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Mozilla, Opera Form Group to Develop Web App Specs
An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software have formed a working group to develop specifications for Web applications. The new Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group is working on specs for Web Forms 2.0, Web Apps 1.0 and Web Controls 1.0, among others. This is being done outside of the W3C, with the hope of getting a viable alternative to Longhorn's XAML available soon. Another reason for working outside the W3C could be the rift between Mozilla/Opera and other W3C members over what technologies Web applications solutions such be based on: Mozilla/Opera favour a backwards-compatible HTML-based standard, others are looking towards to XForms and SVG. It will be interesting to see if any other browser developers jump on board WHATWG." This story builds on our recent story concerning the group.
The one noted difference between the previous post about this and this one is that before it was being taken to W3C and now it is being done outside W3C.
Looks like W3C rejected this.
Evolution or ID?
RTFA
WHAT WG was created not because a specific developer wanted to do it's own thing, but because the majority of W3C members aren't browser developers. They're plug-in developers. Some people within the W3C have even stated that the browser is dead. This kind of environment is openly hostile to the further development of existing browser-based standards. The only logical course of action in this situation would be for the various browser developers to form their own standards group, which is what happened.
I am no w3c expert by any means, but that's an interesting statement and strong point. Too bad Microsoft won't jump ship as well, as I don't feel Opera and Mozilla have the marketshare and clout to pull this off in terms of setting defacto standards.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I think that i would be if better if konqueror/khtml people joined the group, as for
instance khtml is representing safari too.
Obviously, I didn't RTFA and am just knee-jerking to the blurb. But does this mean that SVG support will be held back in any way on Mozilla and Opera? That would be quite a shame...
Their whitepaper describes a cool S-expression based language (kinda like a blend of HTML and Scheme) that elegantly merges the simplicity of markup languages with the power/complexity of lisp.
I think other companies are right in movin on and letting backward compatibility behind. This is a new kind of app. Backward compatibility will bring complexity to the implementation, and probably there will be a lot of things that could be done better but won't to mantain compatibility...
And if it's right that W3C rejected it, they don't have support of almost anybody right?
As more and more business move to 'web-deployed' business software I predict a big departure from HTML for web applications.
Joe public user doesnt want to know about "You cant use drag and drop anymore, the browser doesnt support it".
There will be a migration to technologies like Flash/Actionscript where you can get the rich client experience in the browser. Users will demand this, execs will demand this and development companies/open source groups will provide this.
Having said that, I have looked at XAML and there doesnt seem to be a reason why it could not be interpreted to build a flash GUI. Perhaps this is the true of this effort too, but to include hypertext in the title indicates a degress of shortsightedness IMHO.
This is being done outside of the W3C, with the hope of getting a viable alternative to Longhorn's XAML available soon
Okay, Microsoft are trying to develop some standards. If history says anything about how the web has evolved its that the users define the standard. If it works, we use it. XML works. Macromedias Flash app is a defacto standard, created outside the W3C. If it works, we use it. Suns Java is pretty popular too. A lot of stuff is created outside the W3C, it all works, if its good we install it. simple really.
Do you need a website upgrade?
An alliance is exactly what they should be doing. Well, ideally it would be under the auspices of the W3C, but it's a great start.
.NET development tools.
The reason is XAML. Microsoft has basically thrown in the towel with its (X)HTML rendering engine (the last release, IE6, was three years ago, and the differences from IE5.5 were not huge -- it still doesn't support stuff like translucent PNGs and much of CSS2). When Longhorn is released, expect a massive push towards the use of their proprietry XAML for web application deployment tied with their
If Mozilla, Opera and hopefully Safari (which shares a few key developers with Mozilla and is implementing the Mozilla XUL box model in places) can push open standards and hopefully get a combined ~20-30% desktop share in the next 5 years before Longhorn is released and becomes semi-ubiquitous on the desktop, they'll be a large thorn in MS's side. Major businesses won't be able to ignore them, and with their focus on backwards-compatible specifications that expand upon existing CSS/JS/DOM technology and degrade well in older browsers (unlike XAML), they'll be the new default for client-side developers.
So start pushing those copies of Firefox onto friends' computers once v0.9 is released in a week or so with its auto-update notification. The more people who are aware that "web browser" does not equal "the blue 'e' icon", the better...
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
Mozilla and Opera creating new unoffical standards? If IE does not implement them, they will be simply ignored. I cannot forsee business implementing web services designed for these standards which will only be working for Mozilla and Opera users. What is the market share for the two? 5%?
Its time for goverments to step in and force standards. The Internet must remain open and interoperability is essential.
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Opera is a great webbrowser, so this is good news. The browser market - as any other - needs compitition. I'll be damned if Microsoft is going to take it over completly!
Google would be a hugely useful partner in this effort. If they implemented future versions of GMail according to these standards rather than XAML/Avalon their dominance in the internet would make the difference between success and getting steamrollered by MS when Longhorn comes out.
I had a quick look at XAML and it looked quite straightforward and simple.
So... besides XAML coming from Micro$oft and aiming at being yet another WWW-defacto-standard, what's bad with it?
The article is misleading. There isn't a "rift" between Mozilla/Opera and the W3C, indeed Mozilla and Opera are very active members of the W3C and were both present and actively participating in the recent Web Applications workshop.
;-)
At the moment this group is basically innovating extensions to HTML, for which you need a lot more flexibility than a standards organisation would provide. Once the proposals have reached a mature point we intend to submit these proposals to a standards organisation (whether it is W3C, IETF, ECMA, or another is yet to be determined, but note that the W3C have a policy that says we would not be allowed to say if we were planning on submitting this work to the W3C).
I expect the W3C to start work on the non-backwards-compatible alternatives to WHATWG work, such as creating an XForms/SVG "uberspec" or a new language or something, and when that happens I'm sure Opera and Mozilla will want to be taking part.
All of which is explained on http://www.whatwg.org/, but since when has research had anything to do with journalism, eh?
... I read that as WHATWJD. And the answer (of course) is smote things.
