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Trouble Brewing at the W3C?
An anonymous reader writes "A breakaway faction of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) called WHAT-WG, or the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group--which includes Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera--is threatening to revolt over electronic forms standards. WHAT-WG has announced its intention to submit the draft to the W3C, posing the potentially awkward possibility of the consortium advocating two conflicting avenues for Web forms. The fate of a standard could also determine whether the order form could be accessed in any standards-compliant Web browser, or if it would be available only to users of a particular operating system--an outcome that has browser makers and others worried about the role of Microsoft."
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"The best thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It is a period of civil war.
Mozilla spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Microsoft Empire.
During the battle, Mozilla
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, INTERNET
EXPLORER 7, an armored web
browser with enough power to
destroy an entire website.
Pursued by the Empire's
sinister agents, WHAT-WG
races home aboard its
browser, custodian of the
form standards that can save
their people and restore
freedom to the galaxy....
Forms based on current Web standards are used in every Google search, every Amazon.com sale, every automated blog entry, every online tax payment, and every Web e-mail log-in.
Wow... I didn't know these all-powerful "forms" were everywhere!
More differences between browsers... that won't be good. Its already a nuciance with standards not being fully supported as is across the different browsers.
Tim (http://tim.igoe.me.uk)
Computers are like Air-con, open windows and they stop working!
I'm all for choice when it comes to how to do things, but standards should be, well, standard. The point of such arbitrary standards is lost if the bodies that are supposed to arbitrate the mechanisms are squabbling.
However, given the members of the W3C that are in the breakaway faction, it gives me pause to think that the only non-participating engine coder on the list is Microsoft. It makes me think that perhaps the standard that our favorite punching bag monopoly is trying to do something with the web forum standards that the others aren't liking.
Of course, this is without R-ing the FA, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
So let me get this straight. Microsoft wants to make Xforms the standard. Everyone else wants something else to be the standard. But does it really matter which standard we choose as long as its an open one? And aren't all W3C standards open? So what's the problem? I say choose the better standard regardless of other factors.
Or is there something I'm missing here?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
...but aren't WHAT-WG and the W3C advocating two standards for different purposes?
I thought that Web Forms was seen more as an extension of HTML 4.0 forms to make building HTML applications easier, whilst XForms was to improve things like introspection/interoperability (at the cost of being close to impossible for mere mortals to grok)...
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
... this'll all turn out just like Beta vs. VHS with some initial worriement that resolves itself with one set of standards beating down the other and becoming the norm. As for the possible role of Microsoft... whoever gets Bill Gates on their team, wins.
I just love how :
:
"Apple, the Mozilla Foundation and Opera--is
threatening to revolt over electronic forms standards."
suddenly becomes Microsoft's fault
"an outcome that has browser makers and others worried about the role of Microsoft."
Geezus guys, feeling a little insecure are we?
XForms:
- Doesn't require scripting
- Is not backward compatible
- Microsoft doesn't support it
Web Forms 2.0:- Requires scripting
- Is backward compatible
- Microsoft doesn't support it
No clear winner here, yet, but I'll put my money on XForms.How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I find it very ironic that Mozilla, an organization that touts itself as standards compliant, is party to making new standards. Making new web standards, by the way, is something that Mozilla chastizes Microsoft for.
Last I checked Microsoft hasn't chosen a side of the argument. Right now it's the browser makers vs the plugin makers.
No one said they can't work with the W3C to make new standards that everyone can use. This isn't like back in the mid-90's when people just made up standards for their browser and didn't care if someone followed them or not.
Kid, I've flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful form that controls everything.
No matter what the 'winner' is, people will still be running older browsers that don't support the new technology. So, as a 'just in case' scenario, application developers will still be using whatever programming language they're coding in to do the verification and whatever it is they need in the background. Unless I'm missing a magical thing that XForms, XAML and Web Forms 2.0 would be doing?
We have been waiting for xforms for far too long.
Forms, the way they are now, are a mess. And the very very late introduction of the long-awaited xforms will serve to F things up even more because all the developer toolchains will have to be made compliant (or not). Its going a long and painful road.
Part of the blame goes to java (sun) and microsoft for screwing up and/or sabotaging the applet concept.
If things were done right, developers would be writing user-input pages as applets rather than a messy rat's nest of css, html, forms, javascript, jsp's, etc...
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
It's time we reconsider the place of closed organizations like the W3C. We should start a new open source based open standards organization, free as in freedom.
I read Joe Gregorio's take on XForms a while back. XForms seems to make everything regarding forms/interactivity unnecessarily complicated. (The standard might've been simplified since then, un-RTFA etc.)
668.5
Now while I am one who loves standardization, the idea that you can impose standards that render all known browsers obsolete is ridiculous. Most people can't figure out how to update their computer with security patches much less download a whole new browser gasp... it'll never happen. The industry will not just leave 90% of their customers out in the cold because they cannot support the new forms. On another note, I am glad to see that some people are not affraid to stick up for the average person and challenge the W3C's authority.
Ok, the way I'm interpreting, "more sophisticated forms," is more hours spent trying to code websites to be compatible across different browsers. More hours spent adding and debugging code to check for the existence of support for a particular, "standard." More hours spent writing parallel code for users who support the new, "standard," and for users who don't. As well as yet another access point for virus writers to potentially exploit.
I like pretty forms to look at as much as the next user, but I'd rather have a fast loading site that gets me the information and products I want instead of having to deal with yet another pointless error message. I'm sure sites like eBay and Amazon might adapt this new specification, but not without using parallel code for those users with browsers who don't support it yet.
