[HN Gopher] Join the W3C Exploration Interest Group: where stand...
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       Join the W3C Exploration Interest Group: where standards start
        
       Author : pentagrama
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2025-04-22 13:34 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.w3.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.w3.org)
        
       | zb3 wrote:
       | Standards start at Google nowadays..
        
         | Y-bar wrote:
         | ... And that's clearly a major concern because my front end
         | developer colleagues treat everything that Google does as the
         | one true way of the web. No matter if it is accepted into a
         | standards body, or if the Chrome implementation is buggy, that
         | is their target and every other browser is an after-thought at
         | best.
        
           | Etheryte wrote:
           | I think this misses the point. If the vast majority of your
           | users use something Chromium based, that's where you should
           | put most of your effort. It doesn't matter if it's the right
           | way or whatnot, your users only care about whether it works
           | for them or not. Users don't care about the technicalities.
        
             | fuzzzerd wrote:
             | While true and a pragmatic approach, that's another part of
             | the same root problem.
        
           | zcw100 wrote:
           | Historically nothing has changed just who's on top. Mosaic,
           | Netscape, IE, Chrome...
        
         | zelon88 wrote:
         | Considering the HTML provided by google dot com has 19 warnings
         | and a Content-Security-Policy error for a page that only has a
         | text field and a logo, I'm gonna take my chances and apply to
         | become a W3C invited expert.
        
           | vntok wrote:
           | Surely they have pretty good reasons for doing things that
           | way, don't you think?
           | 
           | That page is probably among the top 3 most analyzed,
           | optimized and A/B tested webpages in the world.
        
       | hnuser123456 wrote:
       | I think we should have a standard for browser extensions that
       | allows extensions to inspect and drop requests for unwanted ad
       | resources.
        
       | bryanlarsen wrote:
       | AFAICT, the W3C produces 2 types of standards:
       | 
       | - standards they write themselves that everyone ignores -
       | standards they copy from the WHATWG
        
         | wizzwizz4 wrote:
         | Which is ActivityPub?
        
           | bryanlarsen wrote:
           | If that's your best example of a well used w3c native
           | standard, thanks for helping me prove my point.
        
           | immibis wrote:
           | An incompatible attempt at reformulating Mastodon Protocol.
           | If you've ever actually tried to work with the protocol,
           | you'll know the standard only loosely describes it. If you
           | attempt to implement it by following the standard, you won't
           | be compatible with anything else, because everything else
           | implements Mastodon Protocol instead (and calls it
           | ActivityPub).
        
             | wizzwizz4 wrote:
             | Touche. Mastodon is the Internet Explorer of ActivityPub.
             | There _are_ other, non-Mastodon extensions, and some
             | ActivityPub-spec functionality that Mastodon eschews but
             | other implementations support, but overall this is an
             | accurate summary. Especially regarding the C2S protocol:
             | most apps just use the Mastodon API instead (see
             | https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/10520).
        
         | robto wrote:
         | I think the RDF standards have produced many useful tools for
         | those that work with graph data. And the W3C is a useful
         | coordination place for new standards like Verifiable
         | Credentials[0] and Decentralized identifiers[1] and JSON Linked
         | Data[2], which are all being used in ActivityPub, Bluesky, and
         | a lot of other decentralizing projects.
         | 
         | [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verifiable_credentials
         | [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_identifier
         | [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON-LD
        
         | rhdunn wrote:
         | The CSS and specs are maintained by W3C and are widely
         | implemented by browsers. Likewise for the WAI-ARIA, WCAG,
         | MathML, and SVG specs.
         | 
         | The XML and related specs are implemented by various
         | applications and libraries even if web browsers dislike these
         | specs. -- They are used a lot in document publishing workflows
         | that use formats like JATS, and are supported by various tools
         | and libraries.
         | 
         | SVG is widely supported in vector graphics applications and
         | rendering tools.
         | 
         | And WHATWG hasn't just co-opted W3C specs -- it's also co-opted
         | encoding, URIs and others from places like the RFCs.
        
         | magicalist wrote:
         | > _standards they write themselves that everyone ignores_
         | 
         | CSS, WAI-ARIA, SVG, WebGPU, WebAuthn...and a large number of
         | APIs that are referenced as part of the HTML spec but developed
         | and standardized by different W3C groups.
         | 
         | > _standards they copy from the WHATWG_
         | 
         | Not for six years now: https://www.w3.org/blog/2019/w3c-and-
         | whatwg-to-work-together...
         | 
         |  _Lots_ of hn people need to update their priors about modern
         | web standardization work.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-22 23:01 UTC)