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W3C Releases Drafts For DOM L2 And More
TobiasSodergren writes "People at W3C seem to have had a busy Friday, according to their website.
They have released no less than 4 working drafts
(Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide,
the QA Working group - Introduction,
Process and Operational Guidelines,
Specification Guidelines)
and 2 proposed recommendations:
XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0
and HTML DOM 2.
Does the this mean that one can expect browsers to behave in a predictable manner when
playing around with HTML documents? Hope is the last thing to leave optimistic people, right?"
Who needs more than h1, b, and i tags for documents?
doesn't matter how many standard that w3c sets, MS is never going to follow them. They'll just set their own standards, and those will become the de facto standards... its rough, but its the ways it is...
www.punkmafia.com
"I am insane, and you are my insanity"
--Bruce Willis, 12 Monkeys
Does the this mean that one can expect browsers to behave in a predictable manner
When there was 1 standard (HTML), browsers didn't behave predictably.
Now there are more, there is more scope for implemetations to have their quirks, not less.
Standards are large and complicated descriptions of expected behaviour. Each implementor may have a slightly different interpretation. Different implementations will have their strengths and weaknesses which make different parts of the standard easier or harder to implement fully and/or correctly. There may even be reasons why an implementor may choose to ignore part of a standard (perhaps it is difficult and he believes that users don't want or need that functionality yet).
Unfortunately, standards are an ideal to aim for, not a description of reality.
I've been looking around for a nice simple API to XML parsers, and I've yet to find one. Java and Perl both have clean, native-feeling XML APIs (JDOM and XML::Simple) but so far, the only C++ ones I've found map closely to DOM's overly complicated object model, and don't "feel" like C++ libraries (they don't use the STL and whatnot). Anybody know of a library along the lines of JDOM except for C++?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You seems to confuse DOM with HTML standard. DOM does not enforce HTML document structure, it is just OO representation of HTML and XHTML documents.
JavaScript is good for many things, like eliminating travel to server for doing basic input checks, make HTML documents smaller (and thereby faster to transmit), dynamically creating HTML in a frame etc. Other people can probably give you more examples.
;)
If you got a problem with popup ads, then please download the Opera browser... you'll find F12 to be your best friend.
If you really want to crusade against something, then VB script is a better candidate or why not Outlook... the worst virus spreading software ever created.
Somedays I'm more optimistic. Today's one of those days (tomorrow may not be 'cause I'm digging deeper into IE's weird-ass DOM than I usually care to). But...
Most web developers that have been around for a while would rather code to standards than to marketshare. Standards give you the promise of backward, and more importantly, forward, compatibility. It's also a helluva lot easier to sort out your code when a client asks for a redesign in a year or two if you've been conscious of more than just "making it look right" in the popular browser of the day.
Markup designed for IE only often does truly evil things on other platforms - there's going to be more cellphones and PDAs accessing web pages, not fewer. There are also serious organizational advantages to coding to standards - more tools for handling your pages, it's easier to whip up a quick perl script to process standards compliant HTML...the list of advantages is long.
Just like any other field, there's a trickle-down effect. Not everyone will write good, W3C compliant code, but more will, more often. And despite their megalithic, feudal mentality, Microsoft will have to pay attention. IE6 is still a long ways away from adhering to standards, but it's much, much closer than IE4 was. This seems to have been in large part a reaction to developers bitching about their lack of compliance. I'm hopeful the trend will continue.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I thought they released a draft for DOOM 2.
Yeah, considering how long ago it was released, the draft for it would be just about due...
How about an example from around the time of the Great Browser Holy Wars...
NETSCAPE ONLY TAGS - blink - layer - keygen - multicol - nolayer - server - spacer
INTERNET EXPLORER ONLY TAGS - bgsound - iframe - marquee
Hmm... looks like Netscape had more.
Look around you, proprietary "anything" is how you keep money coming in and marketshare up. If youre talking about some kind of open source, community developed code, like Mozilla, then yes, please avoid proprietary stuff. But quit bashing Microsoft just because they have a good browser that supports standards at least as well as their only major competitor and are using the same technique as just about every other capitalist on the planet to make more money and keep investors happy. Netscape sucked and deserved to die.
Now go ahead, mod me down because I stood up for MS.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Web Ontology Language (OWL) Guide
Soon to be followed by the Acronyn Formation Policy (FAP) ?
>2 proposed recommendations: XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 and HTML DOM 2.
XML-Signature XPath Filter 2.0 is a final W3C Recommendation, not proposed.
-m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
Yeah, some really popular sites (like Slashdot) need to use standards compliant code and not cover for browser bugs. Wired recently went XHTML and CSS2. This is the way to go. If a browser can't render it, file a bug. If it doesn't work in IE, too bad!
My own homepage doesn't render in anything but Mozilla, currently, but small, personal sites aren't gonna break or make anything (unless they come in the millions, which is unlikely).
The people at Mozilla have provided us with a tool of 99% perfect rendering. Now it is up to the web site maintainers to actually enforce the use of Mozilla (or any other browser that fully adheres to standards; there is no other currently).
But Slashdot won't take this upon its shoulders, because it doesn't believe in standards, just like M$.
So M$ wins.
frawaradaR anahaha islaginaR!