I wonder how this will work with Opera's plans for an IPO?
For those who don't know:
XForms:XForms provides a richer, more secure, more reliable, and presentation independent way of handling interactive Web transactions.
I made a quick xml page, with the source being here, just to show some people who don't know. Please note that in the example I used css to make the page look like something, this is technically incorrect
Some other XML technologies
W3C do NOT create standards, they create "reccomendations"
big difference
even on their site the stress this, yet people seem to ignore it and believe what they want no matter how wrong it is
Great-
I work at a company that rolled out a web app that was "ie" only. Made all of us sick (especially since there are a lot of us that only have unix workstations). We've tried accessing the page with mozilla but it must be some activeX controls that are preventing us from using the page.
Open source should be taking the lead on many things and this is a good start. Even without IE support out of the box, if these standards are significantly better, web apps will be written to use these standards and the browsers are mostly compatable, companiieswill install them (they're free!). Our company bent over backwords to get us IE access for timecards on our unix workstations.
I just hope these standards are fully implimented, unlike ccs2 and xhtml which have been around for a while and don't seem to be fully supported. Its hard to tell which browser supports what nowdays.
Now Opera has been known for ages for being pretty anti-XForms, mostly because integration of standards such as XForms/SVG would bloat the browserfootprint to such an extent that a lot of mobile device manufacturers might start looking for a different browser - you can basically script together a viable Word alternative using a little PHP, a lot of XForms and SVG today, but instead we are seeing another fork off into a separate direction by a new web-related splinter cell.
It's a shame to see this development as XForms is a really neat standard that exists today - anyone with a engineering background certainly knows how useful it can be at times to can backwards-compatibility in favor of allout innovation.
Flash is an animation format. It's place in a website is the same place that images have: a small embedded box on a site.
It's discriminatory, it's crap, and it's simply not a website.
Backwards compatible isn't the answer, in my opinion. Just do like they've always done - support both standards until everyone migrates to the new one. If we tried to make everything backwards-compatible, we'd still be dealing with people who need tables emulated, since their browser doesn't handle them - No offense, Lynx users.
Smells of troll?
But Mozilla has been VERY strict at implementing standards, and following W3C published standards. In fact its central and core to the organisation.
The introduction of Mozilla (and to an extent Opera) was instrumental in W3C ditichign its own browser efforts, as they felt that Mozilla's support for the standards was good enough to use as a reference browser.
Mozilla DOES extend some of the spec especially in CSS. This is allowed by the w3c, provided they are labelled as extesions (Mozilla uses the _moz prefix). And as some of these extenstions are incorporated into appropriate spec (CSS3 and opacity for example), Mozilla deprecates the extensions and provide support for the spec.
What the W3c frowns upon is not the addition of spec, but breaking exisiting spec. If a browser does not implement a spec, it should grafefully degrade. Mozilla does that well. Bugs not withstanding, Mozilla by feature does NOT break exisitng standards to be incompatible with standards developed pages.
Please explain WHAT you mean by Mozillas support of w3c is less than rosy. I am sure many others would like to know too.
Have a nice day!
XMAL is proprietry to MS, and that means a big thing.
Fortunately there is already XUL which is working, stable and in use. XUL is as open as it can be.
however the good thing is the difference between the models shoudl not be too great, and using XSLT stylesheets it might be possibel to make cross platform web apps yet.
Have a nice day!
As a developer I don't ***** care who is inventing which standard anymore.
The promise that HTML was going to be a simple and independent language/tool is long broken.
With every new standard and browser development gets harder, testing and debugging longer.
For years now every bigshot has been talking about standards - but true implementation is far off.
HTML has mutated over the years - not properly developed.
If Opera & Mozilla try to force new stuff on developers - they will only get ignored even quicker. Web development is mostly based on IE6 - and nothing else.
Although I love and use Opera (and a bit Firefox here and there) - IE6 development brings in the money. And as a small fry I can't afford NOT to follow the money.
Exactly.
Because of Microsoft's pure dominance and Mono-based XAML plugins for Mozilla, it will be able to reach a lot more people than anything Moz/Opera could come up with.
There really isn't a point in creating yet another standard. Working on getting a single one to work across everything would be a big boon to everybody, but it seems Moz/Opera are both sick of following in IE's wake.
It's not 'yet another standard'. It's an attempt to REPLACE the web with a new system, now that microsoft has achieved market dominance. It's not just 'embrace and extend' -- it's worse.
What Wig?
This is quite possibly the dumbest acronym I've ever seen.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > public-webapps-cdf-discuss@w3.org > April 2004
Compound Transactions,Documents,Streams,Proxies.
A proxy based approach
You've obviously never used the 4.x range of Netscape, which most web developers battled with for years, to provide work arounds for broken tables, css, and (not w3c) nice javascript features such as resize bugs. http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/netscape4.html This was when IE5 and 5.5 were out, which implemented CSS nicely, started up in less than 5 seconds - reasons why it became the dominant browser: it was and still is faster. Even firefox and its claims of speed is still slower.
Nothing costs nothing
Instead of everyone branching off and making their own standards everyone should try to make these features cross-browser for better support. I don't want to have to use Internet Explorer to do my banking with an app made with the XAML then having to change over to Firefox to check my email using the WHATWG application. I think Applications should stay as programs and web browsers should stay as web browsers. The OS is where applications run, not the browser.
Have you metaroderated recently?
It's about time someone tried to circumvent the W3C.
Honestly, the timescales the W3C are working on now are a joke. CSS3 has been in development since 2000 and is still nowhere near completion. XHTML 2.0 has been in development since August 2002, has already suffered from having its mission statement rewritten without announcement, and is, frankly, a bit crap. They don't even make use of XLink, but instead decided to write their own linking specification from scratch.
In short, the W3C has become a dinosaur. It takes far too long for them to get around to do anything, and it seems riddled with political jostling between both its members and its different working groups.
I think it's time someone else took over. The W3C only really works because the public allows it to - after all, the W3C isn't an official standards body so it's "standards" aren't really standards anyway. If someone else can do a better job, I say let them.
