links I thought were interesting today
April 25th, 2008 by Gen Kanai- Baidu’s William Chang: ‘No reason for China to use Wikipedia’
No need for any other user-generated content from outside of China, right? - Getting Ready for the Launch of Firefox 3
Mozilla’s Paul Kim on our plans for launch - Microsoft: break up HTML 5
Who benefits from this proposal? Who can’t or does not want to implement the HTML 5 specification? Oh, you don’t say? How surprising.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
About HTML 5, it’s far more complex than you seem to think it is. First, the HTML 5 spec is a very complex one. Far more complex to read and grok than HTML 4 for instance. Agreed, it contains a lot really a lot of new things. But that’s not really an excuse for complexity.
It’s also a super-long spec. 536 pages in my A4 pdf… Urgh, to say the least.
The spec is totally unreadable for web authors because it mixes too many things the web authors should not have to worry about. Granted, a W3C spec is not for end-users but for implementors. On another hand, the Web’s incredible growth can thank the simplicity of the HTML specs and the HTML language.
Last point, and it’s not a minor one, the whole thing relies on Hixie’s shoulders being the sole editor-in-chief at this time. This is not a normal situation and life is unfortunately full of bad surprises. What if Hixie has an accident ? Becomes entirely unavailable for a long period of time for personal reasons ? Of course not the kind of things I wish for him, but hey, life is a bitch and you never know.
I do agree with Chris Wilson here : splitting the HTML5 spec into modules does make a lot of sense.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Daniel, you are correct. It is a lot more complex than I wrote, and I do understand both the reasons for and against Wilson’s thinking. I just found it too convenient that all of the other browser implementors have begun to implement portions of the HTML5 spec. but Redmond’s stance is one that benefits them for being late to the party. My comment is not about the specification itself, it’s about Redmond’s position on the specification.
As to your comment about the specification being large, that’s due to the fact that the HTML 4.1 spec. is over 10 years old. No wonder this next spec. is large. The web is much more important now than it was 10 years ago. Do you think we could have a great specification for the next generation of HTML, with over 10+ years of demand, and have it in a small, easy-to-read document? I wish for that too, but I imagine that you cannot have a great next-generation specification that will please many/most of the stake-holders AND have it be small and compact.
As to Hixie being the sole editor, that’s a problem, but a separate problem from the specification.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
yes I do. For instance, HTML Parsing and the HTML language itself could be different modules. The DOM could be a module. Offline storage and other network-related objects could be a module. Each of these modules would be easier to read that the whole 500+ pages thing.