Blog December 2007

There’s a fair bit of discussion around at the moment on the topic of HTML 5, and I’m led to wonder why. According to an article on A List Apart, we shouldn’t prepare for any practical use of HTML 5 until between 2017 and 2022!

“Why” I wondered, “when it took fourteen years to move from a working alpha to the HTML 4.01 standard we know today (and its XML-based cousin) does it take between ten and fifteen years to move up one major version?”

And I think the answer is this: there are far more players in the Web game than there were in the early ’90s, and everybody wants their say. Apple have recently weighed in to the discussion with the request that they drop support for the Ogg Vorbis audio format from the new spec along with Nokia, a company that has no business deciding such matters. Apple are obviously protecting their proprietary DRM-protected format, but why should it worry a mobile phone manufacturer who have never really embraced portable audio in the way others have?

Recently I’ve got back to using Winamp. I’ve always loved this software, but I found that since Microsoft bucked their ideas up with Media Library 9 and above, other (admittedly, non-bundled) players haven’t had a look in. However, with their full support of WMA and a myriad of other formats, and their near hassle-free Media Library - more than I can say about Microsoft’s over-engineered system - Nullsoft have really hit the nail on the head.

But looking through the various tweakable options the player contains, I couldn’t help thinking that here was an example of community thinking done right. They’d looked through the forum and its Wishlist section and discovered, then made the changes that would make this product so immensely versatile. Forget the large number of plugins, skins and visualisations available: most (if not all) of the functionality the player needs are right there in the initial download. Some have been written by others, some have been “inspired” by other plugins, and some are just great ideas that Nullsoft could never have thought of because they were too close to the project.

So why then can a media player as popular as Winamp is be designed by committee but still get put together pretty quickly? And the answer is simple: they’re a dictatorship! They decide which ideas to approve and reject (the ones that go into the player’s make-up, that is), and they are the ones that implement them. They rely on a body of loyal users for their feedback and a tight community of developers for that expert touch. What they don’t do is include every amendment, contribution or request for functionality (or lack thereof) from every Tom, Dick and Harry who signs up to be a member of their “working group”. They know what they want, and they know that their users trust them.

So my point is...oh yes, there is one...we can pretty much forget about HTML 5, as none of us are going to see it in our careers: not in any practical sense anyway; not unless somebody decides to stand up and say “no more”. Working groups are useless in my opinion; democracy is a great system but it relies on strong leadership to make difficult choices. OK we can appoint the leadership, but we then have to trust in their judgement. The reason no-one’s doing that now is because the Internet was always designed to be a community affair, and although there are numerous bodies from the W3C to the WHATWG to InterNIC and beyond, none of these is a governing body: none of these can make a choice that affects how the Web works in reality. After all, none of the big players conform to the W3C’s standards, so why should anyone else?

So there.

Why is it that nothing seems to work any more? Websites constantly kick out 404 errors, my OneNote is always getting out-of-sync with my Outlook task list, Dreamweaver is always forgetting my FTP details, and I can’t think of a time when Adobe Acrobat has ever actually worked inside IE.

If you buy a product from a company like Sony, you’re pretty much guaranteed that it’ll work perfectly and never break, because their “reassuring expensiveness” is justified by great build quality. But why does this rule not seem to apply for desktop and web apps?

Now a cynic might attribute some of this down to the ineptitude of software developers such as Microsoft, but I think that’s a complete cop-out. The reason Macs don’t have such widely reported problems is that hardly anybody uses them, because there’s no reason for them, other than to provide work for Mitchell and Webb when they’re between series.

No, I think the constant stream of bugs, be they online or offline, is due not to simple ineptitude, but to the pressure under which people continually put themselves. If the deadline for Windows Vista had been properly thought out and not then been put back, and back, and back (I first blogged about Vista in December 2005 as one of the things to look out for in ’06), maybe it would work flawlessly. If the guys behind MySpace weren’t so keen to attract more and more visitors to their site, maybe they’d spend a couple of days ironing out the myriad bugs and imperfections that plague the site.

I find it so strange that we come to accept crashes, internal server errors or “quirks” as just part of life; it’s also not helpful when certain software giants (naming no names, Bill) continually deny that many of their oldest bugs even exist, a fact which has given rise to a saying in our office: “this bug is by design”.

But what does one do? Complain to the developer? Your local MP? The European Court of Human Rights? Is it not your right to be able to use a piece of software without fear that your brain will turn to cheese through repressed anger at its various gremlins? OK, maybe that’s a bit OTT, but how about the next time you come across a problem with a website or a piece of software, take five minutes to get in touch with the developers if you can, and let them know. If it’s a large company, chances are they already know about it and probably aren’t doing much to counteract it, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get, and you never know, your email could be the straw that breaks the Project Manager’s back and forces him or her to schedule in that bug fix, if only to stem the flow of abuse.

Just a thought. Go in peace.

While doing some research for a new project, I happened upon an old website, at wee.com. The site basically consists of two pages, and I have to say I find it one of the most interesting websites I’ve ever come across, to the point that I now feel like an archaeologist, obsessed with knowing the intricate past of this enigmatic domain.

The pre-filled Wiki article on aboutus.org would tend to suggest that I’m not the first one to tread this trail, and the Alexa report uncovers a much more interesting statistic: this site is nearly 12 years old! Twelve years! The domain was first registered in 1996, and doesn’t appear to have changed in the slightest.

Putting all that aside, the opinions page is really worth a read, serving as a warning (albeit, a retrospective one) that the Internet will be reserved only for “bored tech writers” in Silicon Valley. The writer then goes on to question whether the Web will take off as a democratic, social medium, or whether it will simply be a wasteland, bereft of content because its would-be contributors were too busy playing video games.

This site was apparently developed by a fellow called David Kemper. Upsettingly a web search turned up few apparently relevant references, but I hope that wherever he is, he gets the chance to read this and know that somewhere out there, someone was interested in what he had to say, once...and I hope he doesn’t choke too much on his 12 year-old words! :)

God bless you David J Kemper.