Bring back the browser wars! 19 Dec 2007

Simon Willison points us to this controversial quote from Alex Russell:

"To get a better future, not only do we need a return to 'the browser wars', we need to applaud and use the hell out of 'non-standard' features until such time as there's a standard to cover equivalent functionality. Non-standard features are the future, and suggesting that they are somehow 'bad' is to work against your own self-interest."

While comments like these will no doubt offend the sensibilities of many a standardista, you have to hand it to Russell, he does have a point. Take the XMLHttpRequest object, for example...This object is the backbone of Ajax (and by extension, the Web 2.0 movement), yet it was created by Microsoft, not some committee at the W3C. XMLHttpRequest began life as part of Outlook Web Access in 1997, but was later redeveloped for incorporation within Internet Explorer 5.0, which was released in 1999. Noticing the power of this object, The Mozilla Project added its own open source version to Mozilla 1.0 in time for its launch in 2002. This implementation was later copied by Apple (who first included it as part of Safari 1.2), Opera Software (who included it as part of Opera 8.0), and all other mainstream browsers thereafter. It was only in April 2006 - nearly 10 years after the object first appeared - that the W3C finally got onboard, publishing a Working Draft specification for the XMLHttpRequest object's API on 5th April 2006. And at the time of writing, this standard is still a work in progress! As is evident from this example, we cannot wait for the W3C to define the future of HTML, CSS, DOM etc. for us, we need browser manufacturers to take the initiative and invent it on their behalf - however unpalatable this may sound.