Post #163,270
7/7/04 1:59:29 PM
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The future of HTML forms processing?
Mozilla, Opera and Safari have joined forces in [link|http://www.whatwg.org/|WHATWG - Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group] to try to move forms processing for html forward. Forms processing hasn't been changed much since pre-HTML3.2 days and it's rather obvious that the W3C has no intention of improving it's lot. Instead, the W3C is busy developing [link|http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/|XForms], an admirable effort, but useless for web applications in the near to mid term as none of the browsers has any plans to support that standard.
Further comments from [link|http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/|Jon Udell] and [link|http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/view/68#comment-353|moi].
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Post #163,289
7/7/04 5:58:15 PM
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I highly doubt it; no channel for it without IE buy-in
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Post #163,290
7/7/04 6:06:54 PM
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Or an IE plugin to handle them.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #163,291
7/7/04 6:15:00 PM
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Why not use Java at that point?
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #163,292
7/7/04 6:16:32 PM
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Re: Why not use Java at that point?
The form plugin would simply handle the new form elements. The rest would just be HTML.
UIs in Java applets are a pain in the ass compared to HTML.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #163,298
7/7/04 7:05:30 PM
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Can plugins do that?
IOW, can they interpret custom tags embedded in an HTML document, or would it just be a bunch of OBJECT tags or some such?
Of course, now that I see we are talking about an ***IE*** plugin, there probably is some way to do just that.
Maybe via:
[link|http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/msdnmag/issues/0500/cutting/toc.asp?frame=true|http://msdn.microsof...oc.asp?frame=true]
--
Chris Altmann
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Post #163,312
7/7/04 7:57:05 PM
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Dunno.
I'm pretty sure you could do it with a Firefox extension, though. Some of those are pretty complex.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #163,356
7/8/04 12:21:10 AM
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Another possible avenue...
...is to implement some of it using stylesheets and javascript. Not necessarily efficient, but it might be worth exploring for the sake of backwards compatibility. And then there's the path of least resistance, which provides that the forms will still work on older browsers but without the added features.
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Post #163,357
7/8/04 12:37:59 AM
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It's definitely an uphill battle...
...but it has a couple of things going for it. First, XForms is a long long way from ever becoming ubiquitous. Of course, MS could change their minds at a moments notice but at this point IE seems to be a dead end product from their perspective. MS innovation in their browser was a casualty of the loss of competition.
Second, MS is going down the path of Avalon and .Net, while Sun and IBM are busy with Java and J2EE. Both pretty good technologies for what they do, but neither of them has made significant strides on the client side for internet based applications. Java applets have proven too clunky and MS has a history of trust failures with trusted ActiveX components. Neither technology is a sure bet. Java's pretty set as the Enterprise glue, and .Net may succeed for intranet based apps. But when it comes to over the internet apps, both technologies still are just cranking out html based forms and doing a lot of processing on the server.
Third, there is a pent up demand for improving the forms processing capabilities of html. While DHTML, CSS, DOM and JavaScript have seen a number of improvements over the last few years, web forms are still stuck in the rut. Lot's of web apps could definitely use the enhanced forms processing capability (I know several of mine sure could).
Finally, the proposals for extending the HTML forms capability is the only solution presented that represents an incremental solution to rich internet client apps. It may not be the most elegant - XForms being much more well thought out, having started with a clean slate. But it is incrementalism that usually succeeds in such matters. Most don't won't to learn a completely new way of programming, they'd rather just extend what they currently have.
That said, the odds are probably against this rebellion. But I think that the odds that this will succeed are about as good as any other internet based proposals. IOW, the possibility of failure doesn't mean that someone else wins. It may just mean we continue to be stuck with HTML3.2 forms based processing out to the indefinite future.
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Post #163,358
7/8/04 1:03:46 AM
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A few good ideas, a lot of crud
Looking at the spec, I see a few good ideas and a lot of crud thrown in. There are a few very nasty bits also where they change subtle bits of behavior, such as altering the OnChange event slighly. This is liable to break existing web sites when the new browser shows up and fires off unexpected events.
