Comments on: How to Save the Web http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/ The official AllPeers blog Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:44:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: Brendan Eich http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-129099 Brendan Eich Fri, 02 Nov 2007 06:52:31 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-129099 Matt, you should check out WHAT-WG list threads on saving XML via XHTML5 -- Sam Ruby, Henri Sivonen, Anne Van Kesteren are some names to seek. /be Matt, you should check out WHAT-WG list threads on saving XML via XHTML5 — Sam Ruby, Henri Sivonen, Anne Van Kesteren are some names to seek.

/be

]]> By: mawrya http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128994 mawrya Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:37:39 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128994 I would be interested to read another blog post regarding the viability of XHTML. Sometimes I get the feeling that one can talk about XHTML in several regards - full adoption, replacing everything: webforms 1.0 with XForms, etc. Or a much more base-level approach: lets just write HTML that is XML compliant--close all your tags, put ending slashes on empty tags, etc. Just this, would be a step in the right direction. I also don't understand why the two can't co-exist. We already have an XForms extension that is nearing completion, SVG is built-in, we can use doc-type and serve pages in various MIME Types, it seems things already do coexist quite nicely, in Firefox. One rather large obstacle that seems to be holding things back is that IE doesn't have its MIME types together (application/xml+xhtml not supported). Funny, seems like that is a recurring theme lately, "IE holding back the web..." I write a lot of internal business web app stuff and XForms has been a tremendously powerful tool. IBM is putting a of stock in it, but get the impression there is resistance, maybe just indifference to it inside Mozilla, and I don't understand; why can't we have this wonderful tool right along side the older web forms. Isn't this the standards-compliant version of "embrace and extend". You talk about beating MS at their own game, and wanting to do it based on standards, XHTML, XForms, and the lot, strike me as a great starting place. Keep backwards compatibility but add the shiny new goodness, just like the ES4 story. Anyhow, blog on, I'll be reading. -mawrya I would be interested to read another blog post regarding the viability of XHTML. Sometimes I get the feeling that one can talk about XHTML in several regards - full adoption, replacing everything: webforms 1.0 with XForms, etc. Or a much more base-level approach: lets just write HTML that is XML compliant–close all your tags, put ending slashes on empty tags, etc. Just this, would be a step in the right direction.

I also don’t understand why the two can’t co-exist. We already have an XForms extension that is nearing completion, SVG is built-in, we can use doc-type and serve pages in various MIME Types, it seems things already do coexist quite nicely, in Firefox.

One rather large obstacle that seems to be holding things back is that IE doesn’t have its MIME types together (application/xml+xhtml not supported). Funny, seems like that is a recurring theme lately, “IE holding back the web…”

I write a lot of internal business web app stuff and XForms has been a tremendously powerful tool. IBM is putting a of stock in it, but get the impression there is resistance, maybe just indifference to it inside Mozilla, and I don’t understand; why can’t we have this wonderful tool right along side the older web forms. Isn’t this the standards-compliant version of “embrace and extend”. You talk about beating MS at their own game, and wanting to do it based on standards, XHTML, XForms, and the lot, strike me as a great starting place. Keep backwards compatibility but add the shiny new goodness, just like the ES4 story.

Anyhow, blog on, I’ll be reading.

-mawrya

]]> By: Matt http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128966 Matt Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:13:40 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128966 Brendan, Hey, I'm the guy who supports radical new web technologies, remember? You make a great case for ES4, and I believe that the same approaches could be applied to make XHTML a viability evolutionary path, were we to apply the same level of ingenuity. In fact, I think I might feel another blog post coming on. :-) Brendan,

Hey, I’m the guy who supports radical new web technologies, remember? You make a great case for ES4, and I believe that the same approaches could be applied to make XHTML a viability evolutionary path, were we to apply the same level of ingenuity. In fact, I think I might feel another blog post coming on. :-)

]]> By: Brendan Eich http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128955 Brendan Eich Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:31:13 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128955 Backward compatibility is not the same as graceful degradation. With HTML5 as proposed by the WHAT-WG, for instance, an input tag with a new type degrades in older browsers to a text field. Not so with XForms in XHTML2. With JS2/ES4, the C-like syntax simply does not work that way. Instead, new ES4 content must be shipped only to browsers that support ES4. This can be done <a href="http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=proposals:versioning" rel="nofollow">client</a>- as well as server-side. User-agent sensing may seem to imply "writing all of your JS code twice", but it's not as bad as that. You can buy into ES4 incrementally, annotating APIs for your Ajax library, but not the library code. The API annotations can be conditionally crunched or removed by your server-side setup. The implementation code behind the APIs can be migrated to use ES4 over time, with translation to ES3 handled by a compiler. And code generators (GWT etc.) can target ES4 where it's supported. We have been through JS upgrades before, from ES1 to ES3. The web was smaller in degree and content complexity, but nothing is different in kind now. The same techniques still apply. And ScreamingMonkey plus other browsers supporting ES4 natively should, best case, mean near-ubiquitous support within two years. /be Backward compatibility is not the same as graceful degradation. With HTML5 as proposed by the WHAT-WG, for instance, an input tag with a new type degrades in older browsers to a text field. Not so with XForms in XHTML2.

