New Code Releases – Are We There Yet?

New code languages are being released all the time, promising wonderful new features that were never available on the internet before. These new features are long awaited, and when the code is finally released, we’re itching to get that cool new functionality put onto a website. But hold your horses – that “bleeding edge” code is not quite ready to use yet! Which makes you wonder, why?? If you’ve already heard about cool new features, and the code seems ready to be used, how come we can’t just use it already? First, let me start by explaining the process that new coding languages go through in order to become “stage ready”. It’s quite complex, but I’ll try to put it in a nutshell if I can…

Phase 1: W3C Standards
The World Wide Web Consortium (or W3C) writes standards for all the new code that is to be launched for the internet. They spend months and years in meetings, conferences, collaborating on all the details that are to become the new coding language – the code’s laws, or standards.

Phase 2: Standards Release
Once they come to an agreement of the new standards they create an official document listing all the code standards and release those standards to the browser companies that create Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

Phase 3: Build New Browsers
New browsers are built from the ground up that are capable of handling the new code – not only do the browsers need to read the code properly, they need to display it properly to you, the end user. Which can take months to years to create and then bug test to work out all the kinks.

Phase 4: Browser Upgrade Release
The new browser versions are released to the general public (you and I) and we then click the “update browser” button that annoyingly pops up all the time – or maybe not; sometimes we like to ignore it for a while until we finally decide to make it stop bugging us and upgrade already!

Phase 5: Are We There Yet? No.
Once a majority of users have upgraded their browsers, web developers can begin utilizing the code in their websites if the website absolutely requires the new functionality, but… When any percentage of users are still running an old browser, web developers run a risk of having the website be absolutely unusable to those users. So until these stragglers catch up, web developers shy away from using new technology at all, leaving those with new browsers wondering, “hey, where are all the new cool features I was promised?”

Phase 6: Great Success!
Nearly all users have upgraded their browsers, and web developers can start using the new code widespread on all their websites. Although not everyone has upgraded (and 100% upgrade would only happen in a perfect world), the upgrade is widespread enough that the older browsers can be left in the dust and new code features can be used. The code has become a new standard!

This entire process can take 5-15 years, depending on the complexity of the code, market demand, and which version of code it is (ie upgrading from 3.3 to 3.4, or from 3.3 to 4.0). In short, whenever new code is being released for use on the internet – you can ask the question “Are we there yet?” and the answer will generally be “No”.