I'm starting to move more and more away from this point of view. I can see much of the merit in it - but have come to think that drawing some kind of uncrossable line at the browser level that demands uniformity is ultimately arbitrary.
Why shouldn't browser vendors innovate at the cutting edge? Why shouldn't application developers have to make a choice between platforms just like they have to at any other layer of the big grand tree of tech?
I know it wouldn't be popular among folks who want to build enormous websites that centralise distribution of media etc... and mega-corporations that rely on such mass distribution... but I'm all for a kind of severe nominalisation of the web where technologies are allowed to freely develop to serve smaller and highly targeted niches.
I can understand the desire to have one platform that works for everything... If there was just one smartphone platform in existence at any one time that'd be great too from that point of view. Reaching the masses would then be a snap!
But I guess I've never really understood the argument for this rigorous standardisation of the web platform. At least, I've never understood what people think is special about the web such that this standardisation is an absolute must - beyond the view that people are too lazy to use multiple browsers. It's ironic because no one believes that there should be one single smartphone platform - yet it's a hell of a lot harder for people to switch platforms if there is an app on one that they particularly want to use. It takes 30 seconds to install a new browser - a couple of seconds to launch - if you need to switch.
That was the problem in reality. The proprietary extensions were almost irrelevant, unless you were a big fan of blinking text. The issue was those two stagnant browsers were strangling the web, IE & Microsoft doing so with malice.
The fact that we can even make that comparison with a straight face shows just how far we've come. You literally just tried to equate a browser market in which there are 4 very active and competitive players releasing new versions daily/weekly, to one where a near monopoly kept the same browser version on the market for six years.
Yep, why do you think the WaSP was created? AFAIK this war began with Netscape having a monopoly back in 1995, which effectively killed HTML 3.0 and resulted in 3.2.
Why shouldn't browser vendors innovate at the cutting edge? Why shouldn't application developers have to make a choice between platforms just like they have to at any other layer of the big grand tree of tech?
I know it wouldn't be popular among folks who want to build enormous websites that centralise distribution of media etc... and mega-corporations that rely on such mass distribution... but I'm all for a kind of severe nominalisation of the web where technologies are allowed to freely develop to serve smaller and highly targeted niches.
I can understand the desire to have one platform that works for everything... If there was just one smartphone platform in existence at any one time that'd be great too from that point of view. Reaching the masses would then be a snap!
But I guess I've never really understood the argument for this rigorous standardisation of the web platform. At least, I've never understood what people think is special about the web such that this standardisation is an absolute must - beyond the view that people are too lazy to use multiple browsers. It's ironic because no one believes that there should be one single smartphone platform - yet it's a hell of a lot harder for people to switch platforms if there is an app on one that they particularly want to use. It takes 30 seconds to install a new browser - a couple of seconds to launch - if you need to switch.
What am I not getting here?