Sorry, I'm holding out for the WHAT-WJD!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The last 2-3 years the W3C has been so caught up in retarded politics that it's out lived it's usefullness. Rather than focusing on stuff people want like webservices, they've been focusing on semantic bullshit and RDF crap. I hear their funding is seriously going to get yanked because they haven't produced much. The pressure is on, but I think the W3C is clogged by beaurocratic BS.
One thing I really miss about using Safari is that with PithHelmet I could s!*.slashdot.org/*.pl!it.slashdot.org and not have to put up with that terrible green.
Sound to me as if someone either missed the cluetrain, was having a slow news day and decided to invent a crisis, or swallowed some Microsoft FUD without checking his facts.
From the Web Forms 2.0 draft spec:
"This specification is in no way aimed at replacing XForms 1.0 [XForms], nor is it a subset of XForms 1.0.
XForms 1.0 is well suited for describing business logic and data constraints. Web Forms 2.0 aims to simplify the task of transforming XForms 1.0 systems into documents that can be rendered on HTML Web browsers that do not support XForms."
The Web Forms proposal is hugely important precisely because it can be implemented for IE using a "standard library" of client-side script. It won't be quite as nice as native implementations, but it'll work. It's the first evolutionary proposal I've seen that actually makes allowance for the festering carcass of IE holding everybody else back.
I saw in other news that further arguments have led to another breakaway faction called WTF, or WHAT The Fuck.
Most of the big standards that the W3C has published to date are more about documenting and unify existing technologies that have already emerged (i.e. HTML, XML, RDF). This XFroms thing would seem to be the first major thing they have tried to pioneer where all the major vendors have their own interests at stake.
I would be expecting more solidarity from the Mozilla side of things but I guess there is big business there too now. The web is about sharing where business is about Darwinism. This sort of problem has to be resolved if the web is to progress.
As for XForms, what can you do with them that you can't do already? Less Javascript perhaps? Is that worth having to support 3 separate technologies? If it doesn't get resolved then I know I'll just stick to the current standard as it will always be supported.
We're talking about a cross-platform plugin, right ?
Aren't there like 7 code monkeys who could whip this out in a few days and then just redirect people to get the plugin ?
we're talking about a truly open source plugin, written to a stable standard...not a java plugin, or a macromedia plugin, or a realplayer plugin.
it seems to me, that any road except the proprietary one (miscrosoft/avalon/XAML) would be somewhat easy to do this way....and a redirect for a plugin is pretty much the same across all browsers.
None of these companies or organisations are going to dictate what the used standard will be. As usual, it will be the porn industry :P
Let's see here...
a) Using CSS instead of the tag actually uses less code if you need that "font style" a lot in a page or website.
;)
b) XHTML is based of XML, therefore all XML rules (including code termination) must be met. If you've got a problem with this, go back to SGML based HTML4.01 which allows this
c) In CSS you can have a as wide as its content, use: "width: 0; overflow: visible;"
Full height-sidebars? "height: 100%;"
d) Attribute="value"s have to be completed in order to comply with XML spec, as I said earlier, SGML-based HTML4.01 is more flexible....And you forgot to close your element properly
The W3C Standards exist for a reason and many are devised by people who, lets face it, are waaaay smarter than both you and I. If you've got a problem with this, then join one of the W3C Working-Group Mailing lists and ask them yourself.
"The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
I get the feeling that the problem with adopting XForms is the "chicken and egg" issue of current browsers not supporting it so current websites would look like they were moving in REVERSE if they supported it.
It looks like nothing will get the current standard adoption out of NEUTRAL (XUL, XAML, XForms, or some proprietary tech) unless it can be compatible with the current browser tech.
Web Forms 2.0 offers something that the web sites could adopt that would still be backwards friendly to Internet Explorer. It's the lubrication that can get the websites to move their tech forward.
It seems that Apple and AOL are on the cusp of a new major browser release things are just about to be pushed into DRIVE. At the very least, this "super scripting" solution of Web Forms 2.0 looks like a way to push the website providers into an upgrade cycle for everyone.
My guess is that there's no significant reason this was done outside official W3C procedures other than the rapid speed of making changes, but it looks like they're planning to submit things to the W3C for the full, slow, tectonic ratification.
XUL and XAML are general markup languages for GUIs. And Flash is a complete runtime.
The notion that XUL and XAML are substitutes for a forms standard makes about as much sense as saying that a C compiler is a replacement for a web browser: just add a little bit of code yourself. I guess we should count our blessings that at least they aren't proposing to use Java.
XForms is specifically for forms: things you fill in and submit. XForms also has facilities for off-line filling and mailing of forms. We need a standard like that.
Having said that, I find neither XForms nor Web Forms 2.0 particulary persuasive. XForms suffers from second system effect: there is just too much of it. And Web Forms 2.0 seems like a mess; reliance on JavaScript is a no-no.
Thanks, but not thanks: everybody should go back to the drawing board. Maybe in another few years, they'll come back with something reasonable.
I'm all for css, but the last time I tried "height: 100%;", it didn't work in all browsers (I think it only worked in IE). I love CSS, but we must admit that it is sometimes a pain in the arse.
perception is reality
Then take a look at recent w3c recs and pity the idiots that drafted them.
This is exactly what I've been talking to lately with people about the W3C. They're becoming useless. They have these factions and everyone wants things done one way or another, nobody agrees, and nothing gets done to help the people. And like in this case, it only creates new problems.
And they apparently won't even consider taking any of Microsoft's adaptations to the standards into consideration, even though many times some of these changes are actual improvements. IE is such a superpower that the only way we can ever have ONE standard is to start blending everything together. At the rate we're going, the browser compatibility divide will only continue to INCREASE, not get better.
So really, why should Microsoft give any credibility to these standards and the people behind them when they can't even agree with one another on such important things?
