Data.Driven()

In an effort to expedite the standardization of widgets, the Web Application Formats Working Group yesterday decided to split the Widgets 1.0 Specification into three (or more) specs:

• Widgets 1.0: Packaging and Configuration
  • Covers Zip packaging and XML configuration document
  • Defines the processing model for XML and Zip
• Widgets 1.0: Digital Signatures
  • XML Digital Signature profile
• Widgets 1.0: APIs and Events
  • All the functions, properties, and events you know and love.
  • I’ve asked Arve Bersvendsen, of Opera, to be the lead editor. Unfortunately, he is tied up till mid April… probably making something awesome for Opera.

Other specs may also follow, particularly:

• Widgets 1.0: Automatic Updates (I personally think this one is critical)
• Widgets 1.0: Cross-widget Communication

Other documents are still under development too:

• Widgets 1.0: Requirements
• Widgets landscape
  • A look at how widgets are created and what features are supported across popular widget engines.

We are aiming to have all these done (ie. Last Call) by October. However, now that the document split has happened, I should be able to get the packaging format done fairly quickly.

We have more or less now settled on the configuration language format. The elements are going to be:

• <widget width=”" height=”" id=”">
  • <title: the title/name of a widget
  • <description> a description
  • <author email=”" url=”"> some details about the author
  • <license> paste your GPL here!
  • <icon src=”"> the icon
  • <access network=”true|false” plugins=”true|false”> if your widget need to get online
  • <content src=”"> some file in the widget archive

Only <widget> and <content> are mandatory at this point.

The processing model for the XML is going to be quite forgiving. The only thing that will cause an error, is not having a well-formed document.  For example, the following the following would result in “The Awesome Super Dude Widget” as the title:

<widget xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets">
   <title>
     The <blink>Awesome</blink> 

     <author email="dude@example.com">Super Dude</author> Widget</title>
</widget>

The unrecognized elements are simply ignored, but their text content is extracted. This makes processing more forgiving and allows for extensibility and some graceful degradation. I also want to push that the widget should function if the namespace is omitted.

We are also currently investigating how we are going to deal with internationalization in the configuration document format. We are looking at following ideas from the Best Practices for XML Internationalization.

PhD, W3C, WAF-WG, Widgets

The charters of both  the W3C Web Application Formats and WebAPI Working Groups have now expired (as of the 15th of November, 2007) meaning they are effectively dead (although still twitching!). From their ashes will rise a new merged working group called the Web Applications Working group… hopefully by the 31 of January.

According to the new proposed charter, the missions of the new working group is to:

…is to provide specifications that enable improved client-side application development on the Web, including specifications both for application programming interfaces (APIs) for client-side development and for markup vocabularies for describing and controlling client-side application behavior.

The new Web Applications Working Group is chartered with the continual development of the following specifications:

Another cool thing about the new working group is that it is modeled on the HTML Working Group, meaning that is open, transparent (no secret chats on the members list) and anyone will be able to participate via the public mailing list.

I’ll continue to edit the Widget Spec and Requirements, and possibly continue to help out with the XBL Primer.  I’ll continue to be part of this new working group for a least 1 year, as I my PhD program ends in March 2009… and hopefully longer, if someone gives me a job to continue working on specs!

PhD, W3C, WAF-WG, Widgets, Work

June was a fairly busy month:

• Went to Sydney for two days to work with Lachlan Hunt on the XBL Primer.
• Finished My PhD confirmation.
• Become a Facebook addict.
• Published Widgets 1.0 Requirements.

July is also going to be pretty intense:

• will try to get the First Public Working Draft of the XBL Primer by the 13th of July.
• Presenting my PhD confirmation on the 25th.
• Going to Melbourne on the 26th to work with Cameron McCormack for two days on a model for the XBL 2.0 Test Suite.

After I come back from Melbourne I go to Oslo for a WAF Face 2 Face to be held at Opera Software.

