(slide 1)

Good morning|afternoon,

I am going to tell you a short story of the World Wide Web, a story
of ducks, ducklings and swans. It's an allegory about our most
important specification, HTML.

(slide 2)

Like many other species on this planet, all our documents have a head
and a body. Well, about 98% do, according to Google. Not 100%.
Head and body are necessary for a normal life. Try to drop one of
these, and the thing is dead.

Beheaded ducks often keep running for a while, but they're really
dead.

(slide 3)

There are zillions of ducks out there. We, people of the Web,
started raising ducks about let's say thirteen years ago. Not only
are our users used to ducks, they love ducks. And they need ducks,
because they know nothing as good as ducks, and switching to
something else would cost too much.

(slide 4)

Two standards can coexist. That's feasible. But it's a waste of time
and resources, and after all, everyone knows one is better than the
other. There will always be a majority and a minority. That's not
bad, but that must be acknowledged. Good duck foie gras only comes
from France and Hungary.

(slide 5)

So we have in front of us ducks, a duckling and an ugly duckling.
The ugly duckling wants to become a swan, of course. Swans are pure,
white and beautiful. But they are wild, and trust my left leg, they
bite. And nobody eats swans. Ducks are only ducks, very common, less
beautiful than swans, but easy to raise and they're tasteful.

(slide 6)

The World Wide Web is about ducks. Not swans. At least for the time
being and the near future.

I think we must give the World Wide Web a successor to HTML 4 that is
backwards compatible with the Web we see and use today, that spec
living in a realistic set of technologies that we are able to deliver.

That Web is about HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, XBL.
Microfomats and Widgets. SVG and Flash. XSLT.

Not XHTML2 or RDF. And I'm even wondering if namespaces are not harmful.

There's been a lot of criticism recently about the W3C itself and the way it
deals with the future of HTML. The Consortium started hearing it. Hearing it
is not enough, please listen to it.

Thank you very much.