...I'm waiting for the OHHKAAAY-WG and the YEEAAAHHHH-WG.
It doesn't scare me too much, I know how to make HTML forms and (as the old "Chevy Van" song goes) that's all right with me... I guess we'll soon abandon the "relic in Internet time" known as HTML 4 soon though (not sure when that'll happen at Slash"HTML 3.2 Final"dot--just look at that DOCTYPE in the page source...).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
And for the other one, "width:0" is no good if you want a border or background.
Mozilla, Opera and Apple are allied? I don't even have to know what it's about to know which side I'm on.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Fron TFA:
The W3C is saying the answer is XForms. Microsoft is saying it's XAML. Macromedia is saying its Flash MX. And Mozilla is saying it's XUL.
The "standards" committe is saying one thing; Microsoft is saying another; Macromedia is saying another and Mozilla is saying yet another!
Did I misunderstand just WTF a standard is?
Ok, so the everybody at 1% is off obviously, but come on he has a valid question -- is this a case of everybody vs. MS?
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
"height: 100%;" only works when an element has a parent with absolute height. You need to set "body { min-height: 100%; }" first. Of course, CSS2.1 still does have short-comings where are the only viable way to achieve a particular aesthetic effect. But I stress this is in the minority of cases, and there's almost always workarounds. Just remember kids! "If in doubt, do without!"
If anyone needs a little help with the imagination part, I suggest checking out The CSS Zen Garden.
It's a bit tricky to get some tableless stuff right, but in the end it's way better: most of the stuff (not only the colors and fonts, but positioning and sizing too) can be easily changed, and things get real clean when generating pages dynamically.
But unfortunately, Microsoft still has 95+% of the browser market.
Really? I know W3Schools.com is biased toward web developers and thus toward savvy users, but its February 2005 stats show 25.1% Gecko share (Mozilla Suite + Netscape 7 + Firefox) and only 69.2% IE 5/6 share. Or are you counting Gecko on Windows as a Microsoft client?
[What follow are my opinions.]
This battle is barely on developer radar, as far as I know. Those on the bleeding edge are using .NET and/or XUL as per ideology and having a great time.
The mantra for nine years has been that one needs to validate on the server, because the client can't be trusted.
This comes down to servers vs. clients in the end... server manufacturers and server software publishers want to be able to control the whole pipeline through the standards, at the potential cost of breaking backwards compatibility in web user agents, and bloating their code in the bargain.
Meanwhile the w3c is far out in front, the same way it's been with CSS2/3 and other tech.
The Web Standards Project, to which I am attached, has taken a wait-and-see approach. This is due mostly to resource constraints, but also because we're loath (as a group) to take the side of any publisher or group of publishers except in defense of active Recommendations, or in opposition to precedents that would hurt the user community as a whole (such as RAND licensing and the Eolas suit).
When everything's said and done, the greater interest is in a fair standard that's likely to be followed, even if it doesn't manifest the most intelligent solution.
...When in doubt, think for yourself.
Firefox ignores backgrounds on <col> and <colgroup> even though the standard explicitly allows them.
Bug 4510 happens because a cell inheriting style from both a parent <tr> and a pseudoparent <col> would inherit conflicting information. Should it follow the style of the <col> or of the <tr>? CSS specifies no way to resolve multiple inheritance. What is the Right Way, with documentation?
Who cares you wins the forms war ? Is it like forms as they are today are going anywhere ? Not for some time I would say.
The WHAT-WG is more than a working group now. I fact, they're an actual task force!
Let's hear it for the WHAT-TF
A breakaway faction of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C) called WHAT-WG
According to the WHAT-WG page, "Many of the members of this working group are active supporters and members of the W3C..." So it seems they themselves do not see WHAT-WG as a "breakaway faction."
And if they actually rejected the W3C, why are they planning to submit their proposal through the standard W3C pipeline? Why not attempt to bypass or ignore it? If WHAT-WG are against the W3C, they would not be planning to cooperate with them.
It looks like this WHAT-WG is just another group submitting another proposal to the W3C. Yes, that proposal conflicts with an existing W3C one. But that doesn't indicate anything about turmoil in the W3C. It's just another potential standard that happens to have the same goal as another. Competition of standards in the W3C is nothing new.
What the fuck are you on about?
A well designed website will work fine in Lynx, and look FUCKING great in Moz, and even better, still work for disabled people.
Why? CSS, data seperation. HTML == Define data, give it names (with id/class). CSS==looks.
Microsoft is going to get a plan together, crank the condescension generator up to 11, and say "There there, now, you see what we've always said about "forking"? Let Mama Microsoft make it all better." They'll then proceed to release their own standard via the usual culprits (The Gartner Group, PC Magazine, every other PHB news source). The geeks like us will whine about it, but Joe Businessman will smile and nod and go with the "standards" of the newly-minted Microsoft Web Pro Standards (or whatever silly name they'll call it).
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Don't use that ... you can do it in CSS and it only takes 3 times as much code!
... The list of reasons to use CSS is like endless. You're totally, completely, absolutely wrong here.
...)
Hmm, it usually reduces your page size by half, and it a lot easier to read. More accessible, renders faster,
All tags must be terminated explicitly. Because it happens so often that you need to nest a directly within another , with nothing between them.
This hardly represents work - lazyness at best. People who usually cant manage and complain usually make quite messy html. It's good practice. But I suppose we should come out with a new version of XML where we don't really have to close tags either, or improperly nest them? You don't really have a point...
(... more crap
CSS rocks - if you know how to use it.
Whoever modded this insightful is either stupid, or works for microsoft's W3C compliance team.
Later, there will be versions for cell phones, and text-only displays. All possible because the formatting is not specified in the HTML.