Actually, IE6 does a decent job. Their DOM1 support is good, their CSS1 is more or less complete, but their CSS2 is pretty crappy. Fixed positioning doesn't work, selectors like E[attr] are missing, etc.
Lately I've been working on an app for a company's internal use, which means the delightful situation of being able to dictate minimum browser requirements. As a result, the app is designed for IE6/Mozilla. All development has been in Mozilla, and a lot of DOM use goes on. And it all works in IE6, no browser checking anywhere. My only regrets is I can't make use of the more advanced selectors provided by CSS2, so the HTML has a few more class attributes than it would need otherwise. But, overall, not bad.
Another positive note, IE6 SP1 finally supports XHTML sent as text/xml. So at last, XHTML documents can be sent with the proper mime type.
So despite being a Mozilla (Galeon) user, as a web developer who makes heavy use of modern standards, I look forward to seeing IE continue to catch up to Mozilla so that I can worry even less about browser-specific issues.
If a browser can't render it, file a bug. If it doesn't work in IE, too bad!
Many sites can get away with this, but many cannot. If I'm selling a product on the web, I'll make darn sure that 99% of my customer's browsers work with my site. It's a good ideal to say "fix your IE bugs", but often not realistic.
Does the this mean that one can expect browsers to behave in a predictable manner when playing around with HTML documents?
One simple example: innerHTML. This 'property' is not part of ANY W3C draft, yet many, many websites use it because both IE and Mozilla (Netscape) support it.
Even though M$ is on the committee, their own browser still has plenty of features that are not defined in XHTML 1.0, DOM (level 2 or 3), CSS or whatever. And of course 99% of all web 'developers' are more than happy to use these features.
The W3C should have stopped with a full specification of HTML. Anything they have been doing beyond that has been doing more harm than good. The web succeeded because HTML was simple.
Of course, some client-side code is useful, but unfortunately, the major contenders have dropped the ball on that one. The W3C has given us JavaScript+DOM+CSS+..., but it's way too complicated for the vanishingly small amount of functionality, and nobody has managed to implement it correctly; in fact, I doubt nobody knows what a correct implementation would even mean. Flash has become ubiquitous, but it just isn't suitable for real GUI programming and is effectively proprietary. And Java could have been a contender, but Sun has chosen to keep it proprietary, and the once small and simple language has become unusably bloated.
But, hey, that means that there is an opportunity for better approaches to client-side programming. Curl might have been a candidate if it weren't for the ridiculous license. But someone outside the W3C will do something decent that catches on sooner or later.
http://validator.w3.org
Is a great tool.
If your code is valid HTML then if anyone complains that their X browser doesn't render it properly that's your first point of defense.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
You have to have standards. The W3C are the people who are widely recognized as being the technical lead for the net. Now they don't make law, quite right, but if there was no W3C then Microsoft really WOULD own the web: as it is, we can and do take them to task when they break the rules. They can ignore us of course, yet whaddaya know but IE6 supports DOM/CSS Level 1. Not a particularly impressive achievement, but it's a start.
The standards are actually very precise, which is one reason they are seens as being very large. There is hardly any room for interpretation in stuff like the DOM, CSS, XML etc. Of course, sometimes when the internal architecture of IE mandates it Microsoft simply ignore things, the mime-type issue being a good example, but also the fact that you have to specify node.className = "class" to set the style on a new element, as opposed to setting the class attribute (which works fine in Mozilla). Why? Because (according to an MS developer) internally the MS dom is based on object model attributes, so that's what you have to set.
Has any company yet written a complete CSS1 implementation? A complete working version of DOM0? Yet here we are toiling away on XHTML and CSS3(!) and DOM Level 2. And they don't even seem to give a rat's ass if anyone actually follows the rules.
[sigh] Yes. Mozilla supports DOM and CSS Level 2 and they have partial support for Level 3 now. Level 0 is the term used to refer to the pre-standardized technologies, it doesn't actually exist as a standard so EVERY browser that can script web pages has a level zero DOM. It should be noted that TBL himself has stepped in on occasion to tick off Microsoft about stuff like browser blocks, bad HTML etc.
From what I hear about CSS3, it's going to be such a massive specification that no company (save Microsoft, if they actually gave a damn) would possibly be able to implement it.
Then you hear wrong.
In the meantime we see developers actually building websites entirely out of Flash because there's one reference implementation (one version, period) and it just works. Is that the future we want?
Developers do not build web pages out of flash. Marketing departments do. Luckily most web pages are not built by marketing.
It's time to hold these clowns accountable. Make them do some real work: make them create a working version of their spec.
Poor troll. The W3C already implement all their standards, go to w3.org and download Amaya. Nobody uses it for actually browsing the web, but there it is, proof that an actually very small organization with very few coders can implement their standards.
MSDN clearly marks out which functions are standard to and which version of HTML/DOM they are complying to.
Mozilla is almost de-facto compliant because that's the only thing they have to work from and they don't have an agenda like interoperation with MS Office/Front Page.
Standards compliance does work, it's the lazy/inept authors of web pages that are to blame for faulty product resulting from an ad-hoc approach to web page development.
Then again, like the saying goes: "A bad workman always blames his tools..."
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