Actually, those two things have little to do with each other except that I wrote about them both during the last 24 hours:
- On my RedMonk blog, I discussed XML-based UI definition languages including XForms, something that’s been on my mind for a little while.
- For Web Worker Daily, I ask whether the impending consumer launch of Vista matters to web workers. I’d think not, though granted some of the features look really cool and what Windows user doesn’t need better security?
The fact that Vista and XForms are mostly independent topics annoys me, since Vista includes IE7, which would be a great place to implement native XForms support. But why would Microsoft want to implement an open standard that could bring much more powerful UIs to the web, no matter what browser or operating system the user chose?
4 Comments
I’m still in the process of figuring out Xaml and Vista, but I’m fairly certain there is a link between the two. As I understand it, Xaml requires .NET version 3.0. Since .NET 3.0 runs on either XP or Vista, I’m assuming that means one can run Xaml apps on either OS. However, I’m pretty sure that in order to take advantage of some of the cooler (i.e. more graphic intensive) features of Xaml, one must have Vista.
Also, there’s a relationship between Xaml and IE 7, which is probably why IE7 doesn’t have native support for XForms. Xaml pages can be displayed in IE7, or compiled into a Xaml browser application which also can run in IE 7.
I agree with your assessment that the release of Vista probably isn’t that relevant to Web workers - to the extent that a Web worker has control over his desktop.
Vanessa - you’re probably right that one reason Microsoft isn’t saying anything about XForms is because of XAML. I’m not sure how interchangeable they are–XForms includes some pretty fancy data binding capabilities, does XAML?–but at least superficially they are aiming at the same thing, declarative specification of browser and desktop UIs with XML.
True, not all web workers have control over their desktops. Plus bunches of them must be using IE–I was just looking at your blog post which noted that IE is now around 80% of total browser usage. Pretty amazing what kind of market share they have, even if it is trending downwards.
This discussion parallels a discussion my business partner and I had over lunch the other day. We’re asking ourselves how important standards are. Don’t get me wrong. I love standards, and I love it better when everybody gets on board (as in M$ finally putting CSS layout into IE). Our question is whether it’s the standard that’s important or the accessibility (i.e. openness) of the technology. For example, it used to be that database management systems were all proprietary. It was nearly impossible to get your data back out once you put it in. When SQL came along, all that changed. Those DBMSs that were SQL compliant were hugely popular. SQL is a standard, but there are vendor-specific flavors (such as M$’s T-SQL). It makes me wonder how important it is to conform to the actual XForms standard than it is to get on the same page. How important is it to implement the standard verbatim as opposed to implementing the spirit of the standard?
I think it’s easy to say that companies (i.e. customers) don’t care about standards, but that’s proven not to be true. Corporate America has come down firmly on the side of Web standards which is why IE7 (and M$ dev and design tools) support these standards now. I guess that companies like M$ feel the need to do their own thing to create a competitive advantage. The initial response is differentiation. Integration occurs only after customers find their voices.
I think the spirit of the standard is important, less so the complete to-the-letter implementation. I was working with an organization recently that was using Oracle’s BPEL process manager and I pointed out that BPEL was an evolving standard, not really fixed, not really mature. They said “we don’t care about the standard, this accomplishes what we want to accomplish.” It was eye-opening to me. From their perspective that it was a standard meant that there was more than just Oracle behind it–that’s good. But it really didn’t matter if the standard itself was immature, they were interested in the product and the implementation.
So there’s interest in standards but not slavish devotion to them. Seems reasonable to me. As for XForms, I think it may be too complex anyway. What we need is a more gradual evolution of HTML perhaps.