The Neverending Story

Applets. ActiveX. Flash. Flex. Silverlight. Angular. React.

Through all of it, Web Standards continue to thrive. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript have never moved fast enough because collaboration and agreement isn’t easy or fast. Web Standards aren’t thriving because of any magical feature or capability. They’re thriving because of agreement and compromise.

Through it all, HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript have been constant. The ease with which any human on the planet can reliably access and read a web document from thirty years ago on any device with a browser today is beyond beautiful.

On the other hand, when creations from less than a year ago require making changes to the original document, untangling and upgrading a rat’s nest of conflicting dependencies, installing a specific version of a runtime or build tool, and then figuring out how to open it on a device that may or may not support it, isn’t a formula for success.

Libraries come and go. HTML standards roll out slowly but better stand the test of time.