Last month Molly Holzschlag lead an interesting discussion on the divided state of the web standards community on A List Apart. Now we all know this has been happening for a while, this fragmentation of the web standards community.
Molly is prompting people to get involve with their web standards group of their choice, in an effort bolster the community, and maybe reverse the trend.
Okay it’s a good idea in theory; but in reality, from a personal view I’m tired of the same thing time and time again. Take for example the Web Standards Group mailing list (we don’t have a local WSG) I’m finding the constant rehashing of topics and questions and answers a bit pointless, to the point that I’ve just lost interest.
You know a few months back Microsoft floored the web industry by doing a back flip on its previous decision to include a X-UA-Compatible Meta switch with Internet Explorer 8.
What a difference 6 months makes. Now Microsoft are back to their old tricks. So what have they done, well it seems now that Internet Explorer 8 will not be defaulting to rendering in complete standards compliant mode that Microsoft promised.
Well this week the web in a small way moved a little closer to the full semantic web as Yahoo announced it’s now indexing for the semantic web and microformats (which is really good to see).
So what is the big deal. Isn’t this semantic thing something the web standardsi have been touting for a while now. Does Yahoo finally joining in make any difference.
Well yes in a way it does, it means that Yahoo are taking the step in the correct use of semantically formated and organised information as a tool to understanding the context of the information that is being indexed.
Microsoft told us via a very careful explanation from the standards representatives working with them (Eric Meyer et al) that Internet Explorer 8 would have a switch (meta tag) that would have to be in place to render the new features (including JavaScript improvements), otherwise the rendering engine would be fixed at Internet Explorer 7 levels. In other words to render IE8 as IE8 you have to have the metatag switch.
This was primarily in response to the IE6 to IE7 compatibility backlash by the corporate sector; as IE7 broke a lot of Intranet applications. We all bitched and grumbled, Jeremy Keith got up on his soapbox. But basically we all go on with it, understanding (but not liking) Microsoft’s positioning. That was in the past.