There are some good ideas in the lot though, the input event would be nice. Fixing the layout on TextArea has needed done for years, as did applying MaxLength to all fields where it makes sense. Some of the controls they suggest would be helpful, such as a date field. And the ability to submit a form and then update it without loading everything would be very usefull for complex applications.
Most of their control suggestions could be done in javascript. But writing the javascript for complex fields can be very nasty. On the other hand, their additions to limit ranges and submit numbers in a different form are fairly pointless. The first is easily done in Javascript and the second should be handled as a server side issue.
Jay
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Post #163,359
7/8/04 1:04:46 AM
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I agree with Udell.
Basically, the visible non-Microsoft players are getting bolder in pushing HTML forward. I can see that when Opera implement this in their mobile versions people will be asking Microsoft why this doesn't work on their desktop. I can see Intranet applications requiring something other than IE to work. It's worth a try.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #163,627
7/9/04 5:05:18 PM
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Interview with Mozilla's chief architect
[link|http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail156.html|Audio interview with Brendan Eich], Mozilla's chief architect (and JavaScript creator) about the direction of Mozilla with respect to WHATWG and a whole host of other issues. Longish (1:07 hours) but quite good for those interested either in web apps or the future directions of browsers.
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Post #163,628
7/9/04 5:16:01 PM
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Idiocy embodied
Would that Todd Blanchard has designed it.
Only the good give up young.
-drl
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Post #163,638
7/9/04 5:44:12 PM
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Mozilla is a pretty major accomplishment
Considering the obstacles that project has had to overcome and the nice architecture that has evolved, I wouldn't lightly dismiss what the Chief Architect brings to the table. I assume that you mean to impune his JavaScript creation as opposed to his work in the browser arena?
As for JavaScript, it's a serviceable language for the niche that it tries to carve out. Yes there were some dumb decisions made early (like overloading the addition and concatenation operators, as well as the way it does its autoconversion in general). But it also brings some interesting concepts to the table like object prototyping (an idea forwarded in Self - which was an extension to Smalltalk). And when it comes to document scripting (be it html or pdf), there really haven't been any other candidates to step to the plate.
JavaScript is not meant as a general programming paradigm in the same sense as C, C++, Java, Smalltalk or Lisp. But it is ok for client side browser scripting, assuming the browser people could (a) implement the standards correctly; and (b) implement a proper sandbox. Most of the problems people have with JavaScript or client side scripting have little to do with the language itself, but rather with the environment that it resides in.
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Post #163,639
7/9/04 5:46:58 PM
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Re: Mozilla is a pretty major accomplishment
Everything in computing that is visible, is mostly shit.
-drl
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Post #163,640
7/9/04 6:05:47 PM
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zIWETHEY works pretty slick in FireFox
The internet and the browser are the major accomplishments of the last 10 to 15 years. You can curse both as subpar and borked, but I daresay that there's a hell of a lot more information at our fingertips as a result of this shit.
Yes, there are problems with the way things evolved. And, yes, things could be have been better. But to dismiss this stuff as shit is an exercise in futility itself. Lot's of shit programmers are taking lot's of shit tools and protocols and doing some pretty impressive stuff with this subpar technology.
The original question was whether we should make this shit incrementally better. The alternatives are pretty simple at this point. Let the browser languish, never updating the html standard for any reason going into the future. Rely on XHMTL, SVG and XForms to do our more polished user interfaces. Rely on .Net or Java to save us. Or let MS dictate the terms with the new Avalon clients.
Well, the XML clients are all specialized, with very uneven to no support in the browser. Java and .Net are not really significant players in the internet applications market (either being a player only on the server side or being confined inside the friendly confines of firewalls). And I won't even go into the Avalon.
In any case, I'd venture to say that Todd has expressed much displeasure with Java, .Net and XML. He's probably not enamoured of browser based clients either, but for the kind of freedom to develop applications, I'd say he'd probably prefer an html extension over any of the other alternatives. Perhaps he'll weigh in at some point in the future and set the record straight.
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Post #165,216
7/20/04 5:41:06 PM
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Re: zIWETHEY works pretty slick in FireFox
I missed this post first time, don't know how..
