"desk-bound pen pushers"
Hi @SimpleSimon,
I do think you may be slightly misunderstanding what's going on. Web technology is always progressing, and browsers will inevitably add new features and capabilities, particularly as demand for functionality increases.
If there are no standards in place, you end up with the horribly messy situation we had back in the 1990s where you practically had to write different pages for different browsers - for instance, IE introduced ActiveX control that didn't work in any other browser, Netscape introduced the tag, and so on. This made it much harder to produce a good website, whether you were a professional developer or (as I was then) an amateur.
As for deprecating elements, the point has already been made that this doesn't mean they're not going to work - it's starting the (very gentle) slope towards phasing that functionality out. Although I appreciate your concerns, this is actually a good thing. I will still use tables for a number of things, but using and CSS makes for better, more flexible sites. This and other changes to specifications also make web browsing easier for those with disabilities, and for those who use smartphones and tablets to browse the web.
The guys who develop and document these standards are highly competent engineers, developers, and the like - not Brussels-style bureaucrats - although I admit that I find their documentation pretty tough reading in its unsummarised state!
Rest assured, your site will keep working for a good while longer - and even if by 2020 it starts to come apart at the seams, people will still be able to get at the content - even if not quite as it was intended to look.
Al