"It will be interesting to see if any other browser developers jump on board WHATWG."
I think "WTF" would be a more appropriate acronym.
And we can all be safe to say that we wont be seeing IE join in on Opera and Mozilla's pillow casing party.
Personally, this entire little development sounds like a waste of resources that could be better spent on tuning and promoting their products. Seeing how widely adopted Mozilla's XUL architecture is, I think the Mozilla group would be better off getting Firefox up to speed and getting the rest of their projects in order before running about trying to cop some moves here.
That's not to say that I don't support Mozilla and Opera but, being a Web Developer for the last 6 years and a Internet Services Architect for the last 3, I can tell you right now that the last thing both Web Developers and Browser Developers need are more languages and competing standards. We are at a point of language saturation as never before and most these new languages are aimed at online services. While this may seem to be a great thing because choice is generally good, we have too many choices and most developers I know can only get 2-3 languages down to an expert level. So this development would most likely be ignored on a professional inplementation level while more standardized and familiar languages/feature sets would be used. In the end, it would most likely be a waste of time and resources for both Mozilla and Opera who should focus (IMO) on getting DOM Level 3/XSLT/CSS/SVG upto snuff and better integrated with the existing standards before going off on their own.
Case in point: Right now, I'm making a web service that has a native XML interface, which then gets (optionally) rendered via an XSLT interface with a 100% CSS defined GUI and the UI logic handled via DOM level 2 and Javascript. The applicational logic is handled via a PHP portal/middleware broker to the stored Postgres pgSQL database views/routines.
Got all that? I argued strongly with my client against using soch a complex interface architecture, but it was writtten in stone and they held firm and were willibg to pay for it -- so they got it. But, I can't count all the possible points of failure on one hand. Does it break in the database? maybe the XML? The PHP? Maybe the XSLT or maybe it's just the CSS or the Javascript.
The fact that Firefox requires a seperate CSS-stylesheet doesn't help matters, but I opted out of Firefox support to Support Gecko variants (safari) as well as Mozilla and IE -- but not Opera. Not proving support for certain browsers was a definite plus here -- since it's an intranet app meant to be used via VPN and not accesable to the public. But I shudder to think at the amount of CSS-stylesheets and JS includes that would be required to support this as a public service.
What we need right now is better integration/platform independence and the browser would be the common ground here. So instead of running off on their own and adding more languages/points of failure, maybe they could figure out a new means of getting everything to work together a bit better.
A good start would be getting Opera/Mozilla/Firefox all on the same page in terms of CSS/DOM level 3 compatability, that would be a lot more meaningful to me than a competing standard.
And thus ends my rant.
Great, yet more web standards to learn.
I'm so sorry! Perhaps we should halt all further development on the web? It'd certainly make my life a great deal easier, although very, very dull.
I don't put a great deal of faith into Mozilla, whose w3c support history has been less than rosey.
In what way exactly has Mozilla's w3c support been less than "rosey"? Portable Network Graphics? CSS2-3? Ever heard of "MOSe" (Mozilla Opera Safari extensions)? They're the browsers that actually support the latest w3c standards - try doing alpha-blended PNGs on IE. Try doing CSS3 on IE. If you want to see just how rosy the MOSe future looks, check out the Zen Garden, and in the meantime consider this: what do the w3c use as their de facto reference browser? (hint: Mozilla)
I was under the impression XAML is to be used primarily for laying out winforms, rather than as an new alternative to the tag.
You were wrong. XAML is similar to XUL (XML UI Language), or, if you like, dotNET. Just as you can use UI elements in a dotNET Windows App, you can use the same (well, similar) UI elements in an ASP.NET (web) app.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Sure I would also like the form improvements that WHAT WG are promising, but I've already got a bag of tools which do pretty much all I really need in that direction, as ugly a hack as CGI might be.
But until SVG is fully integrated into a browser and the DOM, the most important projects that have built up over a lifetime still cannot get started, and the stuff I have been working towards is only a tiny fraction of the potential applications of object graphics, an almost endless territory I became a lot more aware of in early PostScript days when potential players were attracted like bees to a honeypot.
Most people seem to have convinced themselves that SVG is primarily a more open alternative to Flash, but I see it being far more important that SVG bring the interactivity of the Web to areas which nowadays are mostly represented by static PDFs, obviously beyond print previewing.
It's really quite strange, when so much of the heritage of cooperative development came out of the technical research communities, that all that half of the current generation seems to want to do is reemulate a very tired set of office applications.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a meaningful schematic diagram is worth ten thousand and a manipulable schematic diagram would be worth a hundred thousand.
While Flash could technically be used for such tasks it suffers from PDF's failure of not playing nicely with the browser model at the next level, and from a whole lot of historic perceptions.
For a brief moment earlier this year it appeared that the Mozilla team was going to get serious about SVG. There is another "last" opportunity during the Longhorn FUD to make some real inroads against the monopolist.
If we can finally get SVG to the point where we can seriously start building a technical visualisation web then I may not have to go to my grave with quite so many incomplete projects.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
As long as it's Mozilla? Come on, if Microsoft add something outside a standard there are cries of "embrace and extend", "evil monopoly" and so on. Why is it OK for Mozilla to do skip? Next thing you know the <blink> tag will come back.
Netscape isn't mozilla, Mozilla looked at the 4.x range of netscape code and chucked most of it. Any history of Mozilla says this. Netscape 4.x sucked, and most people will admit it. Netscape lost the browser wars for two reasons, MS shoved them out, and Netscape 4 really was bad.
Mozilla isn't netscape, the New Netscape Browsers is just a rebranded Mozilla. Mozilla started over, which is why it took so long to get up to speed.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
And presumably the XAML definition file will be rendered as HTML by asp.net engine, unless ms plan to build in a XAML parser into IE (probably quite likely). Clearing up points 1 and 2which were not intended as trolling/flame bait, 1 was in reference to the wide range of standards that have been implmented badly by each browser producer, including IE, and 2 until recently has been a correct statement - looks at netscape 4 and 6. It's only since mozilla's own browser has been released that we've started to see quality, the blame perhaps can be pointed at netscape rather than mozilla.
