600 years of typography. In 1993, the web came about and we had very little control of typography. 2008, we have 18 fonts, most still use four or five fonts.
@font-face comes about, but still isn’t used. First supported in Opera, then Webkit, Firefox and Internet Explorer in a proprietary way. When a couple of things converge, technical disruptions happen. How do you respond?
Look past where your revenue model is today and ask what we’re trying to do here. The qualities that contribute to the success of the web are the qualities that will make us successful too. We are native to the web
Initial proposal was JavaScript-based styles. http://www.w3.org/Submission/1996/1/WD-jsss-960822 After discussion and conflict, consensus was reached, but style needed to be separate from scripting. After some code was developed, the team was able to agree on what eventually became CSS.
Moving forward we can achieve rough census, but we must have the code to demonstrate. Proposal for img tag, consensus wasn’t universal at the moment, but code for Mosaic browser shipped with code for inline images using img tag.
Gauge feedback for features and write blog post about proposed features, see where that goes. Get something out there, get the idea in front of your users.
“If you’re not embarassed when you ship your product, you’ve waited too long.” -Reid Hoffman
Watch what your users do and say. When you see a pattern, adapt your product to meet the users needs. Iterate, get things out as quickly as you can. You might not always get it right the first time. Speed of iteration, beats quality of iteration. Trying to get to that perfect release really slows you down.
We must stay on the top of our game to be successful on the web.
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