- From: Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+w3c@gmail.com>
- Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:44:42 -0500
- To: Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
- Cc: Karl Dubost <karl+w3c@la-grange.net>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>
On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 9:06 AM, Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com> wrote: > I don't imagine, though, that Aryeh speaks for all of the MediaWiki > development group. Aryeh, do you speak for the entire group? Are you > stating MediaWiki's official position in this regard? Of course not. I'm one volunteer developer, and what I say is only my own opinion. However, further questions about MediaWiki development should go to wikitech-l or to me privately, and I won't answer them here -- I doubt most of the subscribers to this list are interested. On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu> wrote: > On 1/17/10 7:46 AM, Aryeh Gregor wrote: >> >> Aren't there lots of features regularly discussed here that can't be >> changed despite the fact they were never put in a CR? Things like >> localStorage > > Which is now widely viewed as a huge mistake, right? Sure, but so is half the web platform, right? :) You have to make a tradeoff between shipping lower-quality features sooner, or higher-quality features later. Is the extra time to deployment worth the gain in quality? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If the goal of HTML5 is to advance the web by making it a more attractive platform than proprietary competitors, then getting more basic features out there faster will get us a lot closer to parity. Better to have basic video out there now so we can start chipping away at Flash video's market share ASAP, than to put it off an extra year to make sure it's better. Same for localStorage, same for all the major new features that are essential for doing key things in a standard way. A mediocre standard is better than no standard, because with no standard you're giving a lot more room for proprietary technologies to grow. This isn't so true for standards that already have basic functionality and are mostly just being refined. As an author, I mostly don't care so much about getting new CSS features soon. HTML5 is what I want to see soon, even if some parts are half-baked, because it opens up possibilities that just don't exist now.
Received on Monday, 18 January 2010 20:45:14 UTC