Content Management Matters ™

If you like to review W3C standards before they become official, here's one you need to take a close look at. The W3C Web API Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of "The XMLHttpRequest Object" specification.

It was about mid-December, just after Opera Software filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft -- partly focused on Internet Explorer not following web standards -- that Microsoft finally came out and publicly announced their support for key web standards in version 8 of their prolific web browser.

With the recent release of IE8's first Beta the public can now finally find out for themselves just how well they have done that. What is even more interesting -- and perhaps a matter of debate -- is that they have done it in such a way as to not "Break the Web." Or in other words, they plan to deliver IE8 with backwards compatibility by introducing a controversial third operating mode.

The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) realizes that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) discouragement of Javascript does not work for developing accessible Rich Internet Applications. They do recognize the need to provide technologies to map controls, AJAX live regions, and events to accessibility APIs.

As a result, the Protocols and Formats Working Group has released the first set of Working Drafts of the ARIA - Accessible Rich Internet Applications suite.

Oh the semantic web. Such romantic and lofty notions are conjured up at even its mere mention. And now, how it sparkles so. I refer, of course, to SPARQL (pronounced "sparkle") the new query technology released by the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3).

Forrester has released a list of 10 reasons why Apple's iPhone is no friend to IT.

You can probably think of a few already: the prohibitive cost, the first-gen factor, and fidelity to AT&T.

Defining and reaching consensus on web standards is a daunting task indeed. Trying to get the entire internet community to concur on new standards may be best compared to the time honored cliche of “trying to herd cats”.

Every developer has their own ideas on the “right” way to do things, compounded by how the customer wants them done. Not to be ignored, is how the site visitors want the site to work. Everybody has their own vested interest.

Squiz is forever telling us what we should do and what we should think: about CMS, about SEO, doing business on the web, about the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha (it's a WIP). Which is quite irritating, because they're invariably just about right.

Spending a lot of time away from the office lately? Planning to impress with yer spanking new iPhone?

Well there’s good news for you dear reader. The W3C established Mobile Web Initiative has got you and all the standards you can swallow in mind. And they aim to lay plans both for bridging and filling the gaps between our disparate devices.

The boffins at the W3C, locked in their dank MIT dungeon, have nothing better to do with their time than rattle off paper after paper on new development protocols.

The more they put out, so it is said, the less Tim Berners-Lee flogs them.

The shift from linear storage of user input data to much more useful XML based storage (like DITA) is a trend which is becoming increasingly pronounced. Information written to an XML standard offers increased automation potential, reuse, and is altogether a far better bet than regularly formatted text.

When we last left our coverage of the W3C's soon-to-be standard for widget development, there was naught but an incomplete list of requirements.

My my, how things have changed as the World Wide Web Consortium has recently released an updated version of the Widgets 1.0 Working Draft.

Not to be confused with items that might be cranked in a factory, the W3C's idea of a widget is a small application (e.g. code snippet) that runs in a web browser as part of a web page. Examples include: clocks, stock tickers, newscasters, weather forecasters, and games.

The usefulness of widgets notwithstanding, the important thing to remember is that widgets can update and display remote data - like your Facebook status.

The goal of the Widgets 1.0 standard is to specify "widgets' packaging format, their configuration and processing model, launching by the user agent, version control, DOM APIs and events including communication between widgets, digital signing, accessibility, and discovery within HTML documents."

Here's to the W3C in their effort to standardize widget use before another innocent website is senselessly defaced.

For more information about the Widgets 1.0 specification, we encourage you to visit the W3C site.

As the usage of XML as the primary representation format within a content management system proliferates, the discussion revolves around how to transform said XML into a human readable format.

And what about the machines? Who is looking out for them when it comes time to consume data in a custom XML format?

The W3C has released a primer for XBL 2.0 (XML Binding Language - 2.0!) that goes over best practice scenarios as well as proper syntax.

XBL can be used to reorganize and wrap content without making a mess. Imagine being able to apply complex CSS styles to HTML or XHTML without utilizing multiple div elements.

Programmers can also implement fresh DOM interfaces with XBL. And arbitrary sets of XML tags can also be treated as widgets (plugins, essentially), when integrated with other specifications.

Check out the latest draft at the W3C website.

The W3C has released an updated draft of the Device Independent Authoring Language (DIAL). This document will provide a uniform markup language for filtering and presenting Web content across various delivery contexts.

DIAL is based on standard W3C CSS modules and XML vocabularies, which lend a logical architecture for webpage structure, form interaction and presentation. DIAL is also part of the Authoring for Device Independence work category of the DIWG.

Get to know the draft better at the W3C website.

Ever feel like you could use some validation in life? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s popular Markup Validator service won’t quite do that for you, but it will help keep your website running efficiently on different browsers, which is almost as important.

The Markup Validator recently received a facelift in the form of a new user interface and a validation engine with improved accuracy and performance.