The W3C Cannot Save Us

Interesting essay by Alex Russell, arguing that standards advocacy is holding back technical progress in web browser development. I think he makes a good point: standards are great for defining and refining technology that has already been accepted in the real world, but the standardizing process is so time-consuming and requires so much consensus that it’s not reasonable to expect groundbreaking new technology to stem from it.

In short, better to go ahead and use the <canvas> tag now and tell IE users to switch to a better browser than to sit around waiting until 2015 for Microsoft to implement it in a crummy way that won’t “just work” anyway.

★ Monday, 17 December 2007