Forum Moderators: phranque
The W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents
For the summary:
[w3.org ]
For the transcript:
[w3.org ]
Quotes from transcript:
Bert Bos (W3C): Nearly 10 years ago, HTML was in danger. Extensions for layout made HTML less useful, proprietary extensions, etc. so we created stylesheets. CSS is now being taken up, but HTML is in danger again. JavaScript is the worst invention ever. At first we though we could replace JavaScript with style sheets (rollovers, hover, etc.) and Java for applications, but Java is not so great for simple programs.
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Matt May (W3C): Real life problems:* Screen readers + generated script = broken
* Device-dependent events
* Poor semantics (if any)
* 50 ways to raise your window, validate a form, change style, etc.
* Cookie scares, script disablersIn Accessibility, much of the work has been trying to build in these things, as with font tags and so so, we have no idea what you were trying to say. This problem is a second order effect of web authors forgetting that there were any semantics. For assistive technology, for example, the 50 ways to do anything in JavaScript make it impossible to figure anything out.
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Matt May (W3C): I agree. I think that what we have right now, what made HTML successful, was that it satisfied the good-enough technology test. People have taken HTML 4 as the lingua franca. What we need to get over this, and the barrier to XHTML 1.1, is part architectural and part social. People need to see that there is enough value. That's a revolution. We need the critical mass going forward for XForms, XHTML 2, SVG. That is how we move past this unattractive part of the late 90's.
Mark Birbeck (x-port.net): I agree but there are two worlds: applications and documents that link. The documents look cleverer but are not applications; for example they cannot validate your data. There is nothing wrong with HTML taking its role. But look at Microsoft Money or Quickbooks; they have embedded within them a browser-rendering technology. At the end of the day, there is loads of C++ code at the back and the renderer at the front. Bert is right: we need to address the back bit now. There are two worlds.
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TV Raman (IBM): At the bottom of the stack we have namespace, protocol, HTTP.
TV Raman (IBM): Next up we have the XHTML container and the XML DOM at runtime.
TV Raman (IBM): Then we have XHTML Content in the container styled with CSS.
TV Raman (IBM): Then we have Vectors in SVG, Voice in Voice XML, Metadata in RDF Triples, and Timing in SMIL.
TV Raman (IBM): Above that we have meta things, XSL Transform, XQuery finding, XSchema types, XPath access.
TV Raman (IBM): Finally, at the top we have the XForms model and XML Events for eventing.
TV Raman (IBM): Unfortunately, this model comes loose at the seams. We haven't clearly defined the eventing or styling semantics for these languages. So when we mix and match them, it breaks. The xhtml:a element has application semantics. The xhtml:b element has semantics that gets styled as bold.
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TV Raman (IBM): The delay is not because the work is futuristics, but because haste makes waste. WG's decide they have to do it quickly, take shortcuts, and then the constraints become irrelevant. In 1992-1993 you could write a web browser in two pages of Perl. Ten years later we have a more sophisticated stack that is large and monolithic: XPath, XForms, XML Schema, are all big and complex, but they are designed to be modular. If we get this right, at the end of the day, an XML browser will be easier to write than an HTML Browser of 1999.
Jon Ferraiolo (Adobe): It's hard to speed up certain processes without making it wasteful. In general, it is time for the W3C to exert more leadership in leading the industry, and having an architectural vision, would tend to increase the focus to standards for market.
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Alex Hopmann (Microsoft): There was a time when web browsers were on that timescale, but now we are paying for that now with security issues. Web Applications make the security orders of magnitude more problematic. I am frightened when I hear about cell phones with six month development cycles. I say this with all humility because my company's customers are going through this on PCs as well. Do we need to standardize this that quickly?
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Rich Schwarzfegger (IBM): Microsoft said we should focus on XHTML. How do we get those changes into the browser that has over 90% of the market? I have no announcements for rendering technology in Longhorn other than Avalon. Go focus on getting HTML right and make sure the "poisons" don't build up. Rather than tackling a brand new thing...the team that does IE needs to make sure that what we have is secure. We are continuing to invest in browser technology. We need conforming test suites, etc. We're not at the six month development cycles any more. We want to make sure we get it and the security right.
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Leigh Klotz (Xerox): Maybe we should try to get an XHTML+CSS+XForms+SVG client in Java and one in CLR, probably Flash is too slow, and get it out there, and let that be the platform and then stop vying for the pieces of the pie to build that and instead make money by building everything on top of it.
[webmasterworld.com...]
There was a three-way split of opinion between Microsoft, the W3C and Mozilla/Opera over the future of web applications.
Microsoft is doing it's own thing, the W3C want to continue down the road of X-Forms, XHTML 2, etc. and Mozilla/Opera want to concentrate on building upon HTML, CSS and other existing technologies to improve web applications whilst retaining backwards-compatibility and open standards.
