Web standards. They’re big, dumb, and they don’t work. Yet, they persist. Why?

What a dumb article! Have a read:

Communist radicals got a bad rap in the 20th century because they wanted to take over the world and brainwash everybody. More efficient, they said. More humane, they claimed. A better way to run things, so they thought.

These days, the rebel youth aren’t so busy admiring Marx as they are giving each other tutorials on how to use XHTML Strict. Bravely battling JavaScript menus and eradicating layout tables, admonishing us to €œplease think of the children€? and design our pages so they’re compatible with the handhelds of next century. Same conformist thinking, same lousy outcome.

According to the Web Standards Project, the world needs this stuff because it’s simpler, more affordable and available to all. Oh really? Could it be that they’re just ideas cooked up by a bunch of overpaid intellectuals? Whatever happened to trial by market, or supply and demand? Painful questions, perhaps, but let’s face it €” when innovation has slowed to the point that tabbed browsing is a headline feature, it’s time to put down that Jonestown Sling.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are a classic example of the madness. Reared in a cubicle somewhere, they’re pitched as the pinnacle of document styling. CSS are public, free and future-proof. Sounds great until you realise that: a) you need a degree to understand them; b) Microsoft doesn’t care about them; and c) they suck. What’s more, CSS have been promoted as €œthe future€? since the mid-90s, and by now the only thing keeping them alive is a steady stream of guilt and the occasional Movable Type installation.

While XHTML and CSS have been at least moderately successful, many other W3C recommendations have failed to gain any traction. It’s these lesser creations like SMIL, MathML and SVG that really demonstrate the flaws in the group-think process. Not to mention the 20 other projects that no-one even discusses.

However, this doesn’t seem to discourage the advocates. The problem of saving the world from browser competition has mostly disappeared, but no matter. Standards cronies have now latched on to the disabled €” the starving African children of high technology €” for leverage. Spend time reading A List Apart, and you’ll soon get the impression that accessibility is bigger than cancer, and we’re all about to go blind and lose our mouse-bearing limbs. The solution? Web standards!

I too was once seduced by the dream of an XML utopia, complete with vision-impaired people frolicking in the meadows. I too spent nights deciphering the box model, and polishing my shrine to Tim Berners-Lee.

But now I’m fed up. I want the browser wars back. I want to use Flash and PDF (you know, technologies that work) without being accused of bourgeois elitism. Is it really so important to make our Web sites phone-compatible? PDA-compatible? Safe for the flat-footed? No. All that matters is the desire to communicate, and the ability to steal any good thing that gets invented. Like Sputnik.

David Emberton is a professional Web developer, author of Flash 4 Magic and Flash 5 Magic, and regular APC contributor.

Is this guy for real? Why would anyone want the browser wars back? It’s bad enough now! Personally, I think Web Standards are very, very good, I like to code sites that validate in XHTML and CSS; I like seeing the site render well when stylesheets are turned off. Some people should stop living in the past, the future is upon us, web standards are one of the best things that have happened to the web in recent years.