If you want to spend the rest of your life hacking out table-based pages that are impossible to maintain and not viewable except on precisely the same display you tested it on, fine. But the rest of us are moving on.
This appears to be everybody against inertia; and Microsoft appears to be on the side of inertia. As another example, Dave Hyatt (a development lead on Apple's Safari) posted a tale about similar problems dealing with the inertia of the float handling in CSS:
Like CSS adoption, the problem with XForms is the lack of backwards compatibility with the old de-facto standards. Now with major releases coming soon (Apple in the first half of the year, Mozilla before May) it's looking like XForms can move forward by offering pretty baubles to web developers and browsers with these backwards-compatible, familiar, tweaks to encourage upgrades (and while you're at it we'll be in a better place toward Xforms 1.0 or 1.1 adoption).Recent W3C standards have been a complete joke...
Really? I thought CSS was frickin' brilliant.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Maybe people should quit trying to screw in a nail with a hammer. Any really complex web interfaces my company builds use Flash which works on Linux, Windows, OS X & even PocketPCs.
If your interface is very complex it would make more sense to build a web-enabled application for clients instead of a web-browser that brings problems like pop-ups, etc with it.
Just my 2 cents as a developer (I do both stand alone & web-based apps at my company).
A truly paranoid person might believe that all the way back in 1995, Microsoft saw The Internet, installed The Browser, and did Two Things. The first plan was to adopt The Browser paradigm and do it well. The second plan was to start trying to figure out how to move The Customer back to Windows. This has manifested itself in ActiveX Controls first, and now in little over a year, Longhorn with XAML.
.NET Framework 3.0 will be 10 times bigger than 2.0, probably close to a gig in disk space required. Within this not so tiny nut will be all of the necessary compiled components required to render a Windows application from managed code.
.xaml files in any browser on a Longhorn machine and control will transfer from the browser to the OS+.NET 3.0 where that xaml code will turn into managed code and render a fully functional and current Windows application.
We know what a rotting piece of tripe ActiveX was. We shall say no more on that subject.
What do we think will happen with Longhorn and XAML though? Let's speculate!
First of all, I think Longhorn will arrive without Internet Explorer technology embedded into the OS. I still think they will have some html rendering technology in the OS, but it won't be as ugly and insecure as their current Windows incarnations.
I think the
Then XAML. You will then be able to click on
In looking at XForms, Web Forms 2.0, and then speculating on the nature of Longhorn and XAML, and knowing many business customers as well as I do, I think Microsoft will win a large mindshare of the the Fortune 500.
After that it's all a big toss up because below the "enterprise application level" you could mix and match any of the upcoming technologies.
I almost see a splinter in two directions. The Browser will maintain all e-commerce and global corporation applications and Microsoft will still strongly support this area of development.
But where departmental and Intranet applications come in to play, Longhorn and XAML will win a ton of new development and lock out the newer web technologies.
The simple truth is that most users can't stand web applications. They don't mind doing their online banking in them, but if they're working in the treasury department of a bank, they prefer Windows applications (or office type apps built into Excel or Access).
Anyway, this all hinges on Longhorn being locked down and enormously secure. I think that's the #1 key to its and XAML's success. If MS can pull that off, the W3C people and its splinter groups have a whole other thing to worry about. If Longhorn comes out flaky and insecure, XAML will take years to gain any headway and none of this will matter.
But if I were on the W3C board, I would be hedging bets that XAML and Longhorn will succeed and start planning on how that will play in future efforts. I don't see XForms or Web Forms 2.0 competing with XAML though. Something else will have to do that.
Note: It's just speculation!
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
Surely that's what Microsoft et al. thought when they made an addition to Web pages called VML used mostly by Office? Much of that language, with later input from Adobe, Corel, Canon et al. became the SVG that hasn't caught on too much.
I think Web Forms 2.0 will suffer the same fate as SVG does (there's already a popular vector format called Flash and a popular form format as part of the still-popular HTML 4 spec, though Web Forms seems to be simply an attempt to translate one format, XForms, into HTML...right?).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I happen to have recently surveyed XForms engines, and at least two of them under development run entirely within the client, in the style of gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, etc.
Modern browsers are up to this, it just takes a (one-time) engineering effort, treating JavaScript as a full programming language.
Of course, if browsers like Mozilla natively support XForms, all the better. -m
--- Learn XForms today: http://xformsinstitute.com
Don't use that ... you can do it in CSS and it only takes 3 times as much code!
That single line of code can set the font for an entire website. Using font elements means you have to put it in every block-level element on every page of a site. You are spectacularly wrong!
All tags must be terminated explicitly. Because it happens so often that you need to nest a directly within another , with nothing between them.
WTF are you talking about? That isn't the reason elements (you mean elements, not tags; Christ, you can't even get your terminology right!) must be terminated explicitly. It's things like having a much simpler parser, being able to construct a tree without foreknowledge of the DTD, being able to pinpoint the exact point of error when validating, etc.
CSS can do any styling you want! Unless you want a centered div that's only as wide as a content... or a full-height sidebar... then you're just screwed.
Actually, that's perfectly possible in CSS 2, published seven or eight years ago. It's just the part of the specification that Microsoft conveniently forgot to implement, so you have to work around it.
<input checked="checked">. 'Nuff said.
Obviously not. What's the problem there?
The community around WHAT is nowhere near critical mass needed. The mailing list archive is 50% hixie.ch, not a healthy community. It it were an open source project, it'd be in trouble.
"We'll submit this to the W3C later" sounds like a smokescreen. Why go to so much trouble when stupid politics guarantees it won't be accepted?
