Why Tim Berners-Lee is Wrong

The W3C is finally waking up and realizing they’ve got a problem with HTML. The browser vendors are once again abandoning them and going their own way (except for Microsoft, which is going in a different direction entirely). The W3C has wisely decided to start listening to Mozilla, Opera, and Apple and revisit classic HTML. Unfortunately though they realize they have a problem, they haven’t yet realized what the problem is. Berners-Lee seems to think it’s about “quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces”, and it’s not.

XHTML is not the problem. Well-formedness is certainly not the problem. Hell, even namespaces aren’t really the problem although they’re clunky and ugly and everyone hates them. The problem is that the W3C has abandoned HTML for years. HTML hasn’t moved forward since 1999. No wonder browser vendors are getting antsy.

XHTML (1.0 and 1.1) is nothing but a reformulation of HTML. It is a very good reformulation that offers real benefits to developers and authors. However it doesn’t add any significant new functionality. It makes many tasks easier (especially ones that involve machine processing of HTML) but it doesn’t make anything new possible. Nonetheless it’s an unalloyed good thing, and we should keep it. Berners-Lee complains that:

The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn’t work. The large HTML-generating public did not move, largely because the browsers didn’t complain. Some large communities did shift and are enjoying the fruits of well-formed systems, but not all.

The simple fact is that it’s hard to change direction on a moving train. It’s even harder to change direction when that train is made up of millions of independent authors and software vendors. It takes years, but guess what? The train is moving. XHTML is winning. More and more pages are being served in valid XHTML, and more and more tools are generating it. We may never get rid of classic HTML in my life time, but there’s no reason to give up on XHTML now.

The problem is not now and has never been XHTML or well-formedness. The problem is that the W3C lost interest in improvements to HTML and XHTML. Instead they’ve run off and started work on huge, complicated, massive monolithic plugin technologies like XForms, MathML, and SVG, but even these aren’t the problem themselves. Considered individually they’re each useful and practical. The problem is that the W3C stopped worrying about the smaller problems, like how to DELETE a URL with a web form, how to identify a date in a document, or how to logout of a site that uses HTTP authentication. There’s still a lot of room for improvement in classic HTML and XHTML. There are still elements and attributes and attribute values that are simply missing and glaring by their absence.

The W3C’s mistake was ignoring these little things while it worked on big problems like MathML and SVG. What’s needed now is not an abandonment of the good work the W3C has done in XForms, SVG, MathML and most especially XHTML. Instead what we need to do is tie up the loose ends. Finish what Tim Berners-Lee started way back in 1989, and make HTML a really solid language for the writing and reading of narrative content.

Then we can make it even more powerful by mixing in XForms, SVG, MathML, MusicXML, and other pieces. However, we can only do this if we keep well-formedness, keep XHTML, and keep namespaces. These are all critical to enabling HTML to expand beyond the narrow confines of newspapers, blogs, personal home pages, and online stores. Otherwise we’ll be condemned to a hell of tag soup and JavaScript for all eternity; and that is not a fate I wish to experience.

77 Responses to “Why Tim Berners-Lee is Wrong”

  1. darmowe mp3 Says:

    Very interesting comments…
    What I don’t understand is…
    to my understanding, we dropped HTML4.0.1 in 1999 and then moved to XHTML1, then in 2001 we moved to XHTML1.1. So I’m under the impression that we should be writing websites in XHTML1.1, and this is what i have been doing on my site. Why then is the W3c on their website giving people tutorials on how to learn HTML4? This is mad, how do they expect people to embrace the “new” XHTML when they themselves are giving us a mixed message on what Doc type to be using.

  2. smieszne filmy Says:

    How about the W3C come up with an xml language for creating menus, that can be embedded only into xhtml docs. That might spur more xhtml conformance. Nearly every popular page on the web has some kind of menu. A well designed one would provide some level of semantic information, in a form comprehensible to computers. It could be the RSS of documents that don’t change very much.

  3. bwin Says:

    Some people asked for new features; others were wondering if formerly deprecated elements would return; some had comments and criticisms about the decision itself, the WHATWG or W3C process; and a few raised concerns about the WHATWG and W3C ignoring the needs of particular groups.

  4. barbara boxer Says:

    Interesting.I think that XHTM format is very helpful for creating site.

  5. Dubbing Says:

    But its hard to learn XHTM format

  6. börsenspiel Says:

    The problem with XHTML adoption has one clear factor that stands out head and shoulders above the rest: Internet Explorer doesn’t support it. Given that fact, only in corner cases can the average web developer ever possibly have anything to gain by using it.

  7. Gify emoty Says:

    XHTML is not the problem? I am teaching it over two months and I hardly know grounds.

  8. Rene Says:

    Unfortunately xhtml isn’t supported by the Internet Explorer, which is still the most used browser. So, which browser supports xhtml??

  9. cracki Says:

    How about the W3C come up with an xml language for creating menus, that can be embedded only into xhtml docs. That might spur more xhtml conformance. Nearly every popular page on the web has some kind of menu. A well designed one would provide some level of semantic information, in a form comprehensible to computers. It could be the RSS of documents that don’t change very much

  10. cracki do gier Says:

    The problem with XHTML adoption has one clear factor that stands out head and shoulders above the rest: Internet Explorer doesn’t support it. Given that fact, only in corner cases can the average web developer ever possibly have anything to gain by using it.

