Report on the WWW7 ConferenceThis page gives a report on the W3C Track at the 7th International World Wide Web Conference.
Dave Raggett started his talk by mentioning HTML Futures. W3C's work on HTML 4.0 now complete. There is now a need to look at HTML futures. A workshop on HTML Futures will be held in the US in May. Further information, which includes a number of position papers is available at <URL: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/future/> The slides on this session are available at <URL: http://www.w3.org/Talks/1998/0416-WWW7-HTML/>
Dave then talked about the importance of mobile computers (PDAs, phones, car computers, etc.) (NOTE portable computers were mentioned in the Dearing report). There is a relationship with accessibility issues i.e. similar challenges:
Solutions include:
HTML 4.0 and CSS 2.0 address some of these issues.
Dave then talked about MML, the Math(s) Markup Language. MML is an XML Application. A W3C Recommendation was agreed on 7 April 1998. Java and ActiveX renderers have been developed. Dave has written an MML authoring tool, which is a Windows 95 application.
For further information on MML see <URL: http://www.w3.org/Math/>
The W3C Architecture Domain:
They are working on:
The talk is available at <URL: http://www.w3.org/Talks/1998/04/WWW7-Arch/>
XML, the Extensible Markup Language, addresses HTML's lack of evolvability. XML 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation in February 1998. Note that XML has the concepts of well-formedness:
and valid (a DTD is needed).
XML is extensible e.g.
<PART>M-471</PART>
XML supports multiple names spaces:
<?xml:namespace ns="http://foo.org/1998-001" prefix="i">
<P>Insert <i:PART>M-471</i:PART></P>
Note: Sharing document structures:
See <URL: http://www.w3.org/Talks/1998/04/WWW7-XML/>
HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0 made the Web popular. But design flaws and implementation problems caused poor performance.
HTTP/1.1 addresses some of these problems. It provides performance benefits! However it is acting as fire-fighter and provides poor usage counting. HTTP/1.1 is not sufficiently flexible or extensible
HTTP/NG is based on convergence of Internet protocols There are two W3C Working Groups:
W3C Technology and Society domain activities cover:
See <URL: http://www.w3.org/Talks/1998/04/WWW7TandS/>
P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences) recognises that privacy concerns are a current barrier to Web development. The P3P project developing methods for exchanging Privacy Practices of Web sites and user Documents on architecture and vocabulary are available.
RDF (Resource Description Framework) was the highlight of the WWW 7 conference. RDF provides a metadata framework ("machine understandable metadata for the web") RDF is based on ideas from content rating (PICS), resource discovery (Dublin Core) and site mapping (MCF)
RDF applications include:
An example of Dublin Core metadata in RDF is given below.
<?xml:namespace ns="http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf/" prefix="rdf"?> <?xml:namespace ns="http://purl.org/dublin_core/schema/" prefix="dc"?> <rdf:RDF> <rdf:Description RDF:HREF="page.html"> <dc:Creator>John Smith</dc:Creator> <dc:Title>John’s Home Page</dc:Title> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF>
To conclude:
See <URL: http://www.w3.org/Talks/1998/0417-WWW7-RDF/>