You can spec all you want, but…
Monday, June 14th, 2004
Andrei Herasimchuk, who annoys me to this day as the guy who added some things to the Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator user interfaces that just don’t make any damn sense (especially when trying to stretch a metaphor between two very different programs) nevertheless has some very cogent things to say about Why Web Standards are a Good Idea. The executive summary:
Generally speaking, standards are a means to apply pressure on corporations to behave in a manner that is beneficial to everyone, not just the shareholders of the corporation.
You can spec all you want, but if corporate “self”-interest sees more profit in a proprietary approach, standards will simply fade away, and the big corporate dog will set the approach.
Does that remind you of any particular mega corporation? Yeah, that one.
