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"What do you think, is it time to drop web standards?"

Yes, just hand it all over to Microsoft!

Sorry but I don't see the problem with having more than one standard body. Remember, they're not working on the same standards. One's goal is a semantic web, another's goal is accessibility, while the third seeks to fix the problems with current standards. The important thing here is that they're all working on something different that will be implemented by browsers, so you'll be able to use the result of their work. And these standards aren't necessarily incompatible either. Remember, there's more to standards than the markup.

I didn't say there was a problem having more than one body. In fact it's a good idea. Just that they all seem to have become ineffective. What I'm getting at is why are we really bothering with standards at all!

Okay, my bad.

They seem ineffective because standards are not the origin but more of a result of the implementation by the browsers. If you look at HTML5 for example, you can see that a lot of components (for example canvas from webkit) was first implemented by a browser, then proposed as a standard after they could work out the details with an actual implementation. From that point onward other browsers implement it, propose changes to the standards, and so on. And all this takes a lot of time not only to get it right, but also to have a decent support in all browsers.

That doesn't mean you should wait before using a feature if that feature isn't yet a standard. If you can use canvas, audio, video, client-side storage or other features that aren't yet a standard but that browsers implement, use it for these browsers. It might be a better choice than forcing everyone to load an awful plugin.

I stop here, I should have said all this on your blog but I was just giving a justification on my vote yesterday. :)