Alex Russell, one of the developers of the Dojo Ajax toolkit, thinks that it’s time to abandon the W3C as a source of web guidance. In pointing out the differences between web development before standards and how it is today, Russell hits on a key point — it was the rapid pace of innovation that necessitated the standards, not the other way around.
A vast number of prominent developers have responded to Russell’s post, and several are worth pointing out here. Jeff Croft echos Russell’s frustrations saying, “we’ve completely lost the innovative, experimental, lets-try-something-crazy attitude of web designers in the 90s, because we’re too damn concerned about making things that are compliant.” Perhaps more to the point he suggests that “once in a while, we should be saying fuck standards and trying something out of the box.”
While I refrain from comment on divisive issues outside the Lost community, I just wanted to note that I was surprised to learn of W3 backlash, and completely understanding of the frustration with their criminally-slow progress over the past few years.
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