Maybe they could work one something more useful (hint: maps.google.com doesn't work in Safari or Opera)
I'm new to this, but this is what I understand to be the problem:
Current situation: firefox is ascendent, with other browsers making up ground as well. It's the first time in years that the consumer has felt that browsers other than IE can do their job, and they're turning to alternatives because of new features they offer.
One group in w3c (including Microsoft) are advocating a start-again approach to web forms. This is XForms.
The other group fear that if that happens, in the confusion, Microsoft could push forward its own proprietary solution, supporting it with more vigour than XForms. Consumers will be back in the hole of having to use IE to get their work done.
The result of this would be: alternative browsers will be locked out of the marketplace, and the potential of the internet to offer a low cost of entry to new players (described at length by Paul Graham in _Hackers and Painters_ will be compromised, at least in the medium term, because Microsoft will control the APIs and delivery of the web.
Believe with me, my saplings.
-1 "Lame paid 'guerilla marketing' attempt" .. hint: don't sound like a marketing brochure when you're trying to fake grassroots product support.
For me it doesn't sound like too much trouble. It's just part of the evolution of HTML. The thing here is that they're submitting it to the W3C. Think of it as "instrumental regulations" vs. "wacky patents".
In my case, i developed a very similar javascript which uses additional tags in html, to automate validation of html forms. I just add the tags saying how this number should be validated, etc etc.
I read the web forms spec. It's cool, it even has regex testing. See, in the era of the XML-hype, there was this thing that everybody thought would be cool. It was called XForms. But in the end, they were simply too complicated to implement.
Web forms were designed to make things much more simpler. And AFAIK, Microsoft never aims to make things simpler, but rather the opposite (proprietary formats, bells and whistles, etc). So I think this webforms thingy can't be bad.
Therefore making your entire post a moot point.
True, W3Schools and Yahoo! have different audiences and thus different biases. Every site has a bias. But do you really think the defection from IE is six times as much among savvy users than among the grandmothers whose computers the savvy users maintain?
Web Forms is to XForms as Windows was to OS/2.
XForms is The Right Thing; Web Forms is Worse Is Better.
That's my general impression from the little I've read. XForms is loaded with coolness, but the spec is huge and it pulls in bits of other complex specifications, like XML Schema and XPath (as I recall). It's not straightforward to implement and that's a problem: witness the state of support for CSS 2.1 (let alone CSS 3).
Personally, I'm a fan of Worse is Better. We can have improved forms now and evolve towards something better. Right now, XForms promises little more than a dream.
Q: What's the name of your working group?
A: Right.
Q: "Right" is the name of your working group?
A: No, WHAT is.
Q: What is what?
A: WHAT is the name of my working group.
Q: That's what I just aksed you.
A: No, that's what I just told you.
Q: No, no -- just tell me the name of your working group!
A: WHAT.
Q: I said, tell me the name of your working group.
A: WHAT.
Q: WHAT'S THE NAME OF YOUR WORKING GROUP, DAMMIT!?
A: Right! But my name's not Dammit...
(strangling noises)
They've got IE7 coming out "someday", but in the meantime, if there's a new web forms standard, that just costs them money to support it and there's not payback for that support.
I'm not saying they're right. I'm justing pointing out that from MS's viewpoint, the status-quo is just fine right now.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
OK: So this backs up my gut feeling that allowing both is actually a good thing. XForms is for peoplw willing to go to a brand new browser, and WebForms provides a backup method for people staying with old browsers, while smoothing the road for the final move to a pure XForms platform.
I'm actually getting a feeling that the problem is with TFA, which might actually be springing from FUD.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
" The microsoft standard actually deals with the real world business needs for these forms."
.NET webforms (which really do suck , since they're pretty much limited *-*shocker*-* to IE).
In this case, if you replace "business" with Microsoft, you have a better picture of what's going on here.
As far as MS is concerned, IE6 is *good enough for you*. They're pushing their
MS's entire web stack sucks right now. IIS is just an awful web server. IE is just an awful web browser. I view people writing proprietary solutions using those products as proof that mediocrity finds its home in corporate IT department everywhere.
"WinForms is going to go away"
Good. Winforms is an abortion. Or rather, its too bad it didn't get aborted before it was put out. I can't say enough bad stuff about this technology.
It invites developers to develop webforms that are 1M+ and bounce them around over 128K dedicated links. Oh joy.
The guys at MS who thought this up should be forced to used Windows ME for an entire year with no reinstalls for any reason whatsoever.
This is not a war. Many of the WHAT-WG members are also members of the W3C.
The Web Forms 2.0 specification is an extension of the existing (and antiquated) HTML Forms specification. It adds some new elements and attributes some of which are alarming omissions from the original spec. Things like standardised date and number input controls will be a boon to web developers. XForms is a quite different technology. And it may be some time before it has the penetration to be a mainstream development tool. In the meantime, Web Forms 2.0, by extending existing HTML forms functionality gives developers a familiar framework to build on.
If you are looking for any political angle then notice that Microsoft are not represented in the members list. [I can assure you that they were invited.] The WHATWG are about web applications. We need a standardised extension to HTML to stave off the immediate threat of XAML. Web Forms 2.0 and the upcoming Web Apps 1.0 are meant to do just that.
The parent comment is the only one in this entire article which boththered to RT pertinent part of TFA.
How about IE compatibility? Microsoft can trash either standard by making the new, compulsory IE version bork a little on whatever pleases Bill. Expecting that the same guys that sniff Opera to bork it's rendering will be caught by a brand new standard that just happens to work on their software is... naive?
OTOH, GMail and other web apps seem to adapt well to this. Wouldn't it be sweet for Bill if every web app competitor started using the same standard way of interfacing to their clients? "Oh, don't worry because Yahoo! and Google mail/search engines don't work with WibblyHorns SP3.14, just use Hotmail and MSNSearchThing... or wait until these providers fix their apps".
