There's a movement afoot in the web development community that says it's time to move beyond standards and take the web to a new levels. Unhappy with the pace of innovation at the W3C, many developers are calling on browser manufacturers to go beyond supporting official W3C specifications and develop tools to support new features.

Before the standardistas among us cry foul, keep in mind that no one is suggesting that we throw away existing standards. Standards have given us a much improved web that's cross platform to a degree unimaginable a decade ago. Instead the argument is that for innovation on the web to speed up, it might take some non-standard tools to jump start the process. 

One of the more outspoken critics, Alex Russell, one of the developers of the Dojo Ajax toolkit, thinks that it's time to abandon the W3C as a source of web guidance. "Web developers in the 90's were looking forward, not backward, writes Russell on his blog, "I remember being excited about getting the chance to use new features and not caring who gave them to us"

Jeff Croft, an HTML designer at Blue Flavor and longtime standards supporter, echos Russell's frustrations saying, "we've completely lost the innovative, experimental, lets-try-something-crazy attitude of web designers in the 90s, because we're too damn concerned about making things that are compliant." Perhaps more to the point he suggests that "once in a while, we should be saying fuck standards and trying something out of the box."

Croft qualifies his statement saying that the big corporate site you're working isn't probably isn't a good place to do so, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be pushing the boundaries from time to time, perhaps using non-standard tools. In other words, web development ought to be exciting and push the limits of what's available rather than stopping at the limitations of what's in the W3C specs.

Indeed many of the tools that have produced innovative new technologies on the web have come from sources outside the W3C. XMLHttpRequest, the backbone of Ajax technologies, was originally developed by Microsoft for Internet Explorer and later implimented by other browsers back when IE led the pack. XMLHttpRequest was then taken up by the W3C and is now overseen by the Web API working group.

However, supporters of W3C argue that running out ahead of established web standards could see a result in what Chris Messina, who's worked with Mozilla and others, calls a "privileged web" run with proprietary tools like Flash or Silverlight and an "unprivileged web" still using standard open tools. Obviously that's a situation neither users nor developers want to see happen.

No one wants a return to the painful 1996 web with sites that only work in one browser, a problem largely solved by the creation of W3C an the specs it developed. After all they argue, we have all these great standards-based tools, why not stop and smell the HTML 4 for a while?

James Bennett has a thoughtful response to the debate on his blog where he argues that the choices so far on the table -- stay with web standards and learn to live with their development pace, or abandon them altogether in favor of the enthusiastic mob — are a false dilemma.

"The first thing we need to do," says Bennet, "is throw that out and recognize that there's actually a fairly broad continuum of options in between these two extremes; in other words, what we should be looking for is a balance between the input of people who use and develop for the Web, and people who develop browsers and attendant technologies."

Of course much of the talk about web standards often comes down to how well the next version of Internet Explorer will implement them. But Bennett doesn't think that's true any more. Citing Joel Splosky's memorable Fire and Motion analogy and some examples of how IE7 was really Microsoft being forced to play catchup with Firefox, Opera and Safari, Bennett concludes that "Microsoft really isn't relevant to the future of web standards."

What's more, he argues, "any compelling new development that comes from the rest of the industry will be just another form of fire and motion, and Microsoft will have no choice but to keep pace, regardless of whether they participated in the process."

With Opera suing Microsoft over IE's failure to implement web standards and the resulting fallout, which includes Andy Clarke's call to disband the CSS Working Group, because both Opera and Microsoft site on the committee, the future of the web may well end up a return to the browser wars and non-standard innovations.







The problem with moving ahead without the W3C, in Messina's view, is the potential to create a "privileged web" run with proprietary tools like Flash or Silverlight and an "unprivileged web" still using standard open tools. Obviously that's a situation neither users nor developers want to see happen.


Chris Messina, who has worked with Mozilla and others, is a bit more cautious, arguing that "the job of folks who have grown disillusioned with the web standards path should [be to] begin to develop 'community conventions' that can be implemented today, using what leading browsers support."

Indeed many aspects of today's standards began life just as Messina describes -- as various kinds of agreed upon conventions.

The problem with moving ahead without the W3C, in Messina's view, is the potential to create a "privileged web" run with proprietary tools like Flash or Silverlight and an "unprivileged web" still using standard open tools. Obviously that's a situation neither users nor developers want to see happen.