Nothing costs nothing
Netscape 4 is NOT mozilla.. read up.. get the facts.. then come back
really? ever looked at the situation now? IE has awful bugs in CSS, breaks standards and is a pain....
IE became dominant partly because it was bundled
IE is faster coz its loaded with windows
check your facts, then come back
Have a nice day!
Not obvious to most, even at W3C, but it should be.
Microsoft hates browsers, becaused they are inherently non-proprietary. Their browser was an admission that they could not continue to compete without one. Obviously, Microsoft is a big company and there are people within Microsoft who feel differently, and any attempt to make PR out of the fact will be vigorously denined because continuing to coast with their IE dominance is what they want to do without improving anything.
But as much as Microsoft acts as a corporation, any influence Microsoft can bring to bear on browsers at W3C or elsewhere will be to marginalize open standards and avoid better standards-based functionality.
What browsers need is bold new initiatives.
Microsoft's desire to stick to HTML is just to avoid doing anything significant to browsers at all.
Browsers are hampered by the HTTP get/put model, as well as a number of other things that XForms addresses. Microsoft would rather have you using web applications that execute as native or other Windows-specific code, which is a natural consequence if browser-based applications are kept too hobbled.
These days, W3C browser development is throttled by Microsoft who says on most useful browser extensions proposed at W3C: "you may choose to do it, but we will not support it".
XForms is easy and useful enough that it can be efficiently implemented in much less time than the argument takes. Enhancing HTML is a good thing as well. In reality, you won't find Microsoft doing much of either, and the competition should be doing both. There are significant things that HTML is not likely to do. XForms was designed to be the next generation forms for HTML.
Opera is just trying to keep things small.
Mozilla has lost any vision for leadership in these things.
But failure of the browser will be a failure in vision on the part of the IE competition.
Does anyone remember what things where like 6 or 7 years ago, when they tried a similar thing? In the end the simply lost out their market share to IE. Obviously this is an attempt to provide "added value" but I suspect that coming up with something incompatible and proprietary is not going to make things easy for developers trying to integrate their "new" technology. IMO - Sorry, but it just doesn't pass the "So What?" test.... just another block of junk code in the browser(s) that no one will use.
Wow I upset really you SenseiLeNoir didn't I. Mozilla became netscape 4 which almost everyone but netscape will agree was a dire browser, and that has to be the over-riding factor for why people chose IE over Netscape 4,5(6). Nobody who used Windows when NS4 or 5 was out, needed another browser, as the standard one was so much better. I'm not sure what 'ie is loaded with windows' means. It's just a standard exe with a shell extension written in, which anyone can write. Now Mozilla is free of Netscape as a project, it's catching up nicely, however in 4,5 netscape/the mozilla engine's support for w3c standards was a lot worst than IE's, which was my original point, however badly I articulated it ;)
Nothing costs nothing
I've started a petition to get Google to rank XHTML-valid websites higher than others. This would be one way that Google could influence the future of web standards for the better, and head off Longhorn at the pass, while delivering better results to Google's users.t ml
http://www.petitiononline.com/googhtml/petition.h
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Introducing...
Drum roll please...
XAML!! Wow, another great language! How long has it been? Six months? Now the web will be better than ever!
XAML is the dumbest thing I've ever seen!
you're a fag, dude
Ian Hickson mentions other crappy things about SVG in his blog (which I'll be nice and not link to from /. - learn to google)
Link right here.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
I must say that html should be dead and buried for a frigging long time!
...and then throw in some scripts to make dirty work arounds for something in the presentation that can't be done with tables only.
...Since i have no option.
html was MEANT to parse the content of texts. It has tags like quote, emphasis, code and even some obscure and never used bibliografic reference ones.
html today is USED to fake a editoring software like quark, pagemaker or TeX. Designers use photoshop to conceive webpages, then webmasters uses zillion of tables --that were supposed to display data-- to create a presentation for the text
So, everyone is obviously hitting a nail to the wall with a screw driver.
GET A F*&%# HAMMER FOR GOD SAKE!
flash is a standard today because it was the first! It's dirtly coded, it is ugly, slow, it changes it's action script syntax in every release to something worse and the tool's UI is a constant remake of the first one, made by some programer with no sense of usability. But, it was the first. The first to realize that html should be dead. I hate flash because it's like hitting a nail to the wall with an envil.
Java on the other hand was a great concept. But they where too megalomaniac. They basicaly switched the screw driver you were hitting the nail with a 20ton truck. You will get the nail nailed, but you have to get a license, spend some hours aiming and manouvering for each nail, and it can break down the wall.
well, i for one welcome the new discrepant-standards-for-the-same-shit overlords.
Next thing you know the <blink> tag will come back
Blinking text with CSS
And, interstingly enough, from that link:
Not many modern browsers do support this. Opera and Mozilla based browsers do support this effect with CSS.
This is (again) one of those critical times at which Sun could make a difference, yet it seems that once again they'll be late.
This whole thing about "richer client experience" is aimed at business apps; to be more specific, it is mostly about trying to encapsulate the whole mess of technologies that one needs to make a web-based app (http, html, javascript, css, ...) into something amenable to a RAD-type of IDE. And I think it's just the right thing to do, when we're talking business apps it's much more important to achieve the same RAD status as traditional C/S development, than it is to get that supposedly "richer" experience.
Now JSF (Java Server Faces) is Sun's response to .NET WinForms, but... where's the response to XAML??? Sun better join forces behind Mozilla, or else in 5 years time, all business-apps development will be in the hands of M$.
I am willing to take what Mozilla and Opera say at face value...the W3C plugin people are not interested in expending effort into adding functionality to the browser, especially improving it as a platform for applications. My sentiments are probably biased in favor of Moz/Opera, I can see the W3C's logic in not wanting to move XForm's in this direction. The W3C has had a pretty solid focus of getting everyone one the XHTML boat, and these new proposals really read like updates to HTML 4, which the they would probably prefer people to continue too move away from.