Kill Bill, vol. ad nauseum...
It was a bit hard to grok at first, but at that point my developers all have xslt coding experience which made things easier in the end.
Once we got going we all started to feel like this is the future of webforms.
the xforms model also really fits into a REST model really well, which is the direction most of my news web apps are moving.
Haven't seen this competing standard since the first draft, but back then when I read it it seems like what we got (which is a mess really) with some extra stuff adding in, like automatic looping. Hopefully it's a lot better now.
Peace, or Not?
Your typical user has no reason to fix something that isn't broken to them.
The news media, with the help of the Mozilla Foundation, have done a good job of painting Microsoft Internet Explorer as broken lately, specifically because of spyware and worms that spread through various vectors within IE.
The idea that Web Forms 2.0 requires JavaScript is a fallacy.
JavaScript may be used to provide legacy support in the client (browser). However, Web Forms 2.0 is intended for implementation by browser manufacturers. Because it is based on existing HTML forms technology it is potentially implemented quite quickly. No Web Forms 2.0 application should ever assume that the browser supports WF2. There should always be proper validation for legacy browsers. This is being a good web-developer anyway.
During the battle, Mozilla
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, INTERNET
EXPLORER 7, an armored web
browser with enough power to
destroy an entire Windows OS.
No need for thanks, I'm here to help.
Sorry, I'm holding out for the WHAT-WJD!
Personally, I'm holding out for the WHAT-TF!?!? Shouldn't be long now...
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
Parent g0t Insightful??
Don't use that ... you can do it in CSS and it only takes 3 times as much code!
This completely neglects the fact that if you need to change the layout, you only need to deal with one file, instead of hundreds of files. Of course, you don't need 3 times as much code to use CSS, which leads me to believe author of parent doesn't know what he's talking or was trolling.
All tags must be terminated explicitly. Because it happens so often that you need to nest a directly within another , with nothing between them.
Never seen anything like that. Though the example has nothing to do with terminating tags. Another case of a confusing or confused person.
CSS can do any styling you want! Unless you want a centered div that's only as wide as a content... or a full-height sidebar... then you're just screwed. (hint: use tables instead)
Sigh. We are looking at one really ignorant person. For example, you can definitely do a full-height sidebar. Just take a look at the numerous examples on the Web about multiple fluid columns.
this article is terrible, it raises a lot of confusion and muddles the waters...
first of all XUL and XAML have nothing to do with this, they are both application layout languages, not data field and validation languages, why the auther mentioned them, i don't know, IMHO they are both great, and have nothing to do with the W3C (beyond that they are built on top of XML) they are not web standards, and no one is trying to claim they are as such.
The arguments the involved parties have are very logical:
application developers aka "XML Purists" : (IBM, SUN, NOVELL, etc)
Want the cleanest, best solution for their big clients that are tired of shitty javascript forms, they want it to work seamlessley with other XML applications in a big friendly XML web service world.
active browser makers aka "if it works, don't fix it" (opera, mozilla, apple)
are afraid of spending time/money/effort into technologies that aren't adopted, they are more than happy with HTML+Javascript for forms, since it "works" and no one has to do any work that possibly will never get used, thus they back WebForms which is more of the same...
microsoft
i truly believe microsoft has no interest in developing a web browser anymore, they took up the torch because they saw what everyone saw around 10 years ago - web browsers (netscape) sucked horribly, they brought about a new world to the web with IE, but its time as passed, and i think everyone will be happy when it dies, even microsoft - so i don't think they really care what form technology gets adopted, as long as they don't have to pay more IE developers.
Am I alone in saying that I don't really see such a big problem here as the article would make out? W3C supports HTML and XHTML..... why can't it support both XForms and Forms 2.0? Just have both....use the Forms 2.0 for backward compatible and transition until people are ready to use Xforms instead..... I see Forms 2.0 as a midway point between current forms and Xforms....these things always take time, and remember people, these are standards, not requirements! Let's not give MS something they can use to say "ha! you should have used our proprietary standards....those 'open' guys can't make up their minds!" That's not a good situation for anyone, not even Microsoft if they would use a little foresight.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
I don't get it.
With HTML forms or XForms or any other forms, a good developer is still going to validate all the data on the backend.
The only bad thing about the potential scripting in Web Forms 2.0 is that the script engine developers have previously made their script engines a security nightmare. (Microsoft mostly but Firefox hasn't been security hole free)
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
But... Can't you see the Form is everywhere? Even as I speak to you now, Brother, I can feel it's all part of a Form!
I, for one, would like to welcome our new overlords!
People keep saying that none of the browsers (especially IE support XForms so it will never take off.
What they fail to realize is that XForms is not necessarily a client-side technology and can be used *right now* in ALL major browsers.
Take a look at Chiba for a server-side implementation that works pretty well. No plugins to install!
bzzzzt, body has nothing to get the absolute height from, and CSS 2.1 is not a recommendation, just a draft, and even then it is a "no one implemented our standard, so we will strip it down / change it so it makes everything comply with it" pile of shite.
hint: display: table; display: table-cell; display; table-row;
checked="checked" is the actual HTML as well, it is only because the SGML SHORTTAGS property is enabled you are allowed checked on it's own.
font has 0 semantic information, HTML. hint MARKUP. you markup the text with additional information about it. and it takes no extra code. css layouts are typically 33% the size of their non css equivalent.
terminating all tags makes parsing far simpler, and quicker, and removes confusion about what will be inside what.
I always stayed away from depending on javascript, although I used it a lot back when I typed out webpages with a simple text editor. But I don't think it would be a problem for these new forms to depend on it. Yes, people can disable javascript but people are more likely to have a browser with javascript enabled than they are to have a browser capable of handling the new forms. Maybe the preferences can be set up so disabling javascript also disables web forms 2.0.
