Slashdot Mirror
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.
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...
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?
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?
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
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!
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.
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.