Mozilla And Opera Team Up For Web Forms Standard

darthcamaro writes "According to an article running on Internetnews.com today, Mozilla and Opera have teamed up on a web standards proposal for Web Forms 2.0 to be presented at a W3C working group this week. One of the proposal's authors is quoted in the article as saying '... that if a backwards-compatible open-standards alternative isn't created first, then 10 years from now the de facto Web application standard will be Microsoft's Avalon and the .NET framework.'
Are Opera and Mozilla the new 'rebel alliance' in the fight against the Microsoft Empire? Should we call this chapter 'A New Hope'?"

Well... no

[rice_web]

Microsoft isn't the worst thing that's ever happened. In fact, simply creating a new web form system should be evidence that Microsoft is progressing, albeit slowly. Yes, developers should do all that is possible to prevent yet another Microsoft-dominated technology, but if Microsoft can put together a better product sooner, then take it and embrace it until a new technology comes along.

Re:Well... no

[Finuvir]

The reason Opera and Mozilla want to create this quickly is so that developers don't get started with whatever Microsoft comes up with. If they start with a proprietary Microsft tecnology they won't switch to an open standard when it becomes available because Microsoft will have enough reason not to support the new standard ("Why support that? We have this; this is what everyone uses.") Then we have a whole new round of vendor lock-in. If Microsoft was unilaterally developing an open specification it would be different (though I'd prefer to see input from many organisation), but I can't see that happening any time this century.

It all comes back to MSN

[Kick the Donkey]

When ever I hear a story like this, it always comes back to MSN for me. MSN was not created by Microsoft as an application for the Internet. It was created as compitition (or replacement) for the Internet. They couldn't stand the fact that people would be using something they couldn't control.

Anything you let Microsoft own will be to the detriment of the society as a whole.

Re:Well... no

[Ender Ryan]

I didn't say ActiveX was patented... Re-read my post and make sure you comprehend it before responding :P

ActiveX requires the Windows API and AFAIK i386 architecture as well, as ActiveX runs native Windows code on the client machine.

Re:Yeah, right

[endx7]

At this point, all Microsoft has to do to keep things proprietary is not implement the new standard. Why should they want to implement it when they can do some crazy com/.net solution that nobody can use except on a Windows PC?

That's where the competition comes in. A site may say, oh, you need a newer browser to view this properly. Well, Microsoft doesn't have it, so, um, sorry, use Mozilla/Firefox or Opera. As soon as people discover that IE is "broken", they become a lot more willing to switch away.

And then you have to get developers and whatnot to use your standard. An open standard has an advantage there, since -anyone- can do it without paying Microsoft.

On the other hand, IE -does- hold the upperhand, and web developers are always needing to maintain as much compatibility between browsers as possible (or, at least IE), so they might not use something most of the people can't use easily. So you definately have a point. It's not going to be easy to keep microsoft from exerting its market dominance

Re:may the force be with them

[Singletoned]

I suspect that Microsoft would be able to cope with most fines levied against them. Even a few billion a year could be relatively easily written off, much like some of the oil companies who get fined the maximum amount per day for polluting and just consider it a pollution tax, and raise their price by a tiny amount to cover it.

Re:Yeah, right

[elbobo]

A site may say, oh, you need a newer browser to view this properly.

As a web developer, can I just note that no company in their right minds would do this while Internet Explorer still controls 95%ish of the surfing public.

We're not talking about web sites here, we're talking about web applications. When you go hunting for an application to do task X, and you find one but there isn't a version for your OS platform, you don't throw up your arms in rage, accusing them of crimes against humanity.

Just because we're talking about advancements in web technologies, doesn't mean we're still talking about websites as we know them now. Hell, we may as well not even be talking about web browsers.

The direction things are going in is towards "web application runtimes", like say a Gecko runtime engine that doesn't double as a web browser, but does run applications over the internet based on next generation web technologies.

If you look at what Microsoft are talking about with XAML and associated technologies, they're not talking about something implemented in a web browser or as a web browser, and largely neither are the Mozilla folks when they talk about XUL.

Re:Avalon and .NET vs. Macromedia Flash Remoting

[Freon115]

Nonody wants this flashy thing. I'd rather use the MS or Mozilla thing.
Macromedia sells another similar product called "Flex" at $10,000 per server. Yay!

Anyway, the article author should apply for the "forum drama" award, it's really pathetic :P