"CSS can do any styling you want! Unless you want a centered div that's only as wide as a content... or a full-height sidebar... then you're just screwed. (hint: use tables instead)"
/* IE bugfix */">
/* or use "fixed" */; top: 0; left: 0; bottom: 0; width: 20em; background: pink;">
<body style="text-align: center;
<div style="margin: auto; text-align: left; background: pink;">
You're a moron.
</div>
</body>
<body>
<div style="position: absolute
You're still a moron.
</div>
</body>
According to the WHATWG specification, their work isn't intendeded to replace XForms. So I think this entire ZDNet article is a troll.
Focusing on completely useless things that solve no problems like SOAP, due to the politics of Microsoft. That is chiefly the reason, if any, that W3C is becoming irrelevant. Too many people salute when Microsoft brings something to the table to realize it was a diversion, never intended to solve real problems. It is a monstrosity that only creates problems, never solves them. It has helped marginalize XML and other prior standards in general that are very successful and widely implemented. No, SOAP is not really just using XML for web services, which was common process before the convoluted SOAP idea.
The GP may be a troll, but he has a point.
You know what's great about HTML? It's putting the content into a form that can be displayed optimally on all resolutions, browsers, etc. with the preferences the user wants.
However, the CSS-layout simply isn't doing this very good, CSS is more optimized on those terrible pixel-based fixed-everything layout.
Just go to css zen-garden (Google will find it for you) and you will realize that well over 90% of all these CSS-designs are fixed at 800 pixel-width and are thus simply worthless crap.
I once tried to design a webpage with CSS-layout which should have a menu which should have a minimum width of 100 pixels but should grow as needed and should never overlap with the actual content.
I just wasn't able to do it with CSS, it never worked. As soon as you played with the browser window and/or font-sizes, the menu and the content would overlap and form an unreadable mess. (Before posting any wiseguy-responses, try your solution with a really narrow window, like only 100 pixels wide - it will almost certainly overlap.
While tables are not perfect and it's really annoying to define which columns should expand and which shouldn't, it just works and once you got it right, it works reliably - and it works in all browsers.
That said, CSS has many great uses as a way to reduce redundancy (through classes, etc.).
Don't use that font... you can do it in CSS
heh, when recommending the use of FONT elements you obviously haven't looked at the source of the page you're posting on : )
Full height-sidebars? "height: 100%;"
Which planet do you live on? I really wish it was that simple. According to the CSS spec, height: 100% is the exact same thing as no height property at all, except when the block is absolutely positioned - in which case it will fill the viewport, but nothing more. I gave it a test run yesterday, and browsers (IE6/FF1.0/O8b1) acted very inconsistently.
In short, having an element with 100% height (other than body or html), like in the good old days of table layout, is an impossibility with CSS. I find it hard to understand the reasoning behind this.
The goal that CSS has is admirable and while it is plagued by things like flaky browser support *cough*IE*cough* and some stupidities like the aforementioned, it's a great tool when used right. But still... it doesn't give me absolute control over the looks of my site as I would like it.
I'll simply correct your statements, as there is no -1 Wrong available.
.Net2 browser object' to create a custom web browser, complete with tabs, tear offs, etc. I have the beta of VS 2005 and did the exercise (it took about 20 minutes), and had a WTF! moment due to the project rendering sites differently than IE6.
Microsoft is going to release IE7 *this year*, for Windows XP. You may confirm this by checking out blogs.msdn.com/ie.
Betas of IE7 will be available this summer. No feature set / improvements have been announced, but it will almost certainly contain all of the features you described (Except XAML support).
Also, a good bit of 'IE7' might be done. MSDN posted an exercise for users of Visual C# Express Edition Beta that used the '
(New html rendering engine, perhaps? I honestly don't know. I took almost 4 hours to install VS Net 2005, so who knows what's in there...)
lots of black-hat and spyware developers seem to love ActiveX ... :-)
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
If you look at particular user groups, you'll see a very different picture. When I got slashdotted a few weeks ago, I found some interesting things in my website stats. Only some 25 percent of visitors (coming over from Slashdot) were using IE. A whole lot of people ran Macs, and the percentage of non-Windows users (that is: Linux, OS X and few others) was far greater than 50.
First, Version 2.0 of the .net Framework is still in beta.
.Net framework is side-by-side deployment. That applies to the framework itself, not just apps developed with .Net.
.Net ships with Longhorn (expect 2.0, maybe 2.x), as no one will have to develop for it.
.Net as the end of DLL Hell.**
.Net version x.x, it will always be able to run 1.1 apps.
/> tags, for creating Avalon applications.
.Net. DLL Hell may be bad for users, but it's a lot worse for developers.
Second, one of the whole points of the
For example, I have versions 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0 beta installed on my machine. I can write an app using VS Net 2005 that targets 1.0, even though VS Net 2005 comes with version 2.0. So it really doesn't matter what version of
Hint: This is why MS touted
Another hint: This is why Microsoft can never 'break' Mono. Even if Mono, by some disaster, is not able to keep up with
Third, Microsoft is releasing IE7 this year (betas available this summer). Note that this is a full year ahaed of Longhorn, and that XAML is not supported on XP.
And last but certainly most important is that XAML is not a web forms language. In Longhorn, it is the counterpart to <asp:
Let me say that again. XAML is intended to be used to develop Windows applications. Not web apps. While XAML (Windows) apps can be run within the browser, the default behavior is to run as a Windows app, in its very own top level window. Or <canvas>, if you prefer the XAML notation...