With JS2/ES4, the C-like syntax simply does not work that way. Instead, new ES4 content must be shipped only to browsers that support ES4. This can be done client- as well as server-side.

User-agent sensing may seem to imply “writing all of your JS code twice”, but it’s not as bad as that. You can buy into ES4 incrementally, annotating APIs for your Ajax library, but not the library code. The API annotations can be conditionally crunched or removed by your server-side setup. The implementation code behind the APIs can be migrated to use ES4 over time, with translation to ES3 handled by a compiler. And code generators (GWT etc.) can target ES4 where it’s supported.

We have been through JS upgrades before, from ES1 to ES3. The web was smaller in degree and content complexity, but nothing is different in kind now. The same techniques still apply. And ScreamingMonkey plus other browsers supporting ES4 natively should, best case, mean near-ubiquitous support within two years.

/be

]]> By: Matt http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128943 Matt Thu, 01 Nov 2007 23:05:31 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128943 Brendan, Well, the thing about backwards compatibility is that is becomes irrelevant as soon as people start using the cool new features of ES4, so I still maintain that the barriers are very similar to widespread adoption of XHTML. But I take full responsibility for punting on ScreamingMonkey. I remember reading about a bunch of monkeys a few months ago but I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention. Tell your agent they're off the hook. Brendan,

Well, the thing about backwards compatibility is that is becomes irrelevant as soon as people start using the cool new features of ES4, so I still maintain that the barriers are very similar to widespread adoption of XHTML.

But I take full responsibility for punting on ScreamingMonkey. I remember reading about a bunch of monkeys a few months ago but I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Tell your agent they’re off the hook.

]]> By: Brendan Eich http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128924 Brendan Eich Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:17:21 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128924 Matt: how does my application of the Prisoner's dilemma to the XHTML utopia conflict with ES4, which is (unlike XHTML vs. HTML) backward compatible, and which (thanks, shaver) has ScreamingMonkey, a back-up plan for IE support (this plan is good for downrev IE in any event) if Microsoft rejects? I guess you didn't get the ScreamingMonkey memo. Need to fire my agent :-P. /be Matt: how does my application of the Prisoner’s dilemma to the XHTML utopia conflict with ES4, which is (unlike XHTML vs. HTML) backward compatible, and which (thanks, shaver) has ScreamingMonkey, a back-up plan for IE support (this plan is good for downrev IE in any event) if Microsoft rejects?

I guess you didn’t get the ScreamingMonkey memo. Need to fire my agent :-P.

/be

]]> By: jilm http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128884 jilm Thu, 01 Nov 2007 20:26:21 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128884 What do think about Google Desktop and the new ability to add its gadgets into iGoogle? Even that types which are able to get things from your desktop - e.g. music players at iGoogle website playing songs from your disk. Isn´t that something like AIR but in the opposite way? What do think about Google Desktop and the new ability to add its gadgets into iGoogle? Even that types which are able to get things from your desktop - e.g. music players at iGoogle website playing songs from your disk. Isn´t that something like AIR but in the opposite way?

]]> By: Mike Shaver http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128869 Mike Shaver Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:51:04 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128869 That page isn't really ready for public consumption, which is why it's still just hanging off my User:Shaver section, but the ScreamingMonkey stuff was announced by Brendan and others in many places in July: http://www.google.com/search?q=screamingmonkey Mike That page isn’t really ready for public consumption, which is why it’s still just hanging off my User:Shaver section, but the ScreamingMonkey stuff was announced by Brendan and others in many places in July: http://www.google.com/search?q=screamingmonkey

Mike

]]> By: Richard Klein http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128864 Richard Klein Thu, 01 Nov 2007 19:46:19 +0000 http://www.allpeers.com/blog/2007/11/01/how-to-save-the-web/#comment-128864 Check out this wiki page http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Shaver/ES4_FAQ ScreamingMonkey is being developed so you can do ES4 in IE. Check out this wiki page http://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Shaver/ES4_FAQ

ScreamingMonkey is being developed so you can do ES4 in IE.

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