Microsoft, or at least their most visible W3C rep, Tantek Çelik (whom last I heard was moved off of the Mac IE project when it was end-of-lifed and onto some other project inside MS, but is still very active in the CSS committee and takes part in the XHTML discussions), doesn't see the need for xhtml/svg/xforms/etc. on the web currently either. If Tantek's attention is any hint what MS will be improving in IE7, CSS would be a safe bet.
The real meat and bones of this whole deal apparently is Web Forms 2, and is nothing new to people who have watched the XForms spec move forward. I remember Opera really having substantial issues with the XForms spec before it moved to recommended, and proposed something similar to what we see now as WF2.
It add's some handy features to some of widgets, and some nice features to forms in general (ex: elements outside of form markup, documents and standardizes a few things that have become ad-hoc standards, and for good measure adds some nice features from XForms.
What differentiates WF2 from XForms to me, is how practical and usable now the spec is today without the need to drastically reengineer web pages, or browsers to take advantage of the new features. I read through it saying stuff to myself like how much I would really have loved to have this feature on that last project, and finally! a standard datepicker widget (hopefully it's internals would be fully exposed to the DOM).
The Web Controls spec is really icing, we have all been hacking fake form controls forever. I would be great to have a standard way to do it.
The Web Applications spec only says one thing, but what a very nice one thing it is. A standard cross browser way to give fine grained control over cursor to the developer is something that has annoyed me in the past quite a bit.
While I personally might prefer to see XForms fully implemented and my co-workers up to date on how to code them in all the browsers sometime this decade, it won't happen without full Microsoft support, which from what I've seen is lukewarm at best.
I think that there is a decent chance these specs could end up implemented in IE7 if the specs get fleshed out relatively fast, and they get positive feedback from HTML coders.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
The problem is that it's coming from Microsoft and, unless they open-source XAML completely, we can never be certain that there are no lock-in mechanisms that benifit Microsoft to the detriment of developers and users. Microsoft has consistantly shown that they can and will do things of that nature, and we are right to regard any of their technologies with some suspicion.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
(I nearly responded to you originally as if you were a troll; I noticed you weren't an AC, and toned down` my reply - apologies if it was still relatively "forceful" ;)
XAML: this is my understandng, yes. Similar to Macromedia's "Flex", but generating HTML rather than Flash.
Mozilla/Netscape: I'd definitely point the finger of blame at Netscape - and IE. IE gained widespread acceptance because it mimicked the de facto standard - Netscape - with warts and all. Incidentally, that's why IE's browser string reads "Mozilla compatible ...". The Mozilla Foundation ditched much (most?) of the Netscape code, hence the long delay before Mozilla 1.0, and the current focus on "not-Suite", ie. on Firefox and Thunderbird.
Kudos for having the courage to reply, and aplogies for any flames in my original response... it's Monday... I don't function well on Mondays... ;)
This is where the serious fun begins.
NETSCAPE 4 was crap.. agreed IE was superior to Netscape 4, which was the most buggiest peice of crap ever created.
Netscape 5 NEVER EXISTED... full stop..
in your original post you said it was MOZILLA that was lot worse than IE, whcih is clearly false.Everyone knwos Netscape 4 was a pile of crap.
Originally Mozilla was going to be based on Netscape 5. However, it never saw the light of day. Instead Gecko, whcih was under development as "raptor" at netscape became the basis for Mozilla 1.0. Raptor/Gecko is FAR better than IE, and is indeed the reference platform, for the W3C, and has ALWAYS exceeded standards support over IE.
Mozilla/firefox etc are ALL based on Gecko.. NOT the Netscape 4 code.. The Netscape 4 code was only used in netscape 4.
Netscape 6 was based on Mozilla 0.9
Netscape 7 was based on Mozilla 1.0
Netscape 7.1 was based on Mozilla 1.4
Please get your facts right. Its obvious you really havent a clue what you are talking about.
Go read www.mozilla.org
or view a history of Mozilla for more information.
Have a nice day!
note: you can turn browser.blink_allowed off in Mozilla/Firefox about:config. Configurability is great, isn't it?
please don't refer to anything MS has produced as standard; is WinDOS self-consistent? is anything MS makes self-consistent?? how then can it approach a standard?
GrimRC
Please God Not Another Usless F*^@king Markup Language!
Who is the mole from Microsoft that has infiltrated and is making the Mozilla organization abandon W3C standards?
Seastead this.
Yeah, one thing that came out of the Web Applications workshop last week is that the term "Web Application" means different things to different people.
As I said in another post, I agree that on the long term we need a set of APIs on par with an OS, but designed so that they work cross-platform. That's what Microsoft are doing with Longhorn, except that that is Windows-only. The Gnome people will probably come up with stuff of their own, which would be more cross-platform. Indeed Sun did this years ago with Java.
The problem is that writing a spec for this stuff is insanely hard. To do this for a sophisticated application platform on par with, say, Longhorn, is simply unfeasible, IMHO. Notice how WINE has to reverse engineer Windows to determine how it should work -- the Win32 APIs aren't good enough to know exactly how to do it. Or how the various Java clones have to reverse engineer Sun's Java to get interoperability, the Java API documentation isn't good enough either. Heck DHTML is already complicated enough that we have to reverse engineer IE to work out how it should work, and that is orders of magnitude easier than an OS-level API set would be.
Then again, the W3C are likely to be working on such an API as a result of this workshop, and I'm sure Mozilla and Opera will be taking part in that work if it happens. That doesn't stop there being a need, in the meantime, for a solution for those people writing applications this year, in HTML.
(Slashdot itself is an example of such an application. Would you rather use a standalone Slashdot application instead of using a Web browser to read and post on Slashdot?)
But as it says in http://whatwg.org/: The term "Web Application" in this context refers to applications accessed over the World Wide Web by using a Web browser. This group is not attempting to describe APIs for writing high-end sophisticated programs such as office productivity suites, graphics manipulation packages, or 3D games.
