Re: Next Web Focus

On 1/25/14 7:28 AM, Simon St.Laurent wrote:
> For now I plan to return to observer status, and will work outside of
> this group to promote what I thought it was trying to do.  I've been
> doing that anyway, for a very long time.
>
> (I'll still have an article for Wednesday, and will let you all know
> when it goes up.)

The article is finally up at:

<http://programming.oreilly.com/2014/01/web-application-development-is-different-and-better.html>

Because I've told the story positively, I'm sure that will provoke yet 
another round of "but we agree" that sounds nice but is sadly false.

A recurring theme of recent conversation here (and elsewhere around that 
piece) is:

"We love the Web!  We just want to make it more flexible!"

Whether those ideas involve:

* dropping empty elements into documents for later presentational use,

* rebuilding the browser using JavaScript to make it more pluggable, or

* demanding that CSS change before the experiments celebrated in the 
Extensible Web Manifesto actually happen,

those ideas run up against the foundations of what has, in fact, made 
the Web great.

The Extensible Web Manifesto talks about the need to:

----------------------------------------------------------------
"Develop, describe and test new high-level features in JavaScript, and 
allow web developers to iterate on them before they become standardized....

[so]

Developers can ramp up more quickly on new APIs, providing quicker 
feedback to the platform while the APIs are still the most malleable.

Mistakes in APIs can be corrected quickly by the developers who use 
them, and library authors who serve them, providing high-fidelity, 
critical feedback to browser vendors and platform designers.

Library authors can experiment with new APIs and create more cow-paths 
for the platform to pave."
----------------------------------------------------------------

I'd ask the members of this list (and everyone, really) to take the time 
to do those experiments before asking for major tear-downs or 
refactoring of the structures that actually make such experimentation 
possible.

Jim Dovey's suggestion to "try and do polyfills and core standards 
concurrently, not serially, perhaps?" is a concise demonstration of the 
impatience I see on this list for change.  Brian Kardell's call for an 
"an evolutionary model forward" seems more appropriate, but combines 
badly with his advocacy for regions.

The people here all want to improve the Web, but the rhetoric here plays 
easily into the hands of those who really would like to ditch HTML and 
CSS in favor of canvas.

I'd ask this group to step back a bit, and focus on places where 
experimentation can work, rather than rushing forward to encourage 
design by committee. Yes, that's slower, but it produces far less 
erosion of the values that make the Web triumph.

Back to the observation tower.

Good luck, and thanks,
-- 
Simon St.Laurent
http://simonstl.com/

Received on Wednesday, 29 January 2014 14:23:25 UTC