Open Web Platform Weekly Summary - 2012-01-30 - 2012-02-05

Time for your Open Web Platform weekly summary dose. A bit of HTML5, a bit of Web apps, a pinch of Web Architecture and HTTP and everything tied with a Web Education ribbon.

HTML5

Charles Pritchard (Jumis) is asking if the allow_popup attribute value is ready for prime time. IE has an implementation of it and Webkit has an ongoing patch. The goal of the attribute is to allow pop up in some circumstances where it is usually not possible, such as sandboxed iframes.

The abbr attribute on th elements will be added to HTML5 specification.

There is a proposal for the next version of HTML to have a DOM attribute to have access to the metadata contained in images.

There is a meta perma-thread revolving along longdesc attribute but also images map and accessibility. This discussion is not finished yet and let's hope people will reach a common understanding on the issue.

Web Apps

Robin Berjon proposed to add screen orientation lock to the rechartering of Web Apps WG. It is happening sometimes that an app will make sense only when the screen has a specific orientation. On the other hand, your body might have a position which is not the one perceived by the device. For example when you are reading news lying down on the side, and you screen suddenly rotates because of your position.

Should you be able to install Web Apps on your computer. Tim Berners-Lee (W3C) think so and argues for it.

Glen Shires (Google) proposes the creation of a Community Group for the Speech Javascript API.

The discussion on adding Image.toBlob() is still active. It is very similar to Canvas.toBlob(). Some people wondered if in fact it should not be more general and apply to any kind of binary streams.

Education

Chris Mills (Opera Software), who is actively involved in developing a neutral repository for Open Web documentation across platforms, has outlined how the group will move forward. You can join the Web Education Community Group.

HTTP

The discussion about the rechartering of HTTP WG is still going on for working on the new generation of HTTP. There is a lot of input on what are the good strategies for the future. Some people share their opinions about the SPDY experiment. Pretty sure that the IETF WG F2F in Paris (March 25-30, 2012) will be quite active. I will not be there unfortunately.

Web Architecture

Larry Masinter (Adobe) sent a proposal for working on MIME and the Web. The discussion addresses the issues around registries which come quite often. Basically how do we maintain the balance in between the flexibility of the open Web and a control set of values avoiding fragmentation.

Robin Berjon proposed a new draft about the work on API Minimization. He is looking for feedback.

This column is written by Karl Dubost, working in the Developer Relations team at Opera Software.