All of the killer apps I mention *could be* rewritten with glitzy, rich client experience interfaces, but that would add nothing of value in proportion to the original service's value, and those service's current popularity means that a rich client experience just isn't needed.
If it existed, people would use it, but those services aren't failing for lack of a rich client experience. You're talking about icing, not cake.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Netscape 5 NEVER EXISTED Hence why i put (6) in brackets. I didn't know 6 was based on 0.9, I thought it was the just the old engine with a new gui. I'll hold that nugget of info somehwere in the my memory for future bar conversations. MSHTML.dll and the dlls you mention are just mere COM servers, they don't do anything magical. OK it got integrated into the shell so you cannot remove IE, which was wrong of Microsoft, although a lot of their Windows strategy was to be based around internet technologies, so you sort of forgive them for focusing on IE, if you're liberal minded like me. Netscape was open sourced and became the mozilla project when Netscape no longer decided to sell Navigator, from what I've read of the history. This version of Mozilla is what I meant by the less than rosey past comment.
Nothing costs nothing
"And if we still need somewhere to save our favourites, we can easily use such a VM to build a 'traditional' web browser, but genuinely based on standards."
CURL as the language, and Smalltalk as the VM (more cross-platform than Java).
Such people have never known what a browser is. The only thing that has changed is they're now using it. It is good those sort of people are using the internet, it's great the technology is easy enough for them no matter how little they know.
The problem is that when Netscape descided to create a new open source browser, they ditched the original Mozilla codebase and called the new browser Mozilla. Given the random crap that's happening now over Netscape the browser, Netscape the portal, and Netscape the ISP (, Netscape the Breakfast Cereal, Netscape the Tiolet Paper), it seems that someone in the Netscape division doesn't grasp that reusing names is a bad thing because it creates confusion. (Like, this thread.)
Netscape 4 could indeed be called "Mozilla." Entering "about:mozilla" in Netscape 4 would get you a screen similar to the one in the newer Mozilla browsers. Yes, this creates confusion with the current mozilla.org Mozilla. But, as mentioned above, naming confusion seems to be on par these days with the Mozilla project. Which is why I just use Phoenix^WFirebird^WFirefox as my browser.
And Netscape 5 did exist at one point. I saw a beta of it that someone was using for a research project. The problem was that Netscape 4 was so horribly broken and that Netscape 5 was based on Netscape 4 that they ditched the entire codebase at that time. I have a feeling that playing "the version number game" helped the next public release of Netscape (the Browser) be "Netscape 6," so that it would have caught up with Internet Explorer's version number, but there was a brief time when Netscape 5 was in development based on Netscape 4.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
"(Slashdot itself is an example of such an application. Would you rather use a standalone Slashdot application instead of using a Web browser to read and post on Slashdot?)"
What advantages would I gain over the old way (better filtering)? How about using Mozilla Amazon Browser instead of the actual site? RIA's is were we are headed, and NO I don't think that it needs to be a heavy-weight solution. It needs to be a 90% "good enough" solution.
So now my web browser will get fatter as all these new bells and whistles I don't need will be bundled in. What we need is to separate all these features into their own application, and have simply a small framework (a version of which could replace X and go directly to the video) that manages the screen. At least this way I can kill those particular processes (like Flash) that usually need to be killed.
Come on, seriously, putting all these application capabilities in a web browser isn't conceptually much different than a windowing system (besides the specific API and protocol differences). Pretty soon we'll do everything in a (so called) web browser super app and the windowing system will do little more than just start this one beast (and thus be a relatively lame layer). Why not merge these things and make a complete video driver, window system, and apps manager in a uniform design?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Is it possible/easy to have two forms on the same page? In the examples I've seen (mostly on w3schools.com), only one form is present. Since there's no form element per se, it seems as if it would be difficult to have two forms on a page.
Am I missing something?
Why they create another specification or reinvent the wheel?
:)
IMHO, I much prefer if they use existing specification and extend it from there.
How long for the specification to form (at least 1 year) then how long it take for the implementation another 1 year at least. Then how long for the developer to start adopt the technology? So at least it is need 2 years.
However, IMHO by take existing technology or specification it should be much faster.
And if they really create the spec from scracth, I hope they use *Strong Typed* language, not those EcmaScript/JavaScript, because for me once it have thousands of line, those not strong typed language will start to fall apart in term of debuging. It is so hard to spot a mistake by using non strong type language.
I personally like the SVG and Java to be the platform because it is what I do
Sketsa
SVG Graphics Editor
http://www.kiyut.com
Yes to everything except the Vector Graphics. XUL is basically using web markup to build an interface. The most famous XUL example (outside of Mozilla / Fire* of course) is the Mozilla Amazon Browser.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
BTW, I found Stunnix Perl Web Server to be a nice foundation for cross-platform browser-based applications in Perl - it's advanced web server written in Perl aiming at providing smallest response latency possible, that can be packed along with perl-driven dynamic site itself into standalone executable that includes Perl interpreter (that, when run, will start web server on free port and open browser window with the site). Real alternative to Gtk and Qt, IMHO - at least for simple apps.
Configurability is great, isn't it?
Sure is. I was posting mainly to illustrate the "advancement" of the blink tag, not to suggest that we are permanently stuck with it. That's all.
"Fortunately there is already XUL which is working, stable and in use. XUL is as open as it can be."
In use? Where? The Mozilla browser is the only widespread use I see. There's some minor examples e.g. MAB, Newsmonster, but that's pretty much it.
Do you even know what this article is about? XML schemas for web application. How the fuck do you have a a closed sourced XML Schema?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
"The W3C has been working on this - the "creation of a new language designed specifically for Internet computing" - since their original darpa grant in in 1995. Tim-Berners Lee's web site says he still acts as an advisor to the company that's continuing that project."
Unfortunately for CURL. It's not really a standard. It's basically payware. Tim really should know that the standards became a standard because there was no cost to using them. Even the IE "defacto" standards were a no cost choice for developers. Same with Netscape.
