Web standards, in a nutshell, are the reason that your computer and my computer display content from the World Wide Web in the same way. When the concept of web pages was first unleashed, we had something of a Tower of Babel situation on our hands. All of the key pioneers of web technology were striding boldly forward, creating new solutions for displaying web content without regard for what their peers were doing. Developers were writing code that produced amazing results when viewed in Netscape Navigator, but was utter gibberish in Internet Explorer.
Eventually, developers got tired of having to develop two or three versions of every page they wrote, and turned their efforts to writing code in such a way that it would work in any browser. This made for some ugly and convoluted code. Then Sir Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in October 1994, and they set to work on writing a standard for HTML. Over time, the W3C was able to exert enough influence over people in the business of building web browsers, and they started to fall in step with the HTML standard. This was a great thing for guys like me in the website business, because it meant each page only had to be made once, using one set of rules.
Internet Explorer’s user market share recently dropped below 50% for the first time in over a decade — probably because more savvy users have recognized that Microsoft simply isn’t as interested in innovation on the Web as its competitors. Since the W3C sets the standards, they also have a great deal of control over our rate of innovation. That comes with a responsibility to drag browser producers, kicking and screaming if necessary, into compliance with modern technologies (or fall by the wayside).
The problem now is that pendulums swing both ways.
Most of us in the web development business are bursting with enthusiasm for the new HTML5 standard. It’s already in use by most of the major browsers, but a lot of developers are loathe to use it because it’s not fully supported. (I’m not using it here on samhooker.net because it would mean re-designing my site, and I’m content with the way it is, for now.)
Another (more woeful) reason that HTML5 is not being more widely used at present is the W3C’s assertion that it needs a lot more work before it’s ready. So much work, in fact, that it’s not going to be ready until 2022, according to their timeline.
I’d like to share a screenshot I took from CanIUse.com, a really handy tool that tells us which features are supported by which browsers. This screenshot shows a summary of browser compatibility with HTML5 and CSS3.
You can see that the current versions of FireFox, Safari, Chrome and Opera are between 73% and 90% compatible with HTML5 and CSS3. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, is at a pathetic 16%. Even with the release of IE9 next year, current projections do not show Internet Explorer offering the same levels of feature support that other major browser offer now.
As the browser with the highest market share, I am sure that Microsoft’s slow progress is a major contributing factor to the W3C’s 2022 estimate. But given the strides that web technology has made in the 17 years since the birth of the web, doesn’t 10 years until the next big step seem overly cautious? I feel that a more aggressive approach to developing the official HTML5 standard is crucial to our rate of innovation. Whether the W3C’s inertia is due to waiting for Microsoft to catch up, or to the organization itself becoming top-heavy with obsessive bureaucracy, it’s time to shake things up.
Internet Explorer’s market share
