Mozilla, Opera Form Group to Develop Web App Specs

An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine is reporting that the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software have formed a working group to develop specifications for Web applications. The new Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group is working on specs for Web Forms 2.0, Web Apps 1.0 and Web Controls 1.0, among others. This is being done outside of the W3C, with the hope of getting a viable alternative to Longhorn's XAML available soon. Another reason for working outside the W3C could be the rift between Mozilla/Opera and other W3C members over what technologies Web applications solutions such be based on: Mozilla/Opera favour a backwards-compatible HTML-based standard, others are looking towards to XForms and SVG. It will be interesting to see if any other browser developers jump on board WHATWG." This story builds on our recent story concerning the group.

Re:Start your day...

[millahtime]

The one noted difference between the previous post about this and this one is that before it was being taken to W3C and now it is being done outside W3C.

Looks like W3C rejected this.

Curl?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they'd look at "The Curl Project" [mit.edu] that was started at MIT as part of the same DARPA grant that started the W3C.

Their whitepaper [mit.edu] describes a cool S-expression based language (kinda like a blend of HTML and Scheme) that elegantly merges the simplicity of markup languages with the power/complexity of lisp.

Re:No SVG?

[kwench]

There's the Mozilla SVG Project [mozilla.org].

I suppose we'll end having browsers that support everything from HTML to XAML and Flash and SVG.

We do want this in standards body at some point

[hixie]

The article is misleading. There isn't a "rift" between Mozilla/Opera and the W3C, indeed Mozilla and Opera are very active members of the W3C and were both present and actively participating in the recent Web Applications workshop.

At the moment this group is basically innovating extensions to HTML, for which you need a lot more flexibility than a standards organisation would provide. Once the proposals have reached a mature point we intend to submit these proposals to a standards organisation (whether it is W3C, IETF, ECMA, or another is yet to be determined, but note that the W3C have a policy that says we would not be allowed to say if we were planning on submitting this work to the W3C).

I expect the W3C to start work on the non-backwards-compatible alternatives to WHATWG work, such as creating an XForms/SVG "uberspec" or a new language or something, and when that happens I'm sure Opera and Mozilla will want to be taking part.

All of which is explained on http://www.whatwg.org/, but since when has research had anything to do with journalism, eh? ;-)

Re:No SVG?

[MadMoose]

Certain parts of SVG - ie. all the cool vector graphics bits - will probably go into Mozilla once it's ready and if it doesn't impact the rest of Mozilla too much speedwise and footprintwise

Other parts of SVG will (probably/hopefully) never get into Mozilla. Like raw socket support: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG12/#rawsocket [w3.org]

Ian Hickson mentions other crappy things about SVG in his blog (which I'll be nice and not link to from /. - learn to google)

Re:Why WG?

[hixie]

Actually Microsoft was one of the few groups in favour of work like this at the recent workshop (they didn't want scripting involved, but apart from that were in favour with extending HTML rather than going down the XForms or other new language route).

Re:Are you stupid ?

[WWWWolf]

Nor is IETF known for making tons of "standards", they publish "requests for comments". (81 STDs, not even all of them real, vs. 3542 RFCs, though not all of those are "real" either...)

Really, the argument that W3C doesn't create "standards" is pretty weak. They just chose to call their standards "recommendations" just not to annoy anyone.

To me, it's a standard if a) there's a comprehensive specification, preferrably from one authoritative source and b) everyone else decides to follow that specific specification, even if some follow it better than others.

No matter what W3C says, you could call W3C's Recommendations de-facto standards, just like you could call a RFC-specified (but not STD-level) protocol "standardized". True, they're not strictly standardized by any major standardization bodies, but who cares? The nature of the Internet has always been to rely on flexible, community-created specifications rather than expecting commitees to work on the things for ages.

Re:XAML parent is flamebait?)

[peragrin]

Netscape isn't mozilla, Mozilla looked at the 4.x range of netscape code and chucked most of it. Any history of Mozilla says this. Netscape 4.x sucked, and most people will admit it. Netscape lost the browser wars for two reasons, MS shoved them out, and Netscape 4 really was bad.

Mozilla isn't netscape, the New Netscape Browsers is just a rebranded Mozilla. Mozilla started over, which is why it took so long to get up to speed.

Re:This is great news.

[mpcooke3]

The problem is that HTML/cookies/dhtml and server side sessions have long been used to try create applications. HTML was never designed for this it was designed as a markup language for documents.

The current way of producing web-application using HTML templates/scripts etc, is basically just a hack that we have used for several years because the operating systems doesn't support any convenient way of running normal style applications that are served over the web. There have been a few attempts but the only real one - client side java applets was poorly implemented and squashed by microsoft.

I really don't think it will be possible to hold back the broad adoption of a proper way of developing web-applications.

By "proper" web-application I mean ones that work like normal applications and are not pseudo-page based. Applications that can use real widgets, object based state and use web services to communicate with servers.

I hate microsoft but this will be a revolutionary change for the web and a change that is long overdue. At work when the executives realise what XAML actually means in terms of useability they will just ditch non-IE browser support claiming they are old "old browser" not supporting proper web application. And in many ways they will be right, that is unless gnome-mozilla get a move on with native widgets support and proper web/desktop integration.