I mostly disagree, and very strongly, with what you say.
No one was caught by surprise with the Internet. It was a "thing" for at least 4 years before anyone knew it was a "thing". I remember mentioning Java, back when it had a possibility to evolve into something useful, back in a meeting in 1995 - "Huh?" was the response.
Computing evolves at random. All the research and proposed solutions over decades amount to nothing - what we end up with is a stupid, featureless melange of servlets, scriptlets, and other assorted bullshit that evolved the way river gorges evolve - because that's where the water went. There was no planning, no structure, no foresight, nothing - it was all a massive random VBF from the corporate/academic mind, in which the foulest shit had the lowest density and ended up on top.
-drl
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Post #165,230
7/20/04 8:12:42 PM
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The sky is falling, we're all going to die, etc, etc.
Two out of three people wonder where the other one is.
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Post #165,235
7/20/04 8:18:02 PM
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No, computing sucks because it is mostly populated by fools
-drl
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Post #165,292
7/21/04 3:18:41 AM
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<frazer>We're all DOOMED</frazer>
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #163,652
7/9/04 8:11:52 PM
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Worse is Better is an ongoing process
We're getting to the level of "really good shit" now. ;-)
Cheers,
Ben
To deny the indirect purchaser, who in this case is the ultimate purchaser, the right to seek relief from unlawful conduct, would essentially remove the word consumer from the Consumer Protection Act
- [link|http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=1246&Page=1&pagePos=20|Nebraska Supreme Court]
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Post #163,691
7/10/04 3:33:33 AM
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Feel Free To Fix it.
Remember the mantra of Open Source:
FFF.
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #165,215
7/20/04 5:31:01 PM
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Innovations in Internet Explorer?
Stating the obvious, [link|http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/16/29FElonghorn_1.html?s=feature|Udell opines in Info]: Avalon makes no use of Web standards such as XHTML, CSS, or SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and indeed invents its own counterparts to these. .... Microsoft is doing nothing to improve Internet Explorer's support for DOM, CSS, SVG, or other standard ways to enrich the browser. No innovation, much less standardization, can be expected coming from the monolith. Capturing 95% market share has made them lazy.
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Post #165,301
7/21/04 3:51:41 AM
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What's it been, 7 yrs? - and DisInfoWorld is still at it :-(
[link|mailto:jon_udell@infoworld.com;letters@infoworld.com|Jon Udell] writes: The proof is still years away. But given the ambitious scope of the project, it's not too soon to consider how Longhorn will affect the vast majority of enterprises deeply invested in both Windows and the Web. Yes, it is too soon for that. What these as-yet-unwarranted speculations do is mainly to raise Microsoft's "mindshare" even more than their paid-for publicity already does, thus crowding out other systems that might otherwise have been serious alternatives, from CIOs' and other decision-makers' attention. This is exactly what happened to OS/2 in the period from about 1990 to about 1995, as some of us took great pains to point out to the then-editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, Sandy Reed, in 1997 (in the aftermath of the magazine's scandalous decision to invalidate the readers' choice for that year's Readers' Choice awards)... But InfoWorld has apparently learned nothing (probably, in my estimation, because it didn't want to learn anything). Where are all the InfoWorld articles speculating about, say, Linux' or MacOSX' capabilities two or three years down the line? Where are InfoWorld's grave exhortations that "it's not too soon to consider" what those systems will have (probably, possibly, hopefully -- according to the the most optimistic interests pushing them) to offer, at some unspecified future time, given some unspecified future implementation effort, at some unspecified future monetary cost? (No prizes for concluding that at least in the case of Linux, at least the last point will be lower than for Microsoft.) I have to confess that since InfoWorld so eloquently showed how it valued its readers compared to how it valued the Redmond monopoly, I haven't read it regularly (or much at all, really). So it is of course possible that there are quite a lot of such articles -- which would certainly surprise me -- but if there are, that ought to be quite easy to demonstrate. Just give us a link to each archived article over, say, the last two years hyping "Longhorn", and a link to each article from the same period hyping the future prowess of, say, Linux, MacOSX, the *BSDs... and, why not OS/2? Compare and contrast the counts of links for each system; if the links are honestly selected, that should be quite an instructive exercise. Microsoft couldn't get better publicity if they paid for it -- so it's no wonder some people think that's exactly what they do.
