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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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: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.

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.