Take internet banking for example. The application is the same 99% of the time but it's so slow and has a horrible page based HTML gui. It should be just cached XAML/glade files or whatever and have a secure web-API update the balance when I double click to run the app. Same with amazon and several web-apps I have developed in the past.

Matt

Re:Why WG?

[markbirbeck]

> WHAT WG was created not because a specific developer wanted to do it's own thing,
> but because the majority of W3C members aren't browser developers. They're plug-in developers.
> Some people within the W3C have even stated that the browser is dead. This kind of
> environment is openly hostile to the further development of existing browser-based standards.

At the recent Web Applications workshop [w3.org] I did openly say that the "browser is dead". I am not, however "within the W3C", although I am an 'invited expert' on a couple of Working Groups. (And I don't recall anyone else using this phrase.)

My position is simply that to build powerful applications that take advantage of internet technologies - but don't require us to constantly 'drop-down' into C++ or Java - requires a programming environment more powerful than current browsers support. Sure, browsers are great places to save a list of favourites, and most do a pretty good job of rendering HTML, but if we have to wait a few years every time a new mark-up language is bought out - and confusion reigns in the meantime whilst we all try to second guess which browser company will implement what - then there has to be something wrong with the architecture.

So, my view is that the days of the 'monolithic browser' are numbered; it takes too long to update, lacks basic features that any application really should have, and leaves the rest of us at the mercy of a few companies who are more or less radical and 'open', depending on the day of the week.

Of course, it's none of my business whether browser vendors want to create new standards for HTML, but the companies I deal with don't need any more HTML - they've got plenty thanks. What they do need though, is higher-level languages that do more, make application-building easier and quicker, and still deploy as easily as HTML. And for the record, I've been arguing since before XForms became a Full Rec that XForms is an ideal foundation for this [w3.org].

My proposal at the workshop [w3.org] was for an application environment that allowed these new types of apps to be built, in an open standards/open source way, by defining a 'virtual machine'.

And if we still need somewhere to save our favourites, we can easily use such a VM to build a 'traditional' web browser, but genuinely based on standards.

Re:Konqueror

[scorp1us]

It's not called Konqueror, it's called KJSEmbed, and is shipped with kde3.2. One of the components is kjscmd, which gives general javascripting to KDE. This means that you can access K* and Q* classes and write programs in javascript. It also supports DCOP so it is an easy RAD (rapid application development) and integration tool.

Couple this with Factory.loadui(uifile) call, where you can load a QtDesigner .ui file (a XML dialog) created at design time and you have one fast RAD tool.

// create variables that map to the widgets
var dlg=Factory.loadui("square.ui");
var okButton = dlg.child("buttonOk");
var calcButton = dlg.child("buttonCalc");
var xValLineEdit = dlg.child("xVal");

function calc() {
alert( xValLineEdit*XValLineEdit );
}
dlg.connect(calcButton, "clicked()", this, "calc");
dlg.connect(okButton, "clicked()", this, "exit");
dlg.show();
application.exec();

You can of course make dialogs on the fly too:

var popup=new QVBox();
var buttons= new Array;
for (var i=0; i<10; i++){
buttons[i]=new QToolButton(hbox);
buttons[i].text="Button "+i;
dlg.connect(buttons[i], "clicked()", this, "clicked_"+i);
}

function clicked_1 { alert("You clicked Button 1")}
function clicked_2 { alert("You clicked Button 2")}
....

popup.show();
application.exec();
}

And there you have it. I spent 10 minutes typing this email and write 2 (albeiet simple) scripts.

Re:XAML

[Bedouin X]

Yes to everything except the Vector Graphics. XUL is basically using web markup to build an interface. The most famous XUL example (outside of Mozilla / Fire* of course) is the Mozilla Amazon Browser [infodraft.com].

Re:This is great news.

[mpcooke3]

As far as I know XUL doesn't allow you to run application outside of the browser, doesn't have native widget support and doesn't use web services. So as web-application API's go it's pants.

In short XUL is just a layout description language, it could be used as part of a full web application API but it isn't. I don't think XUL is designed specifically for web applications, I think it's mainly used for fully downloadable client side applications such as Mozilla, firefox and thunderbird.

These XUL client side application and the GUI still doesn't run very fast under linux. XAML/Avalon/.NET could end up running web application with a better/faster GUI than Mozilla manages to render itself using XUL!

HTML is not for web apps...90% desperation.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately, this SVG requirement means we're IE only (various Opera bugs prevent it from working) because the SVG only works in the Adobe plugin, which doesn't work in any Mozilla build from the past two years. Last I checked Mozilla's SVG support was inadequate for our needs. That may have changed, but I'm not being paid to check that. :)"

Your post is a bit disjointed, but I'm running Mozilla 1.7b, and the Adobe plugin (3.01) works.

Also if your boss allows it? Look at Adobe's FLEX (uses the latest Flash plugin).

Or if you want XUL and Flash, then this [netspedition.com] is it (so's this [laszlosystems.com]).

Inspiration is everywere [usercreations.com]