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."

Comments

Is it really a Battle of the Browsers?

[Hulkster]

Ummmmm ... is the combined market share of ALL browsers outside of "Apple (aka Safari), Mozilla, and Opera" and IE even close to 1%? I.e. I don't want to be unfair (even though this is /. which is anti-MS), but is this really shaping up as a everyone-but-Microsoft vs. Microsoft battle? Or (and I did RTFA), is it more a matter of which technical standard is better?

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Re:Is it really a Battle of the Browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calculating browser market share is notoriously tricky. But still, add Apples OS market share (some 3-4%, mostly Safari) to Linuxes market share (another 3-4%, mostly Firefox) to Firefox on Windows desktops (possibly 5-10%) and you are somewhere around 15%. Opera has maybe just 1% of the desktop browser market, but here's the catch: it's rapidly becoming the default browser for handhelds (funky mobiles and PDAs), and the hype these days is that handhelds are about to become a major access point for the web - giving Opera a clout not visible in their current market share.

Moreover, the trend for IE is going downwards, and if there's anything the browser wars taught us it is that things can change very quickly. Much easier to get people to change browser than get them to change O/S or office productivity solutions.

So if this is a MS vs Everyone Else battle, it might be one of those that Everyone Else can win.

Wait a minute...

[Apreche]

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?

Re:Wait a minute...

[ekuns]

Nope, Microsoft is ignoring XForms just like everyone else. Microsoft would prefer people use XAML (from Avalon). It seems the only folks implementing XForms are not browser makers, but people developing intranet based software.

Having written forms-based code with current browsers, I agree with the XForms supporters in that scripting is a terrible way to handle form input. It just doesn't scale and you have the form in one location and the code scripting in another place, so if you change something you have two separate locations to update everything in.

But I know nothing about the XForms standard, so I can't speak intelligently about it.

Re:Wait a minute...

[overunderunderdone]

No, You didn't get it straight. Microsoft is pursuing their own proprietary solution completely separate from these two competing standards.

The fight at the W3C is over the open standard Microsoft will be ignoring and/or attempting to crush. One side (tech purists?) is advocating a completely new, technically elegant revolutionary new standard. The other side (Microsoft competitors) is worried that this totally new miracle standard, despite it's technical advantages will be crushed in the marketplace by the proprietary Microsoft "standard". They believe it will be crushed for two reasons: 1) It will take a long time to implement and then for users to adopt and Microsoft will beat it to the market with their solution and 2) It will never be supported by dominant web browser. The alternative they advocate an "evolutionary" refinement of existing standards that can actually be implemented with existing browsers using javascript. It beats Microsoft to the market, it's already supported by everybody including Microsoft(!) it's a no-brainer for web application developers trying to decide which technology to use.

What's the difference??

[IO ERROR]

I actually read the whole article trying to figure out the main differences between XForms and Web Forms 2.0, and this is what I come up with:

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.

Re:What's the difference??

[leerpm]

XAML will be successful, on the Win32 platform. WinForms is going to go away. No one at MSFT is publicly admitting this yet, but there are lots of hints around. Avalon/XAML is going to be the next Win32 GUI API. But until it's well integrated with the Dev Tools, it won't really catch on. Look for XAML to really start catching momentum in 2007/2008.

Whether XAML will be successful on the web, well that is a different story..

Re:Competing standards

[Zocalo]

None of them develop major Web browsers.

True enough, although Sun does produce a web browser called HotJava it's not exactly got a great market share. What they (mostly) do have in common however is that they write the backend applications that will be receiving the data *from* the forms. I guess it depends on which where your first priority lies; getting the form looking pretty or getting accurate and useful data into your backend systems.

Re:Competing standards

[Nik13]

The thing is, the forms won't be used by the browser makers nor the back end makers (well, indirectly in both cases). It's the web application developpers who do, and they'er also the ones left using whatever technologies that are available to solve the problem.

XForms wouldn't work "out of the box" for most users of my stuff, so I'm a bit hesitant. Ideally I'd have to have an alternate method of entry with "old" forms. And I just don't feel I'm gaining much, never was big on XForms (neither has been anybody it seems, since the first draft). It could become an alternative later on if browser support improves.

Flash MX? Flash is known to too many (including me) as a way to create highly annoying ads, making us use extensions like FlashBlock. It's not a good way to make your site "accessible" either. It just feels like some field (no pun intended) where Flash doesn't belong into and shouldn't extent into. Leave it for unusable site nav and annoying ads.

XUL - you hear a lot about it lately. Haven't really seen much or heard of anybody who's really done anything (web forms related) with it. And even though it's getting more popular, it doesn't work on most browsers, so I can't really consider it anyways.

XAML - are you out of your mind? Another Windows Monopoly-OS centric solution, forcing adoption of the worst browser of them all. People are starting to get the point that those kind of standards (like ActiveX) are bad. If you need LH+IE7 to use it, it's completely and absolutely out of the question. Alternative OS/browsers are left out. And I can't see the W3C drink bad microsoft kool-aid and adopt XAML as some web standard.

I've been dying for better forms for the last year mostly as I've been doing more web stuff. I haven't read much onto Web Forms 2.0 yet, but it might be an option, especially if it has good browser adoption, and by seeing the members of the WHAT-WG, you'd think it should be the case. Otherwise, XForms may be the next best bet still.

Either ways, I'll be happy when this is all resolved, and that we have something better and consistently available for all our visitors, no matter what OS or browser. (If that ever happens, that is).

Windows vs. The Browser Part Deux

[ChicagoDave]

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.

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 .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.

Then XAML. You will then be able to click on .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.

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!

Not War

[DeanEdwards22]

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.

XForms

[zemoo]

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!