user agents as well. The proposed specifications include new attributes, DOM interfaces, and events for validation and dependency tracking as well as XML form submission and initialization. The specification also aims to document existing practices in the forms area that have not yet been officially standardized.
"We consider Web Applications to be an important area that has not been adequately served by existing technologies," the paper stated in its opening paragraph. "There is a rising threat of single-vendor solutions addressing this problem before jointly developed specifications. To compete with other players in this field, user agents with initial implementations of jointly-developed specifications should ideally be shipping before the end of the year 2004."
Allan Hickson of Opera Software, one of the authors, said he believes it is important that both Mozilla and Opera support the specification for a number of reasons, including interoperability.
"The whole point of standards is that they be supported by all the vendors. If there is only one vendor that supports a standard, it might as well be a proprietary standard," Hickson told internetnews.com. "Proprietary technologies are not good for authors and users, since they lock you in to one vendor."
Hickson predicts 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. Microsoft will also be presenting an overview of the Longhorn "Avalon" technology XAML at the W3C workshop as well.
"If the W3C (or another group) develop an open standard that is backwards compatible with HTML and DOM and can be implemented in Windows IE6 without binary plug-ins, and this technology gets implemented by the vendors like Opera and Mozilla, then I hope authors will want to use that solution instead of Avalon and .NET," Hickson said.
According to Hickson, getting buy-in from both Mozilla and Opera was a non-issue. "This is what everyone here has been saying for a long time," he said.
In terms of community responses so far to the paper and the spec, Hickson admits that the feedback has been less than he had expected.
"It's rather amusing in that I got more feedback when I wrote a Web log posting about how to embed Flash into HTML using only 'object' elements than I did when I mentioned what Opera and Mozilla thought of the future of the Web," Hickson mused. "I think that rather demonstrates our point, though, that being compatible with Windows IE6 is what matters to authors today."
News courtesy of internetnews.com
June 1, 2004
Download Mozilla Now!
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Contents:
1. The Two Collaborate on Web Forms '2.0'
Additional Articles:
Mozilla 1.0 Steps Onto the Browser Stage
Mozilla, Opera Unite to Standardize Web
Mozilla Patches Vulnerability
PC Takeover Flaw in Mozilla, Netscape
Mozilla: Dollars for Security Bugs
IBM and Novell Join Mozilla for XForms
New Mozilla Flaws Exposed
Mozilla Foundation Will No Longer Release Mozilla