When confronted by an enemy stronger (in this case 10x so in terms of market share) you do not attempt to out-muscle them. If you want to live you use their strengths against them.
;).
.NET if the right JavaScript took advantage of them.
.NET.
What is M$'s biggest strength? Monopolistic power that allowed them to create a deployed base comprising 90% or more of all browsers. The question is how to turn that strength into a weakness not how to "out-sell" M$ and get Mozilla onto those desktops. Not that that would be a bad thing, I'd love to see Firefox everywhere
The real answer lies embedded in this comment, posted earlier:
Actually Microsoft was one of the few groups in favour of work like this at the recent workshop (they didn't want scripting involved, but apart from that were in favour with extending HTML rather than going down the XForms or other new language route).
Now why would M$ have problems with scripting? Simple -- they can't undo having shipped hundreds of millions of "JavaScript VMs" to the world. Those browsers are sitting there, just waiting for the right combination of JavaScript and XML to bring them alive -- and M$ knows it.
Sure, unvarnished JavaScript has a lot of warts, but it also has garbage collection, prototype-based inheritance, full closures, first-class functions, and a number of other powerful features.
If you treat JavaScript not as an "endpoint" but as a starting point you can build virtually anything you like. I know, I've been doing it for 5 years creating everything from full-blown OO to web service workflows in JS and am on the verge of shipping XForms support for IE6+ and Mozilla with no applets or plugins of any kind. This isn't theory, I've got running code.
The bottom line is we don't need a new VM (browser), we need to use the ones that are already out there to their maximum effect. Those IE6 installations could just as easily become a massive anchor holding back M$'s plans for
What's the best news? Our benchmarks show that the same JS/XML applications run at least 2X faster in Firefox, offering a compelling reason to migrate over time to Firefox running XForms and other W3 standards, not
SVG is my wet web dream come true.
yeah I realized that, but I figured it was something related that a lot of people (like me), who get nausea at the thought of blinking text can turn off. And it's easy too! :) I realized that you weren't saying that as a bad thing (although I wouldn't say that the revival of blinking text, which cursed many of us for ages, would be the best way to illustrate mozilla/firefox's good points, but that's ok :) )
Down near the end of this usenet post I wrote last month I talk about how the W3C has been a disappointment lately. Many of the specs I see from them are written for computer parsers, not humans. This is far different from the specs back in the heyday of Web growth. Lately it feels like following the W3C is like following a bureaucracy. It used to feel like I was having a conversation with fellow developers, people who were really into building Web sites and wanted to provide good, standardized ways to do more.
The bottom line is that if this new group can produce more developer-friendly documents that better address real-world problems, then I will support it. If they can get the KHTML team on board, then that's a huge bonus. Trying to do more within the realm of what already exists (rather than scrapping the old and starting again) is the right thing. It's refactoring. It's smart.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
This is just the same people (or mostly one guy who is an editor of all three specs) who could not get their/his way in W3C. This only helps Microsoft, if anything. And judging from the drafts that we can see now, even just cloning XAML on top of Mono would be a way better architecture for web apps. The stuff which is proposed by this group is so backwards.
XAML isn't a lot different from XUL, with two big differences.
.01 release.
Plus two more:
XAML will be marketed as a developer technology, with tool support, documentation, etc, not as an inhouse Netscapism.
XAML will be stable and supported and not break applications when someone upgrades their browser to the next
Because it comes from Microsoft, they'll always make sure that it works better on their platform than anyone else's. This is called an "anticompetitive business practice," and is even worse than if, say, Apple or Opera or AOL came up with it, because Microsoft is a monopoly.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
O: Hey Mozilla.
M: Yes, Opera?
O: Now that we've banded together to develop new web standards, what should we call our new working group?
M: WHAT working group.
O: The WG we just created.
M: Yes, WHATWG.
O: What are you asking me for?
M: I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, WHATWG.
O: Well go ahead and tell me.
M: I just told you.
O: I mean the WG's name.
M: Yes.
O: Whose WG name did you tell me?
M: No, WHO is the World Health Organization.
O: I'm not talking about WHO, I'm asking you what is our WG's name?
M: That's right.
O: Urgh... I'm a baaad boy!
With apologies to Abbott & Costello.
All of the big players, MS, Adobe, HP, IBM, etc are trying to turn the W3c into another version of IEEE or MPEG where they can reimlement their "old boys" standards. The heads of w3c need to wake up and realize that their orginazitions goals are directly contrary to most of their corperate "sponsor's" goals to get rich. Frankly, I think that Mozilla, opera, and Troll tech should focus on getting ALL of the web standards in place. A true CSS2, XHTML, etc solution is very powerful...realize that most of the web is still operating on crappy hacks of HTML4....even CSS2 is 5 years old!!!
Part of the problem is that there is a large philosophical difference between comercial software and OSS. Commerical software companies want every feature locked up in a giant complex mega-program. They "tolerate" plugin developers because it serves to Borrow the communities interests and keep them comming back. OSS on the other hand only thrives with small modular pieces. W3c's original designs fit that model very nicely...and they're not even being used all the way yet!!!! I routinely see PHP projects that make no use at all of higher-level web standards...hell, even slashdot only uses HTML 3.2...I'd love to see SVG implemented...even if those companies need to strip out the spec and sub-define it. SVG is a classic example of why I say they're getting crapflooded. It's readily apparent that SVG was "pre-fabbed" by Adobe as a Flash replacement browser rather than a data type. If what everybody is saying is true about it, the spec violates all of the principles of simplicity the W3c set out to create. Frankly SVG is the most begged for thing because a page like slashdot could exist without any graphics at all, it could be a pure asci stream!, if SVG support was handled properly...
