Slashdot Mirror

One good mechanism for getting the XML and asynchronous features but without hand coding JavaScript is to use any of the various XForms implementations. XForms is a W3C standard that defines a mostly script-free way of doing much of stuff people want out of Ajax, and it's done in a declarative way that's friendly to accessibility agents, and easier to deploy onto other devices. I was an editor of the XForms 1.0 recommendation, but new revisions have come out; see http://www.w3.org/TR/xforms

The FormFaces OSS product is an entire XForms implementation done in JavaScript, running in the browser. You write your page in HTML with XForms markup, and FormFaces does the "HiJax" thing of re-writing it for you. You never need to use XmlHttpRequest, and you can interact with regular servers, RESTful services, etc., all via XML.

Another product that does this, in a slightly different way, is AjaxForms. I just found out about it, but it looks pretty good. AjaxForms uses some server-side components to do the translation from strict XHTML+XForms markup into Ajax (HTML4+JavaScript), but they claim it can work in PHP and Tomcat servers. Again, FOSS, and available at http://ajaxforms.sourceforge.net/

I recently implemented dynamic forms for weblogs and wikis, and did it using Chiba, another FOSS product, that like AjaxForms does its conversion on the server, using Tomcat as a container.

Another important option is the work that the Mozilla Foundation and IBM are doing to make a native implementation of XForms as an XPI for Firefox and Mozilla. See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xforms/ -- they're now in version 0.6, with 1.0 targeting full XForms 1.0 compliance. Like all other Mozilla extensions, it's a 1-click install, and I think it's about 200KB, so it's not very big, and I hope it gets added to the default build after it reaches 1.0. (It's presently built with the nightlies.)

There are a number of other implementations, including browser plugins (FormsPlayer for IE), native implementations for embedded devices such as cellphones and kiosks (PicoForms, SolidForms, and entire server-side systems using XForms, such as Orbeon Ops, so I see an increasingly bright future for using XForms to build dynamic HTML interfaces on top of XML web services and deploy them across a range of devices.

I haven't read the article true /. stylee, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's about using code checkers to check code is valid. I use W3's markup and css validation services for this purpose. If I get a problem (or even if I don't), as a first step, I run the code through their validation services.

I haven't read the article true /. stylee, but I'm going to go ahead and assume it's about using code checkers to check code is valid. I use W3's markup and css validation services for this purpose. If I get a problem (or even if I don't), as a first step, I run the code through their validation services.

This will be a bit long, and I can only draw the dots for you (my conclusions are too inflammatory). If you are on this page, you are concerned about you privacy and security, and you deserve to know enough to make your own mind up about whether you are being well-served or not.

I feel able to comment on this because of my previous lives as:

1) Designer of well-known loyalty programs, both in Oz and other countries, both market analysis AND transactional. This was crossed with census data.

2) A former public servant who had MAJOR fights about non-compliance with privacy and accessibility of web sites.

3) I was competent enough in the 1980s to be invited to be the tech lead in an electronic warfare project, which I refused, and I've seen hints that Oz agencies have been snooped on by non-allies (hint May 2001).

Whether or not there is "Big Brother" malice by our double-plus-good government, very few agencies are up to the task of good data custodianship - and this opens things up for abuse. It's worth considering the commercial value of census information......

OK, the first thing to realize is just how small a Census Sub Sub District (CSSD) is, and what this allows an unscrupulous person to do. It's pretty easy to narrow things down to a single household unless most of the people in your half-block have the same number of adults, same number of kids, similar relationships, etc. You won't be sure you know who the stats belong to, but you can guess. An analogy is with an employee database, when you aren't allowed to query an individual's salary, only averages and totals for groups - but you can select a group WITH and WITHOUT the person of interest, and then it is just simple maths.

