HTML at W3C - introduction

• What was wrong with HTML at W3C
• Chartering HTML and Forms
• New ways of Working
• Two serializations, one DOM
• XHTML2 and spin-offs
• Re-use and refactoring
• Compound Document Formats
• What about media?
• Forms and HTML

What was wrong

99.99999% of the Web was invalid HTML. W3C pretended that didn't exist. This isn't a workable solution.

Taking your tagsoups and making valid HTML 4.01 or valid XHTML 1.0 gave the developer no new features and no benefit besides a gold star and a pat on the back

(well, except for consistent parsing, a reliable DOM, and easier scripting and styling and document maintenance)

Chartering HTML and Forms

• Probably the most complex rechartering at W3C
• Assignment of work to groups changed many times
• Balancing incremental, 'classic HTML' work with XML focused work
• Many comments, often conflicting
• Architectural Vision document describes how these were resolved
• Process comments document describes workflow

Chartering (2)

• Result is three Working groups:

  1. HTML WG (classic and XML serializations)
  2. XHTML2 WG (XML, XForms, XMLEvents)
  3. Forms WG (XForms, Forms Transitional)
• and one taskforce, Forms and HTML WGs.

New ways of Working

• All three groups work in public
• HTML WG has no standing requirements, few f2f, few telcons
• HTML WG has many Public Invited Experts
• HTML WG works primarily through email to foster widest participation

FAQ on HTML Invited Experts, need a better name

Two serializations, one DOM

• XML serialization (well formed XML)
• tagsoup serialization

The two serialisations are exactly equivalent, both are produced from the same DOM, they can be interconverted.

Pretending to base HTML on SGML is no longer funny

XHTML2

• XHTML2 continues to be developed, in its own WG
• Some traction as a clean authoring format - more accessible, RDFa links
• Still little takeup on the client
• Many spin-off technologies from this group - xml:id, XML Events

Re-use and refactoring

• Rich Web Application Backplane - refactoring of duplicate work to share among specifications
• Technology transfer - work moving between groups to where it is better suited
• Greater reuse and integration of formats and features among W3C specs.

Compound Document Formats

• Compound Document by Reference Framework
• WICD Core
• WICD Mobile is the core spec, combines XHTML and SVG
• WICD Full is a superset, for desktop use
• Compound Document by Inclusion (mixed namespace)

Media and licensing

• Royalty free image formats - PNG, JPG
• Royalty free audio - Ogg Vorbis, FLAC (but not on mobile)
• Royalty free video - Ogg Theora, Dirac
• RF media needed for interoperability and testability

Forms and HTML

• HTML 4 has forms (but not very good ones)
• XHTML2 has XForms (good, not compatible)
• HTML5 adds WebForms2

Need a transition strategy, and a bridge so that the more capable forms processors can also read 'classic HTML' forms. Cue next talk ...