Today I followed an innocent little Twitter link from Jeremy Keith that led, unbeknown to me, into a virtual bloodbath. What was the battlefield? Get Satisfaction. And the cause that people were raising banners to? The password anti-pattern, and Get Satisfaction’s unwitting support thereof.

What is the password anti-pattern? In short, it’s the behavior of teaching people that it is safe to enter their password information from one website on a different website. In the modern digital world of phishing attacks and identity theft, it’s a very dangerous habit to help people form.

How dangerous? Well, how attached are you to your personal information?

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This isn’t precisely fresh news, but in August, Justin James cornered Ian Hickson in a HTML5 Q&A at Tech Republic.

Jeff Croft noticed something in the article that stoked his ire (warning: naughty language).

What about HTML5 could be provocative?

It’s Ian’s timetable for the specification, which started in 2003 and he hopes to have finished by 2022.

No, that’s not a typo. For those of you with mathematics disorders, that’s nineteen years total, with the whole shebang completed fourteen years from now.

I’ll be forty-five.

I’m sorry, but that’s bananas! I don’t care that the last ten years of that schedule is debug/feedback time. I find it inconceivable to think that something else wouldn’t have come along by then, rendering HTML5 irrelevant, as today’s comic posits.

Fourteen years ago the best way to view the web was Mosaic. Remember that?

I do. From high school. I was also playing video games on the Super Nintendo and Lucasarts was producing games that didn’t just involve Indiana Jones or Jar Jar Binks.

A Star Wars prequel trilogy still seemed like a good idea back then.

The fact is that with the pace of software and hardware innovation it seems absurd to assume anything about what the web will be like in another fourteen years. I hope that HTML is a memory by the time 2022 rolls around, replaced by something exciting and unexpected that turns the Internet upside down in the same way the WWW did when it was first conceived. Despite all the foot dragging that software giants have caused in the implementation of standards in the past several years, we can’t allow ourselves to grow complacent and assume that we’ll be using the same playbook after enough time has passed for America to finally get off its lazy butt and return to the moon.

Like Croft says in his post, specs aren’t a bad thing. However, I agree with him that it’s definitely absurd to assume that HTML5 will be relevant by the time they hit the end of their projected road.

I’m excited for HTML5, but by the time they put the stamp ‘done’ on it, I predict it’ll be an artifact of Internet history. But then, that seems to be how the W3C works, rather than creating standards they’re just putting the seal of approval on what’s already happened.

That said, some wit has made a convenient countdown clock for those of you that want to keep dibs on the spec’s progress.

I didn’t wake up today with the intent of revisiting old ground, but a motivated commenter rekindled the topic of Opera’s EU filing encouraging Microsoft to be forced to adhere to a series of guidelines for web standards, and my bold statements that both Microsoft and Opera needed to work on adhering to those guidelines.

As I was crafting a response, I discovered that I had more to say on the topic than could be rationally contained in a simple comment.

First, some facts: I don’t dislike Opera. I dislike hypocrisy. Also, I don’t like Internet Explorer. I hate Internet Explorer, and I would prefer to see Microsoft adhere to modern web standards with the same fervor as the other major browser makers.

However, the responses to my earlier posts made by Opera employees and by others on behalf of the browser maker, amount to the following two statements.

1. Microsoft needs to adhere to Mr. Lie’s list of rules they should play by because Microsoft is a monopoly. Opera does not need to do this because it is not.

2. Opera is justified in delaying implementations of “new” features because they’re focusing on backwards compatibility and not breaking the web.

Each is interesting, but ultimately unconvincing.

First, I don’t believe that implementing web standards and new site features is solely the responsibility of a company that is a monopoly. In his well publicized list of rules for Microsoft, Mr. Lie agrees with me. I’ve already quoted the fifth point (relating to adding a new standards-related feature to a browser if two major browsers have already implemented it), and have pointed out useful features that at least two browsers have implemented that aren’t live yet on Opera. I want to emphasize where Mr. Lie states these rules aren’t just for Opera:

“Microsoft will surely claim that it’s impossible for them to develop a browser that complies with the proposed requirements. However, other browsers have played by these rules for years. If Microsoft can’t live up to the standards of the web, I suggest they leave the browser business.”

His assertions are twofold, first that other browser makers do play by these rules (including Opera I presume, which exclusively makes a browser), and that failure to adhere by these rules is enough reason for a company to leave the browser business.

I agree with him completely. I find it comical that some of Opera’s employees apparently do not, and have yet to hear a compelling argument as to why they should be disregarding their CTO’s wisdom. This ties directly into point #2, which is that implementation of new features must be delayed as a necessary sacrifice to maintain backwards compatibility and not break the old web.

Backwards compatibility with the soccer mom-built sites of the world is the same boogeyman that Microsoft has been waving on a flagpole since at least Internet Explorer 6. The world of web developers have yet to give Microsoft any mercy for that, and often cry for blood when feature implementation or standards compatibility is sacrificed on that altar (such as the well documented IE8 meta-tag explosion). I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument as to why any smaller browser maker can justify their own delays at implementing “new” stuff with the same smoke and mirrors and not deserve the same treatment.

In the end, the simple fact is this: I expect better of Opera. I expect them to be better than Microsoft. This means I’m not going to accept Opera using the same excuses as Microsoft, and somehow get away with it due to their size.

So, chop chop. Back to the grindstone, boys.