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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?
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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
[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?
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.
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).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
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
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)
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 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.
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!
Averaging might not be all that useful as different sites have very different audiences. IE usage at Slashdot will be very different from that at cnn.com and different again from Sourceforge, etc.
Trending may be more useful; looking at stats for the same sites, the same user population segment, over time
January stats from TheCounter.com, which looks like it might offer reasonable stats for a range of fairly "general" sites, shows IE6 + IE5.x = 88% This is down from IE usage mid-2004 at the same site (93%), a usage level that had been fairly consistent for the 6 months previous.
Looking at the trending for the past three years on W3Schools, which its more technical user population, shows a drop in IE usage from 86.8% in Jan 2002, through two years of relatively little change to 84.1% in Jan 2004 and then a steady drop over 2004 until 69.7% in Jan 2005.
Sourceforge shows a drop from 74.8% in Jan 2004 to 58% in Jan 2005.
IE usage is falling at different rates (and from different heights) at different sites, but the overall trend is downward. There may have been a time when IE had 95-99% use on some sites, but that appears to be in the past.