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Wanted: Standards Compliant Browser

Sep 24 2008

Keith Medlin

There is an entire sub-culture on the internet devoted to the strict adherence to the almight W3C “standards.”  I intentionally put standards in quotes because there isn’t any form of universal adoption of these recommendations by the major browsers just yet.  While each iteration of Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Mozilla move us closer together the differences are still staggering in some cases.

The news this week that Tim Berners-Lee has started the World Wide Web Foundation as a response to what he perceives as the stagnation of the W3C’s efforts.  I am torn by this news.  On the one hand I completely agree that the W3C is dragging it’s feet on the new HTML specs which should logically could be in place by 2010 not the 2015 they are proposing.  On the other hand, the W3C is Berners-Lee’s organization!  If he’s abandoning it, that is tantamount to an admission that the organization was not set up efficiently and if that’s the case…what’s the guarantee that the W3F isn’t going to similarly fail?

Ultimately the case needs to be made that browsers and merely the delivery mechanism for an HTML rendering engine.  They need not, in any way, be the rendering engine itself.  It would be like buying a DVD player because it supports movies from Warner Brother’s, MGM, and Studio Gibli but doesn’t play anything from Walt Disney Studios.  You expect that any DVD player will play any movie from any studio / DVD manufacturer because there is a DVD specification that the hardware will support.  There is absolutely no reason that this cannot be the case with web browsers.

Vitamin recently posted an excellent article that essentially indicted the browser as an outdated mechanism for delivering web content.  While I agree in principle that the web can technically be a delivery mechanism for data that is used by desktop or mobile applications this isn’t necessarily a complete solution.  Are you going to have an application to read blogs, one to read financial news, one to chat, one to twitter, one to….well you get the picture.  Ultimately the diversification of tools will give rise to tools that facilitate the bundling of tools which is essentially what browsers offer right now.

My argument is that browsers are not the problem.  The rendering engine efforts are the problems.

I believe that the internet needs standards, but given the seemingly complete failure of browser developers to settle on a single rendering engine it is time for a 3rd party like the W3C or W3F to actually just build the thing and keep it up to date.  Browser developers could license this rendering engine for their browsers and build around it, rather than worrying about the actual rendering layer of their browser.

Wouldn’t this strangle competition or innovation though?

I argue that there is no room for innovative interpretation of standards.  If the HTML specification says that you cannot include header tags inside spans then that shouln’t be allowed.  More importantly, I don’t want innovation in the interpretation of the box model…look at where that got us!

I would add that competition between browsers shouldn’t be about standards compliance.  That penalizes all users, developers, and designers.  Competition should be about offering a unique web browsing experience through features, performance, and design.  The Flock browser is a great example of what could be possible in this new model of browser development.  Flock, for those who don’t know, is built upon the Mozilla engine and builds specific features directly into the browser that facilitate interactions with social websites like myspace, facebook, and twitter.

In my vision browser giants like Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple could be free to devote their resources to the development of the user experience within a browser environment.  More importantly, it opens the doors for niche browsers like Flock.  Perhaps HR Block wants to offer a browser that’s specific to tax season for interaction with their services, etc.  Maybe TheStreet.com wants to offer a browser that gives users all kinds of custom aggregrated financial services sector tools.  The possibilities are limitless here.

Rather than developing an individual tool for each individual job you broadly adapt the browser itself to the functionality.  Back to the DVD analogy you can buy DVD players that also serve as receivers for surround sound systems.  At their heart they serve as tools to allow home entertainment users to watch movies, but also provide functionality to plug in a 5.1 surround sound home theater!

There is no reason that browser companies should be tied down to the development of standards compliant browsers.  Companies should be tied down to providing internet users with the best possible experience while browsing a standards compliant web no matter what browser they choose.

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