HTML and the "living standard"

by
, posted

From an interview with with Ian Hickson, HTML editor:

The Web’s technology stack is one of the only (maybe the only? I’m hard pressed to come up with another example) platform that is completely vendor-neutral and not centrally developed. Anyone can invent a new feature and if the market agrees, can get that feature to be a de facto part of the platform. XMLHttpRequest is a classic example. A browser cannot be a serious competitor on the Web without supporting it now, yet it was initially just made up and shipped by one vendor without any consultation with anyone. … the HTML spec is not just a reflection of my wishes.

I always thought of the quirks of web development to be largely because of standards bodies, but I realize it’s more of a living standard—what do browsers decide to implement?

There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in the interview—worth a read.