You are likely correct in speculating that XAML will become the preferred intranet platform of choice for Windows only shops, but developers have been able to produce Windows only intranet apps for years now, without even touching IE.
It's called a smart client: A Windows forms app connected to a web service.
** Having contracted for MS, I am amazed that they were able to develop anything before
I remember being tasked to modify a team member's app once. I check out the source, made the adjustments, compiled, and checked the source in. When the app was run, it had a logic error. After several hours of debugging, I was baffled. A code review found no problems with my work. The original developer, on a whim, checked out the code and complied it. It ran perfectly. I was like WTF?!
I had version 4.2.x of one of the DLLs used in the app on my box. He had 4.1.x.x. Go figure.
"Microsoft won't implement it [XForms] and instead use its XAML form specification. And since IE has over 90% of the market, that would make Xforms essentially irrelevant ... So it is a pretty big deal".
.Net walled garden.
You are so right, and the decisive factor is timing.
Given the fact that everyone but Microsoft (EBM) can implement backwards compatible Web Forms 2.0 pretty much immediately, and the fact that XForms has no chance of achieving widespread delpoyment before Longhorn arrives, people who are serious about standards-based (in practice) have virtually no choice at all.
In the short term, standards practitioners have to support Web Forms 2.0 and to argue for its adoption by W3C. The only alternative is to sit on the sidelines whingeing, while hordes of MS-only web developers gradually transform the web into a
As the coexistence of transitional/strict HTML and XHTML (or CSS and XSLT) demonstrate, there is no reason why you can't have two or more competing standards covering the same area, especially when one can be considered a pragmatic precursor/pre-requisite for the other.
If XAML is the success that Microsoft hope for, there will simply never be any signifiant implementation of XForms.
I agree. I want a div that is the same height as a div next to it. Care to offer a suggestion?
That's simple.
body has nothing to get the absolute height from
body doesn't need anything to get the absolute height from, you can just use absolute positioning.
CSS 2.1 is not a recommendation, just a draft
Direct from the specification: "This is a W3C Candidate Recommendation, which means the specification has been widely reviewed and W3C recommends that it be implemented."
Why do you bother commenting on something you know nothing about?
That works in IE6? jebus, you people are a waste of space.
In my opinion, a good web developer will use server-side validation as a last resort.
Think global, act loco
You forgot something in your analysis: it isn't just the client anymore!
There are millions of websites that don't use XFORMS. They won't change because there isn't enough money to change them all! Microsoft would be suicidal to introduce a browser that cannot read those millions of websites.
It's not just a "Browser War" anymore: it's a war for the whole Internet.
I didn't say don't validate on the input side, but you can never trust code that's running on the clients side. Ultimately re-validate everything on the backend because you never know when a malicious user is screwing with you.
In my opinion, a good web developer will user server-side validation for every single form that gets posted.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Okay, I've seen a lot of people posting that IE has 95%-99% of the browser market. Can anyway show evidence supporting this? I did some browsing for web statistics at various sites and found reports from as low as 54% to as high as 89%. The average from ten different reports is that IE has 71% of the market. I'm not trolling here... just injecting a little reality adjustment. You can find the reports that I used by google'ing "browser usage statistics". Dave.
No it doesn't work in Internet Explorer. That was my point: it's not CSS that sucks, it's Internet Explorer. Try it in Firefox, Safari, Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, OmniWeb, or any other graphical browser that implements CSS, and it does exactly what you want. With Internet Explorer, you have to hack around it.
If Sony televisions had a habit of starting fires, would you tell everybody that PAL/NTSC is dangerous, or would you say that Sony televisions are dangerous?
I compoletely agree with you.
how well do your sites work for folks using:
Screen readers?
Text based Browsers?
Blackberries?
WAP?
Exactly.
Flash is NOT evil.
When it's used properly there are things that flash can accomplish that HTML and Java simply can't.
Saying Flash is evil is like saying guns are evil. Flash does not ruin user experiences, designers that use it to make eye candy ruin user experiences. It is totally possible to use Flash is a beneficial and useful way. It's just not used for that most of the time,
What a terrible analogy. Electricity is dangerous and the risk has to be managed. But what's your point? Did you have one?
You publish a website on the internet for everybody. If I was publishing on a controlled network I'd consider using CSS2, but I'm not.
additionally, testing a list of zipcodes against a list of municipalities is trivial if you populate your database with this data.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
i published my experimental blog on the internet for everybody. i used several techniques that require CSS2 support.
look at it in WinIE, and get a feel for the whole page.
look at it in *ANY* OTHER GRAPHICAL BROWSER and look again. neat trick, huh? it looks nearly identical except that nifty mouseover effect. and guess what? i tested in WinIE6 last. and i needed to make only one change to make it work.
i never excluded WinIE. WinIE excluded itself by not supporting one little cool feature.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
But are those things needed? My experiences with flash have uniformly been crap that slows things down and provides NOTHING I haven't seen done elsewhere without flash. I haven't had flash for some time now and the only thing I've noticed is a few idiotic sites like the one I mentioned and some missing adds or eyecandy that the site didn't need.
Yes calling it evil is hyperboly. I intended the comment as such and did lable it opinion. What it really is is anoying and uneeded. As an option for users with broadband who want the extra eyecandy and the (admitedly slight) risk increase that's fine. I have neigther the desire for that sort of eyecandy nor the bandwith to be wasted.
You are of course perfectly entiteled to a differing opinion, but web designers really should not cause a site to fail for lack of flash. That's just bad web design.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
I'm not sure anything after HTML3 was ever worth the addition of the comlexity involved.
Are these standards really going forward - or backwards? Will the new stuff run faster (I bet it won't).
Aside from css I have seen nothing to get excited about for W3C and much to dismay as the new HTML is getting hard for humans to read.