Combine this with the generally poor recordkeeping, data custodianship practices and technical competencies in many agencies, (I'll tell you how to figure out how good an agency is at dotting i's and crossing t's in a minute or two), the number of contractors now in agencies (who don't realize they have a regulatory requirement to act just like a public servant, and may have other agenda), poor governance, and you might begin to see the problem.

MIND YOU, MANY PROBLEMS COULD BE AMELIORATED SIMPLY BY A TEN-FOLD INCREASE IN FUNDS TO THE AUDIT OFFICE (www.anao.gov.au), BUT FEW IN POWER WANT THAT?

So, the trick is to see just how competent an agency is. How do you do that from the outside? Well, examining the web pages of a site (don't hack, just LOOK at what they send you during normal activities) will give you some indications. Compare what the agency DOES with what the MINIMUM requirements for websites of agencies (or government owned businesses, or agency work sub-contracted out). You can find these requirements at www.agimo.gov.au/practice/mws and use the theory that "if there are cockroaches at the front of the restaurant, it will be REAL bad in the kitchen where customers don't go". As "The Economist" said, website quality is a good proxy indicator of the quality of the company or agency that owns the pages.

DO THESE TESTS MANUALLY, ONLY TEST DATA THE AGENCY KNOWS THEY SEND TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD AS PART OF NORMAL ACTIVITY, AND YOU CAN'T GET DONE FOR HACKING.

How do you tell an agencies committment and competence in technology and contract management?

A. Do they know HTML, the basic language of web pages?

If a website cannot give you error-free HTML, which is pretty easy, then there is little chance they are doing the hard stuff in the back office, which you cannot see. So, how many stupid errors does the home page have. Check it out using http://validator.w3.org/ and type in the web address you want checked. Compare the number of simple syntax errors between agencies and companies. For starters, http://www.abs.gov.au/ has 48, http://stream0.census.abs.gov.au/eCensusWeb/ has 1,

Timothy B. Lee is not a thinly disguised Tim Berners-Lee, despite the apparent similarity of names.

That is the "international" standard. Though it isn't very international if europe and the US don't use it. Still, for that very reason, it is the recommendation for all web documents

It is important that the year is always at least four didgets, even for a year like 0003.

Maybe we should all use the "Official" ISO date format - YYYY-MM-DD and avoid confusion. I have a system that I administer that uses the ISO dates, and every single one of my users hates it.

http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime

Concur.

Nonsense! There is nothing wrong linking linking as often as Wikipedia does

You are aware that you can place more than one HTML file control on a document, right? Of course, a smarter fix would be to allow an HTML file control to select multiple files. That would require a change to the standard, though. Since the w3 is currently pushing XForms, I doubt that'll happen.

I personally have never had a problem with Java in Firefox (Note: Don't ask about Adobe Flash 9 with Firefox or Opera). JUpload is also cross-browser compliant, assuming that you're using Sun's JVM.

Oh dear, somebody who doesn't understand how the internets work. Here, this is a good start. http://www.w3.org/

The idea is completely ridiculous. First off, 20 years for using a misleading meta tag? Does that sound appropriate? Particular if you consider how easy it could be to do (you copy the template from some previous site for another site and forget to update the meta tags).

Why are laws always passed by people who keep on re-inventing the wheel (and a square one, too)?

Why not simply make it a requirement for adult websites and search engines to use these:
http://www.safesurf.com/ssplan.htm
http://www.w3.org/PICS/

For instance, I'm a photographer. I have a lot of good samples of my work on my website, and people searching for a photographer in a particular market or of a particular style would do well to find my site. However, images are not easily categorized by google. Google doesn't necessarily know if an image is of an infant, a commercial project, a wedding, or anything else.

For instance, I'm a photographer. I have a lot of good samples of my work on my website, and people searching for a photographer in a particular market or of a particular style would do well to find my site. However, images are not easily categorized by google. Google doesn't necessarily know if an image is of an infant, a commercial project, a wedding, or anything else.

