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.

Comments

Why WG?

[peterdaly]

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

Re:Why WG?

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent wrote: Some people within the W3C have even stated that the browser is dead.

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.

Re:Why WG?

[vrmlguy]

From what I've read about Longhorn, I suspect that Microsoft is one of the groups opposed to "a backwards-compatible HTML-based standard". They want to replace the browser with new tools built into Longhorn that only they control. See any of these Google links for more details.

Re:Why WG?

[pldms]

I am no w3c expert by any means, but that's an interesting statement and strong point.

Too right it is. I don't recognise that characterisation of the W3C at all. True, they are concerned with the web as a whole, not just browsers, but it difficult to explain announcements like annotea moves to mozilla if the W3C is hostile to browsers.

Browser companies take part in W3C working groups, and provide valuable input. W3C even develops its own browser. And, a minor point I confess, W3C presentations normally use HTML in a browser.

What I see this group doing is providing the basis for W3C work. Working groups tend to be less successful if there isn't preceding work to serve as a basis. The W3C are attempting to remedy this (incubation groups iirc) but in the meantime I think this is interesting project.

Re:Why WG?

[hixie]

So instead of a "monolithic browser" you want a "monolithic runtime" that takes too long to update, lacks basic features, and leaves the rest of you at the mercy of a few companies who are more or less radical and "open", depending on the day of the week?

I really don't understand the difference between your VM idea and the browser of today, except that you would use XForms as the core instead of HTML. Different tags, same problems.

The more I read your VM proposal the less I understand it, unfortunately. I guess I need to see a more formal proposal to really understand what it means.

Konqueror

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that i would be if better if konqueror/khtml people joined the group, as for
instance khtml is representing safari too.

HTML is not for web apps...

[D-Cypell]

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.

Re:HTML is not for web apps...

[hixie]

Drag and drop is indeed one of the things that I think HTML should allow. We'll probably be extending HTML to allow for drag and drop in WHATWG.

Anything else? :-)

Web Standards are USER defined.

[Whitecloud]

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.

XAML

[kwench]

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?

Re:XAML parent is flamebait?)

[SenseiLeNoir]

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.

Re:No SVG?

[hixie]

No, it doesn't mean SVG won't be supported. SVG 1.0 is just the thing for vector graphics, and it fits right into the HTML world if you use XBL, for instance. (Although admittedly that won't be backwards compatible and won't work in IE!)

Mozilla already supports a bunch of SVG (a pretty useful 20%, last I heard -- and they're working on the ever popular Gradients as we speak). Safari and Opera don't do SVG yet, but at least at Opera it is something we are looking at doing. (It's very popular with mobile vendors, and, well, they are our main customers, so...)

Just what the Wild Wild Web Needs Now

[l0ungeb0y]

"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.

SVG is my make or break issue

[ynotds]

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.