This grew while I was writing it; seems it developed into a letter to Udell and/or a "letter to the editor" to DisInfoWorld. (Anybody wanna bet whether it'll be published? :-)
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Your lies are of Microsoftian Scale and boring to boot. Your 'depression' may be the closest you ever come to recognizing truth: you have no 'inferiority complex', you are inferior - and something inside you recognizes this. - [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=71575|Ashton Brown]
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Post #165,317
7/21/04 10:00:22 AM
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Without having read the whole article ...
But given the ambitious scope of the project, it's not too soon to consider how Longhorn will affect the vast majority of enterprises deeply invested in both Windows and the Web. Taken by itself, this statement is absolutely true. Of course, I'm reading it as a cautionary statement, not hype. But hey, I'm strange that way. ===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #165,326
7/21/04 10:50:55 AM
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Same ole IWE
Of course, the Hordes are no longer there to act as a counterbalance.
Personally, I think that the magazines love these machinations, as the prognostication is the only thing that makes them seem like they know what they're talking about. Never been good at explaining what's important as of today's technology (much less any sense of history). Looking into the crystal ball though is just an opinion formulated with supporting facts. IWE would like nothing better than to get back into the hype business, as it elevates their importance in the industry.
That said, what I took out of the article is the things MS is planning on not doing. They are not going down the web standards path and they are not going to improve their browser. I view it as a bait and switch scheme by MS. Build the best browser; give it away for free; destroy the competition; get a monopoly; and then move on to the next agenda (Java is the obvious target). MS thinks they own the end of the pipeline, having extinquished the threat of the browser, and now is going to try and worm it's way through the rest of the pipe.
As for the specific Longhorn junk. Indigo (SOAP) is a mess of a protocol (a kludge all the way down). WinFS is the Registry carried to it's logical conclusion (and totally fuxed). Avalon is only interesting as a mutation of Java that tries to get a Windows lockin by building a higher performance GUI.
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Post #165,350
7/21/04 11:26:06 AM
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Conclusion...?
As for the specific Longhorn junk. Indigo (SOAP) is a mess of a protocol (a kludge all the way down). WinFS is the Registry carried to it's logical conclusion (and totally fuxed). Avalon is only interesting as a mutation of Java that tries to get a Windows lockin by building a higher performance GUI. You say that as if it meant Avalon won't become the dominant development model. History implies otherwise...messy protocols, fuxored OS subsystems, and constant API mutation are the only way to continue to ride on the coattails of that same Windows lockin. ISV PHBs everywhere will be trampling each other to get Longhorn and Avalon; it's the only way they can continue to make money without having to think or take risks.
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Post #165,354
7/21/04 11:50:19 AM
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Not saying it won't...
...but just saying that it's nothing new. If you look at the efforts, you can easily see who the enemy is: messy protocols (Indigo) Enemy: Linux, BSD* and any other non-Windows server used for web services. fuxored OS subsystems (WinFS) Enemy: Samba. Constant API mutation (Avalon) Enemy: Java.
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Post #165,502
7/21/04 11:46:38 PM
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Interesting to see them try that.
I recall the business interest in XP was lukewarm at very best. I would surmise that most of the reason XP is on any corporation PC is because that what the laptop came with. Even I was surprised by the fact that where I currently work the standard desktop build is NT4!
Microsoft is going to find it tough to push corps to Longhorn et al. And those that do will be spending a fortune to do it.
Wade.
Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
| |
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please
| -- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne. |
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Post #165,510
7/22/04 12:48:12 AM
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No they won't
Large early adopters get sweetheart deals and good support to manufacture case studies. Once the case studies are published, MS can start unveiling the real price.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #165,609
7/22/04 1:55:51 PM
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Huh, it would be nice
if they took a look at what's going on with eComStation.
OST, it probably wouldn't.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca] [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
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