Hi there,

what do they really mean with 'accessible'? I'm sorry but I can't figure out how

1. an invalid markup: see here
2. the discouraged use of:
   • 'br'
   • 'font'
   • other presentational markup
   • deprecated tags, like 'b'
   • javascript
3. the lack of:
   • 'title' attribute, at all
   • the so called semantic markup
   • separation of structure and presentation

could enhance the accessibility of a search engine.

Considering the amount of money google has, I think they should invest some more to make their sites really Web standard compliant and clean up that 'tag soup'! Please, google, consider good websites as examples, first.

Federico http://www.maggi.cc/

For what's supposed to be an "accessible" search engine page, Google have made pitiful efforts to even bother validating the XHTML (yes it has DOCTYPE of XHTML 1.0 Transitional). Check out the W3C's validation of it - 8 errors, including some outrageous typos like "bgtcolor" instead of "bgcolor" and no closing slashes (required for XHTML) in their <br> tags. I find it amazing that Google would tout such an search engine on its accessibility merits when it doesn't even validate due to blatant errors that are easily fixable.

In that case Google.com will be ranked last. google.com W3C compliance.

Actually it does matter.
-OMouse

<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>

<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>

<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>
<P STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in"><BR>
</P>

The irony is, its pretty damn close. None of the errors on that page would require more than 5 minutes to fix. Its all minor syntax crap.
Trying a search does significantly worse, although there are probably only 20-30 unique errors and the rest are repetitions.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Flab s.google.com%2Faccessible%2F (neither is any of google's web pages).

It's the only consensus so far for a large CSS test case since the W3C hasn't provided any

W3C CSS test suites.

If you want to complain, complain about Internet Explorer. Mozilla, Opera and (as far as I know) Safari all support the CSS table rendering model, which can do almost everything that HTML tables can. The main thing it lacks is support for colspan and rowspan, but for your average website layout (banner across the top and one or maybe two sidebars beside the content) you can get away without using either.

Of course, Internet Explorer only supports the bare minimum of the stuff in that chapter, and even then only when applied to HTML tables. Nor does Microsoft plan to support it in the near future. Most people don't even know that CSS can do table rendering because of Microsoft's lack of support, but the truth is that for all of CSS's warts, simple table-based layouts are actually right there in the CSS2 spec and will work just fine in every modern browser except Microsoft's.

it appears he's basically experiencing some pain with his first exposure trying to format using a technology that he doesn't really understand.

Precisely. The first clue should be when he says:

CSS's real benefit was that the layout not only could be changed easily but also could become dynamic: The content is stored in a database and presented as necessary, with instant updates. With dynamic content, it's possible for 100 people to go to the same Web site and get 100 different versions.

What the hell is he talking about? Not only is that not CSS's "real benefit", I can't even figure out how he managed to get the idea that this is what CSS is all about. Did he take one look at the CSS Zen Garden and completely miss the point or something?

He can't even get basic facts and terminology right:

The first problem is the idea of "cascading." It means what it says: falling--as in falling apart. You set a parameter for a style element, and that setting falls to the next element unless you provide it with a different element definition.

Nope, wrong. That's inheritance. The cascade is when you resolve rules found in multiple stylesheets.

You don't "set parameters for style elements" at all. Style elements are instances of the <style> element type, and they are used to include parts of a stylesheet in an HTML or XHTML document. You don't set parameters for elements either. He could be talking about attributes, or perhaps properties, it's hard to tell when his terminology is so muddled.

Finally, this bit is hilarious:

Worse yet, nobody except the most techie insiders wants to talk about this mess.

That's right, he's been totally oblivious to CSS, and now, when he starts to learn a bit about it, he blames his ignorance on some sort of conspiracy! That's right, us "techie insiders" have been keeping the truth from you, muhahaha!

While your analysis of the e-mail is astute, I think you missed Zeldman's larger point, that this e-mail is just one piece of evidence in growing frustration amongst rank-and-file web developers with the W3C. Other developers have agreed.