Anyway, the biggest thing the browser developers need to do is start pushing normal web standards...they allow for cleaner presentation, more reusable server-side code and simply work better. There's only 3 non-ms browser makers of influance left...it's time they declare war on non-wc3 compliant browsers and put an end to all those 1999 era trogs!!! After all, windows browsing is covered by at least 2 of them...and downloading a simle browser like Opera or firefox has gotten to be less harmful than service packs from MS for 1999 IE!!! The evilist of evils would be to somehow create a new windows mime type for Alt browsers so that IE would treat pages opened like a "plugin" and open a stripped GUI of mozilla instead....It's amazing how many people will download realplayer, flash, shocwave, and Gator, but not put a little effort in Opera or Firefox which is SMALLER!!!
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
As much as i hate going against the W3C, i would hate to have a new web built on microsoft and macromedia 'technology'. Opera and Mozilla can atleast get basic CSS right (unlike microsoft) so they would be the best to do this, but why not work with the W3C? The big problem with html is that the masses just didnt listen, i guess thats democracy but its been hacked to death to do things it wasnt designed for, CSS was too little too late and implementation is just so fucking poor in some browsers (IE for mac?) it makes me want to get my dick out and start ramming the disk drive in some hope of getting basic box models to render properly! People dont think of the web as style separate from content, standards complient, neat and tidy, simple interfaces that get right to the point and give you the content you want. People want flashy interfaces like they see in movies, with menus that take several minutes to load so you can see a nice selection of low res pictures in a funky box and 1 paragraph of text that tells you nothing. Well thats fine by me, i could find a life-time of employment designing gimicky interfaces but im damned if im going to do it in flash. We need a W3C or some other open and decent standard that all browsers support very well and that has flash-like design tools availiable but we needed it 6 years ago. Now we have to live with macromedia flash because everyone has it, even though its not nice and ordered, it doesnt tie in with any other W3C web structure/standard and its web-app whatsit is all closed and requires a license. If Opera and Mozilla (and Netscape of course, and KHTML- meaning Safari) can pull this off (and do it well) then that would rock. I dont see any reason why microsoft wouldnt include it in IE, they dont have any relashonship with macromedia (thank fucking jesus for that).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"Unfortunately, this SVG requirement means we're IE only (various Opera bugs prevent it from working) because the SVG only works in the Adobe plugin, which doesn't work in any Mozilla build from the past two years. Last I checked Mozilla's SVG support was inadequate for our needs. That may have changed, but I'm not being paid to check that. :)"
Your post is a bit disjointed, but I'm running Mozilla 1.7b, and the Adobe plugin (3.01) works.
Also if your boss allows it? Look at Adobe's FLEX (uses the latest Flash plugin).
Or if you want XUL and Flash, then this is it (so's this).
Inspiration is everywere
Mozilla is a name, in the context of this discussion we are talking about the CODEBASE.
Up till netscape 4, although it was "internally" and unofficially called Mozilla, it was based originally on rewritten NCSA Mosiac code. To call that Mozilla is actually false (despite what some people said)
the "real" official Mozilla product and platform is based on the raptor/Gecko codebase.
Being able to type about:mozilla is only a FEATURE that is emulated by the said product. in fact it works in IE too by giving a tongue in cheek blue screen. In fact in 1999 there was a extension for IE by netscpae for IE that gave an intresting message if you type "about:mozilla" in IE with that extension installed!
As for Netscape 5.. yes it was in developement and was the initial mozilla, but it was dumped quickly before it was even a product. so for purposes, it really doesnt exist.
Have a nice day!
No worries, I can see where you initally got confused, btu i think as a generall it is really important to differential the old netscape 4 code (based on NSCA Mosiac) and focus on developing for Mozilla. I know people used to call Netscape Mozilla, but it just leads to major confusion.
I can understand why you thought Netscape 6 was based on the old code, because it was mbased on a VERY early version of the "new" mozilla,before it was complete, and had so many bugs it was notoriously unstable. It was only Netscape 7.0 which was based on the complete and stable Mozilla 1.0 which finally made good the promise. Netscape 6 was a big mistake.
> This version of Mozilla is what I meant by the
> less than rosey past comment.
I do understand now that you meant Netscape 4 in the previous post, and i wholeheartedly agree, and so do many others, Netscape 4 was an abomination that deserved to die. But calling it a "version" of Mozilla can be misleading, since mozilla as it stands is a total rewrite and bears little or no resemblance to that peice of "crap" called Netscape Communicator. Even when Netscape released 6, they called it as just "Netscape 6" and not "Netscape Communicator 6" to distance themselves from it.
Have a nice day!
XAML does look easy, but interesting enough they are missing some key demos for complex widgets like lists, tables, and trees. The only information I've seen so far has been how to bind text to a text field which is really straight forward in most toolkits out there. XAML hasn't made it any easier. The reason question is how easy is it to bind data to complex structures. I haven't been able to find any demos for those on M$ site. Plus I'm not sure this could be an open standard because of the way they bind the data to component. It's very much C# centric, and if you were to port it you'd have to bind it differently for each language.
The two things I think M$ did get right with XAML is using XML as the layout language instead of using the programming language. That makes it really easy to write visual UI designers. The other thing XAML binds to C#. HTML, SVG, XFORMS, WHATG, FLASH, bind to Javascript. I don't want Javascript I want Java, C#, etc.
Doesn't REBOL already allow these services that they are working to implement?
REBOL Advanced Language Technology
"REBOL is the first messaging language designed specifically for distributed Internet applications and data exchange across all devices."
"Applications run faster, take less bandwidth, and are easier to create with our unique, dialect-based computing model that rebels against the idea that distributed applications must be built on layers of large, complex, expensive software."
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
If Opera & Mozilla try to force new stuff on developers - they will only get ignored even quicker. Web development is mostly based on IE6 - and nothing else.
What good will IE6 be for XAML? It won't run it. Microsoft's XAML client is to run on/be part of Longhorn. Which means tens of millions of computer owners who can't afford, don't want, or whose machines don't have the capability to run Longhorn.
So unless someone can create a thin, open-source XAML client which doesn't need a GHz processor and GB memory then the MS path is creating a split - a rich person's net vs the rest. (and a poor american is rich by world standards)