Future shock

There’s an article at IBM outlining why XHTML 2.0’s lack of backward compatibility is a good thing. And I suppose it will be a good thing… someday. The fact that many modern browsers still can’t properly render css, introduced in 1996, doesn’t lead me to think it’ll be any day soon.

The article also raises a question (well for me anyway) about what is going to happen to the billions of current web pages in the future. Will they just, you know, not work, simply because a better presentational language has rendered them obsolete? Or will browsers continue to build in support for all of the standards as they develop?

If so, we need to ask whether this might not be the tail wagging the dog.

Posted by timswan at September 23, 2002 12:50 PM