Link: ‘Stop Pushing the Web Forward’

The title is a bit of a troll, but this article does a great job at summing up some of the ways the current web standards people are going in the wrong direction.

Regular readers should know that I’m a big proponent of good, clean, standards-compliant web design. Until a few years ago, that’s what being a good citizen on the internet meant. Unfortunately, things changed. The current web standards proponents are more interested in building web sites that mimic the look and feel of native apps than they are in building websites that actually feel like websites.

This is a major conflict today. Apple is refusing to implement many of the things that standards bodies have decreed are to become “standard”. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is that Apple has no interest in having people build “native” style apps in HTML/CSS/Javascript. Apple is instead implementing non-standard features that they believe make the web a better place for traditional websites – think iOS 9 ad blocking.

It should come as no surprise that I side with Apple here. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is say no to a feature, even if that feature has been labeled a standard. Apple has said no to allowing websites to install plugins that run in the background of your device, constantly using battery life and processor power, even though standards bodies are in favor of this.

If it were up to me, I’d say Apple should pull some of the things they already implemented. There is no reason webpage should be allowed to hijack your scrolling behavior, for example.