PhD, W3C, WAF-WG, Widgets, XBL 2.0, monthly wrap-up

I’ve created audio versions of the various sections of my PhD Confirmation document (PDF ~1Mb). They are read by a AT&T natural voice called “Mel”:

• Summary.mp3 (3Mb, 3mins) – gives an overview of the document; helps you decide if this is going to be your cup of tea.
• Section1.mp3 (46Mb, 48mins) – discusses the issues with widgets and how standardization could help fix them.
• Section2.mp3 (14Mb, 15mins)- discusses the methodologies that can be used to fix the problems with widgets, and other relevant stuff.
• Seciton 3 is the Widgets 1.0 Requirements, which you can read at the w3c.

Files are all encoded in 32Khz, 16Bit, mono…. perfect for listening on any Mp3 Player. Document was converted to Mp3 using NaturalReader by Natural Soft.

UPDATE: added the latest draft of the widgets 1.0 requirements document.

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PhD

Finally finished my PhD confirmation document (PDF ~1Mb) on Standardizing Widgets. This document is supposed represent all the research I’ve been doing into widgets over the last year or so. If you are interested in widgets and the standardization process, Section 1 might be of value. Please send me any feedback and let me know what I need to work on.

Hate reading on screen? Don’t want to kill trees?… download the confimation document as an Mp3 File (~76Mb, 1:21:36sec, 16Bit 24Khz) . It’s read by AT&T’s Natural Voice’s Mike.

On the 11th of July, I have to do a 40 minute presentation to a panel of academics to “confirm”… once I confirm I then have two years to finish all my publications…. It will be great to have two years to focus on the widgets specs. Hopefully we can get them to Rec.

PhD

May was a fairly uneventful month. I spent most of my time just working on my PhD confirmation document (read the finished draft) and made but a few editorial changes to the Widgets 1.0 Requirements document.

I’m supposed to submit the confirmation soon (on June 13th to be exact). I still have a bit of work to do on it, especially in regards to methodology and a contextual review of widgets and widget engines… a contextual review basically looks at what widgets are, what they do, and what are the forces (markets, usefulness, web 2.0, etc) that are driving the continual popularity of widgets. As one can imagine, the contextual review is an ongoing process.

In regards to the requirements documents, I’ve was quite influenced by a chapter I read from the book Advanced Topics in Information Technology Standards and Standardization Research. In that book, there is a chapter title “Open Standards Requirements”, by Ken Krechmer, that provides a set of criteria for basically deciding if a standard is “open”. I took a few idea and used them in the requirements document to make sure that the standard remains “open” as defined by Krenchmer and that no one company controls it… even if not all widget engine vendors are taking part in the discussion.

PhD, WAF-WG, Widgets, monthly wrap-up

I’m just starting to read On The Origin Of Objects by Brian Cantwell Smith for my PhD. My god! What a bunch of incomprehensible nonsense! The guy is talking about simple stuff (ontology, objects, properties), yet he uses the most convoluted language and metaphors ever. If I ever start writing like that, shoot me! Please. I have refraining from reading overly academic nonsense thus far for my PhD. Really! I don’t agree that you need to adhere to silly academic prose to get your point across. And it really makes me wonder why people make very interesting ideas completely inaccessible. I’m sure that Smith knows what he is talking about, but really! There is no need for this kind of unintelligible garbage:

“… a way to feed our undiminished yarning for foundations and grounding, while at the same time avoiding the reductionism and ideological fundamentalism that have so bedevilled prior fundamentalist approaches.” (p4)

“Bedevilled”? pelase! Anyway, now that I have vented I feel better. If I don’t end up throwing the book out the window in a fit of unintelligible rage, then I will move progressively review each chapter over the next three months. Pease note that I am not the only one that bitches about the complexity of this book, simply do a search for the book title, or look on Amazon, and you will see that I am not alone.

Book review, PhD

I’ve been tyring to come up with some ideas about what areas to research for my PhD. I’ve given up my quest to try and create games using Semantic Web technologies. Instead, I plan to follow my current work practices and look at problems in web application development: As the starting point, I am particularly interested in how to build rich internet applications or rich web clients like those made by Google, flickr, etc.
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PhD