The Subjunctive

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Standards Imposed by Asshatocrats

I've been neglecting the blog in response to crazy project deadlines. In particular, I'm developing a web site and I'm trying to get it to conform to W3C specifications. This seemed like a good idea when I started, but now I'm beginning to question certain choices made by this not-so-august body. There are many things I could complain about, but just as an example, HTML 4 supports the ability to open a link in a new window by simply adding an attribute to the the link's tag - as of XHTML1.0 Strict, the use of this attribute has been deprecated. Why? Because the ivory tower bureaucrats at the W3C deem it so. They would like to see the complete reductionistic separation of the semantic nature of HTML from the language that controls the styling of the content.

These fools don't know thing one about art to begin with, but their philosophy notwithstanding, what bothers me most is my feeling that market should create the standards implicitly. If the preponderance of the market uses MSIE as their browser, they are effectively speaking to their preferences and I'd personally like to see the W3C bitch-slapped for their audacity in second guessing us. I don't give a good god damn about what some red-faced Jakob Nielsen has to say about the usability of some design approach I want to take - if I want to take it badly enough, no one should attempt to save me from my "folly." The W3C is like the lifestyle nannies who upbraid oreo consumers and smokers. Get off your high horses and actually get a job making web sites if you want to make a difference, but stop demanding that we out here in the trenches should wait with bated breath for your imperial pronouncements.

posted by Malaclypse the Tertiary at 4:58 PM ·


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