I used to be a member of some W3C mailing lists, but got frustrated by the lack of momentum. Most of the e-mails were deflected as, "someone has already proposed that, read the archives!" or "that is not implementable." Constrast that to WHATWG, where my comment on a spec not granted me a reply from that spec's author, but also gave me a bit of enlightenment into the process.

I was a flag carrier, a proselytizer. Now I just read mozillazine and the Opera blog to see what's coming. It does seem to me that lately all the W3C is good at moving on is publishing standards other people wrote.

While your analysis of the e-mail is astute, I think you missed Zeldman's larger point, that this e-mail is just one piece of evidence in growing frustration amongst rank-and-file web developers with the W3C. Other developers have agreed.

I used to be a member of some W3C mailing lists, but got frustrated by the lack of momentum. Most of the e-mails were deflected as, "someone has already proposed that, read the archives!" or "that is not implementable." Constrast that to WHATWG, where my comment on a spec not granted me a reply from that spec's author, but also gave me a bit of enlightenment into the process.

I was a flag carrier, a proselytizer. Now I just read mozillazine and the Opera blog to see what's coming. It does seem to me that lately all the W3C is good at moving on is publishing standards other people wrote.

While your analysis of the e-mail is astute, I think you missed Zeldman's larger point, that this e-mail is just one piece of evidence in growing frustration amongst rank-and-file web developers with the W3C. Other developers have agreed.

I used to be a member of some W3C mailing lists, but got frustrated by the lack of momentum. Most of the e-mails were deflected as, "someone has already proposed that, read the archives!" or "that is not implementable." Constrast that to WHATWG, where my comment on a spec not granted me a reply from that spec's author, but also gave me a bit of enlightenment into the process.

I was a flag carrier, a proselytizer. Now I just read mozillazine and the Opera blog to see what's coming. It does seem to me that lately all the W3C is good at moving on is publishing standards other people wrote.

They have made a browser http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

Here is a Tutorial on the Semantic Web.

Pay attention to the slide #22 which shows how data from different sources can be merged together. This is one of key differences between XML and RDF - to merge XML data from a number of different schemas one would need to create an application that processes data in these schemas and generate merged data (possibly inventing a new schema to represent the merged information).

In RDF that happens "magically" - in order to merge heterogenous data you don't need to do *anything* - just put all the information in an RDF store and it merges. If the data to be merged change no modifications to the store are necessary - it is like a bag that can hold anything.

The W3C doesn't make the browsers.

They don't? http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

With regards to Microsoft's participation in CSS specs, you should really do your homework before making such comments. Check the following URL:

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work

      The only specification that has a Microsoft employee listed as a current editor is the CSS TV Profile 1.0 Candidate Recommendation, which Sean Hayes is working on. I could not find a single message posted by him in the www-style mailing list archive.

      Michel Suignard is listed as an editor for about half a dozen specifications, but his name is deliberately crossed out as an editor for all of them, suggesting that he's no longer involved. He also hasn't posted a message on the www-style mailing list since March of 2005.

      Tantek Çelik continues to work on many CSS specifications, but he left Microsoft in 2004 and now works for Technorati.

      Brad Pettit is listed as an additional author for CSS3 Color Module, but that's all I could find for him. I could not find any messages posted by him in the www-style mailing list archive.

      So, in a nutshell, I can't find anything that says Microsoft is currently involved in any writing of CSS specifications whatsoever.

they produce next to nothing over the course of six years

You're way off on that one. List, by date, of W3C technical reports.

In one of the very first papers mentioning the Semantic Web, some paragraph was devoted to something then lost in the hype around the semantic web: the Web of trust, which had to be something like a certification of metadata. This is perhaps to be again regarded as important for the semantic web and the web in general (although not easy to manage).
By the way, Norvig is not only a Google exec, but also a well known AI researcher, author of one of most important books on that subject.

