Category Archives: standards

Real Constructors & WebIDL Last Call

October 3, 2011 – 7:10 am

For those who haven’t been following the progress of WebIDL — and really, how could you not? An IDL? For the web? I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter… — the standard is now in last call, which is W3C for “alllllllllllmost done”. Which it is not. Before I get to why, let me first [...]

By alex | Also posted in javascript, programming, webdev | Comments (18)

Half Lives

March 9, 2011 – 9:04 am

I’m headed to Austin soon for spring break SxSWi, and this year I’m lucky and grateful to be representing Chrome on the always-packed browser panel (more usable Lanyrd talk page here). The context for this year’s panel is interesting to me — a couple of years into a renewed era of browser competition, users have [...]

By alex | Also posted in openweb, programming, webdev | Comments (9)

CSS Variables Are The Future

August 11, 2008 – 4:52 am

or: “Reports of the Harm Caused By CSS Variables Are Greatly Exaggerated” To say that CSS is abominable isn’t controversial. The implementations are leading the spec in some places, and we’re getting real progress there. Firefox’s rounded corners and WebKit’s drop-shadows, declarative animations, background tiling, and CSS variables are all hugely important and liberating. But [...]

By alex | Also posted in openweb, webdev | Tagged | Comments (16)

Power vs. Authority

July 9, 2008 – 1:46 pm

Standards bodies are animated only by the needs of industry to reduce costs by forcing vendors to agree on things…In this context, then, the W3C’s only effective function is to drive consensus when visions for how to go forward diverge or lead down proprietary ratholes. Asking the W3C for more is the fast path to continued disappointment.

By alex | Also posted in openweb, webdev | Comments (26)