  11. freemori Says:

    XHTML is a good technolog.I’m grograme and have leaned it and use it to my works.

  12. Papa Tierbedarf Says:

    I dont build my websites with XHTML because I had many troubles with this standard. The browser doesn’t show correctly DIV-Container so I need to build the sites in HTML.

  13. Charlotta Says:

    Very interesting article. But when even Mozilla doesn´t follow – who will?

  14. IP Says:

    The browser vendors are going their own ways, so W3C has to think about it again

  15. LO Says:

    My only concern is whether Microsoft will ever be concerned about XTHML or not.

  16. Joe Toner Says:

    In many cases and for a large number of humans the use of this language is perfectly sufficient. A large number of humans in a the position the fundamental ideas of this honor language are to be learned by the visible complexity. Also I rank myself among this majority. My interest lies not in the handling of a Programiersprache separates in the ability to learn of a technology for the publication of contents on my Website. With HTML4 I can begin already very much. But I am grateful and content. That this simple technology more talented and humans very efficient in this area not to be sufficient can understands I. I plead therefore to the downward compatibility of the new weave and kind to HTML4.

  17. Kerry web Says:

    We need very clear real world examples for every element, with illustrations of what the result should look like. Plus what not to do explained in clear English. The W3Schools site is a shining example.

    Will HTML5 require yet another doctype? Maybe it is also time to consider doing away with doctypes altogether. If the document starts with the HTML element, then it is HTML! Since browsers cope with all manner of mangled code thesedays, what difference does the doctype really have? I can even open a page of code that has no HTML or BODY elements at all, and it displays fine. Even now, there are too many confusing doctypes to choose from. Another one for HTML5 will not help.

    We need columns. Ones that allow the content to flow between them. Amazingly, Netscape 3 had columns with the MULTICOL element. I know you can now do them in CSS, but only in Firefox I believe. We must bring HTML closer to the standard of desktop publishing packages.

  18. John Lee Says:

    I think it is time to change –time to leave behind old & conservative traits and accept new realities. Internet has grown too big and technology/coding/programming has developed to much to stick by the old horses.

  19. Martino Says:

    I think these blog is really useful for new comers and Excellent resource list.

  20. baby Says:

    I certainly don’t disagree with any of the comments that have already shown up here, or with the initial post. There are clearly some problems and ultimately the WC3 must shoulder the bulk of the blame. Even so, when I step back and look at things from a long perspective, I find it fascinating that we become so out of joint over the fact that a product hasn’t been improved quickly enough. The car was introduced over a hundred years ago and still has some kinks that need to be ironed out. Yet we grow ever more impatient at the rate computer design seems to develop. Additionally, though, there seem to be so many components to consider in our computer universe determining which is most essential is a difficult task. Is it the issue of standards? Should we all be trying to focus on the shift to slimmed down web pages that can be accessed via mobile devices? At this point, the future of most of our technology still seems so much in flux that from a designer’s point of view, I would expect that it would be hard to decide which project to commit to.

  21. Desenie Says:

    Very nice article! I’ve heard rumors about XHTML 2.0 that it will not be backwards compatible. Meaning when it comes out, earlier versions of xhtml/html will not work.

  22. Chriseo Says:

    Is that true? I read all the article including the comments. Is XHTML 2.0 not backwards compatible? Thanks for an answer in advance!

  23. Ray Says:

    I do remember an RFC on tables layout being referenced but the major browsers didn’t conform to it. HTML is not unique every spec I’ve seen from the w3c is poor (XML, SOAP, XML Schema….). The w3c also doesn’t seem to know how to manage a standard

  24. Stu Says:

    What’s the problem with namespaces? Every single new element the WhatWG is suggesting could have been done with them and, with some of their undeniable benefits, could have helped to spur adoption of XHTML.

    Why couldn’t they just say “Look, we’ve created this spec using our namespace. If you add <wg:canvas id=”…”/> to a compliant XHTML document then all these browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc.) will work with it. Same with <input type=”text” wg:type=”date”/>. Just add our namespace and it’ll work!”.

    Anyone not using XHTML gets HTML4 mode, ignoring the namespaced stuff. Anyone using XHTML gets the good stuff. I know what I’d do.

    As it is, I feel a disturbance in the force 🙁

  25. luklis Says:

    I haven’t read what Tim Berners-Lee said, but the issue with XHTML adoption is that there is very little incentive to “upgrade”… couple that with the fact that current support for (X)HTML/CSS/JS in the blue e, is lackluster at best (yeah, we’re talking IE7 here), there’s little point moving to the bleeding edge, when the browser most users are stuck with, can’t keep up with specs, and from all appearances, has no interest in doing so.

  26. renatura Says:

    I dont no how is Berners-lee. I now xhtml and html and css. what he say is what I’m doing every day…
    do it do not talk.

  27. Elliotte Rusty Harold Says:

    For some reason this post seems to attract a disproportionate amount of Polish copy-spam. That is, spam that copies previous sentences in the post and the comments. Consequently I’m disabling further comments. If you really want to say something about this, drop me an e-mail.