally am very frustrated when i talk about browser diffrences.
cheers.
antony says:
october 17th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
i agree. just to go back to the purpose of the internet - to share information. all improvements should bare in mind this aim, and thus take in to account whether or not an “improvement” causes any reduction in what information may become less accessable as a whole - if millions of html pages are no longer viewable then this obviously is in conflict with this “purpose”.
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