Ian, we've had this discussion before so I don't expect to change your mind, but as for public references I'd cite these:

http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/minutes-2 0040601.html#topic19.6
followed by
http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/minutes-2 0040601.html#topic26.4
where one individual said "For the basic stuff, other than XML specs for well-formed and verifiable standard XML, we decided not to use any existing standards, and we made a decision that our priority in the design would be support for direct mappings to .NET objects."

So I think this shows at least this one vendor prefers to do more of its innovation in new formats not based on standards.
Given the economics of their product base, it's hard to blame them.

Given the large investment required for IE compatibility (proper implementation of "quirks" mode, underspecified areas, bug compatibility, etc.), it's not surprising that vendors who have achieved it are reluctant to support anything that diminishes the value of that investment; again, from an economic standpoint, it's hard to argue with this. I won't cite specific examples from the same minutes, but you can surely find this sentiment there.

Ian, we've had this discussion before so I don't expect to change your mind, but as for public references I'd cite these:

http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/minutes-2 0040601.html#topic19.6
followed by
http://www.w3.org/2004/04/webapps-cdf-ws/minutes-2 0040601.html#topic26.4
where one individual said "For the basic stuff, other than XML specs for well-formed and verifiable standard XML, we decided not to use any existing standards, and we made a decision that our priority in the design would be support for direct mappings to .NET objects."

So I think this shows at least this one vendor prefers to do more of its innovation in new formats not based on standards.
Given the economics of their product base, it's hard to blame them.

Given the large investment required for IE compatibility (proper implementation of "quirks" mode, underspecified areas, bug compatibility, etc.), it's not surprising that vendors who have achieved it are reluctant to support anything that diminishes the value of that investment; again, from an economic standpoint, it's hard to argue with this. I won't cite specific examples from the same minutes, but you can surely find this sentiment there.

grasshoppa wrote: I never understood why web standards aren't maintained by the folks that actually are writing the browsers. Membership would require a browser with, say, x% market share.

I think (1) you have this, because any vendor who is a W3C member and has a product out there has credibility on many important issues and (2) you don't necessarily want just that: the establishment of standards can lower the barriers to entry, which would make for more browsers with smaller market share (and thus more diversity but better interoperability) and bring to consumers the benefits of competition for good implementation of the common ground, and "innovation" in the other areas. Unfortunately, if you limit membership to large existing vendors (your x% solution), you get members who want to shut out new products and innovation, and simply want to preserve the status quo (which is web terms is called "IE Bug Compatibility"), while the go off and "innovate" in other areas to try to make non-commodity products that they can charge for (InfoPath, XAML, just to pick on MSFT but there are other examples).

Disclaimer: I was editor of a W3C recommendation, but my opinions here are my own (duh).

Looks like they may have some interest in "web as application platform" after all:

http://www.w3.org/2006/webapi/

Or like creating standards tests instead of waiting for third parties to do it.

These have existed for years:

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

All of these are front-page links at w3.org.

Or like creating standards tests instead of waiting for third parties to do it.

These have existed for years:

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

All of these are front-page links at w3.org.

Or like creating standards tests instead of waiting for third parties to do it.

These have existed for years:

http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/
http://validator.w3.org/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

All of these are front-page links at w3.org.

Not accourding to W3C
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fyro .slashdot.org%2Farticle.pl%3Fsid%3D06%2F07%2F18%2F 1725252%26threshold%3D-1

Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and Apple are all members of the W3C according to its members page.

 

 

Here's the wikipedia link..
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedb
 

Here's a link explaining wikipedia..
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
 

Here's a link explaining links..
  http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html

 

 

Here's the wikipedia link..
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedb
 

Here's a link explaining wikipedia..
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
 

Here's a link explaining links..
  http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html

Here's the wikipedia link..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedb

Here's a link explaining wikipedia..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

Why should the W3C set the standard?

Three words: Tim Berners-Lee. He invented the "web" part of the so-called intarweb, and now he's the director of W3C.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.myspace.com