WWW Vendors' Meeting
WWW '94
May 27,28
Geneva, Switzerland
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Introduction
- Background
- WWW on the Internet has become enormously popular, market
continues to grow at an astounding rate
- Success has enabled new opportunities for both commercial
information services and also software vendors
- Real winners are the information consumers (i.e., end-users)
- Problem
- enabling technologies for WWW (e.g., HTML) are evolving
quickly but through "fast and loose" methods
- Result
- HTML in it's current state of evolution has become the
proverbial "moving target"
- Goal
- provide guaranteed interoperability of WWW information to
end-users
Our Experiences
- There's a whole lot of "bad" HTML out there
- Tried to write an SGML DTD for HTML but...
- Tried to develop a parser for HTML but...
Interoperability: Why Everybody Wins
- Customer confidence
- end-user's assured that potential inter-
operability problems between WWW servers and various browsers
is a non-issue
- Continued market growth
- interoperability will make room for
even more new and innovative information products and services
- Reduced support costs
- commercial software vendors will realize
cost savings to bottom line
What Vendors Need
- HTML Specification
- Snapshot the current state of HTML and thoroughly document it
- Important for software developers who wish offer new technology
in the WWW domain (e.g., browsers, editors, converters, etc.)
- Would provide a baseline for future standards work
- HTML Conformance Test Suite
- A useful tool for software developers to help validate their
products
- Serve as the example repository to demonstrate what is considered
"good" HTML mark-up to information developers
- Forum for Interoperability Testing
Industry Needs
- User Documentation for HTML
- Encourages the proliferation of "good" HTML
- Very helpful for information developers who do are inclined
to do raw HTML hacking
- Maintenance Process
- Must be open, lightweight, focused and practical