Re: [widgets] Open Ajax Alliance

Hi Jose,
Short answer, yes. Most of the people involved at OpenAjax and W3C agree
that widget developers want a single set of requirements for their widgets
that will provide maximum range of interoperability, whether the widgets
are launched from a desktop OS (e.g., Apple Dashboard, Vista Sidebar), and
mobile OS (e.g., Nokia Widgets), a mashup application (e.g., IBM's
QEDwiki), or used as a component within an Ajax-powered RIA. This has
caused me to participate in W3C WAF (at least on the public lists) and for
Marcos to start the process of joining OpenAjax Alliance.

Long answer, maybe. At OpenAjax Alliance, we are looking at a transcoder
technology approach which will allow mashup frameworks to use existing
widget formats as they are today (e.g., Google Gadgets and Apple Dashboard
widgets) by defining a standard XML infoset and a set of open source
transcoders for popular (usually proprietary) gadget and widget formats.
With the transcoder approach, W3C Widgets and OpenAjax Alliance Gadgets do
not necessarily have to be exactly the same format because we can write a
transcoder from W3C Widgets into the OpenAjax Alliance Gadgets format.
However, the closer they are, the better the transcoder. The most important
reason why we don't want to commit to grand unification is that the
coordination process is likely to stretch out the time before either W3C or
OpenAjax Alliance would have something that the community could use. It is
hard enough for W3C to deliver a specification to its target constituency
(desktop and mobile widgets such as for Opera and Nokia platforms) and hard
enough for OpenAjax Alliance to herd all of the cats in the mashup space.
Therefore, for the time being, W3C WAF and OpenAjax Alliance will be
coordinating to attempt to keep the two specifications as close as
possible, but we are assuming that there will be two separate
specifications.

Jon Ferraiolo
IBM & OpenAjax Alliance



                                                                           
             José Manuel                                                   
             Cantera Fonseca                                               
             <jmcf@tid.es>                                              To 
             Sent by:                  Marcos Caceres                      
             public-appformats         <marcosscaceres@gmail.com>, Jon     
             -request@w3.org           Ferraiolo/Menlo Park/IBM@IBMUS      
                                                                        cc 
                                       "public-appformats@w3.org (public)" 
             01/02/2008 04:28          <public-appformats@w3.org>          
             AM                                                    Subject 
                                       Re: [widgets] Open Ajax Alliance    
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           





Marcos, Jon,

Happy New Year!!

I was wondering why the OOA and the W3C are working on different specs
regarding Widget descriptors, differentiating between "desktop widgets"
and "web widgets". Perhaps I don't understand well the issue but at
first sight I think that there should be only one Widget Descriptor
format, which of course, could be extended to address the needs of
different communities. But at least, the baseline should be common,
shouldn't it?

Best Regards

Marcos Caceres escribió:
> Hi,
> During the previous face 2 face meeting in Boston, Jon Ferraiolo of
> the Open Ajax Alliance demonstrated a widget proposal and a set of
> adapters which may be of interest to the working group. The OAA specs
> are more closely aligned with "web widgets" (akin to iGoogle gadgets)
> rather than "desktop widgets".  However, there is plenty of potential
> for cross-pollination of ideas between the groups. Please see in
> particular:
>
>
http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/images/e/e8/OpenAjaxWidgets_IBM_20071019.pdf

> http://www.openajax.org/member/wiki/IDE_Widget_Metadata_Strawman_Proposal
>
> Kind regards,
> Marcos
>
> ps: this closes ACTION-142 [1].
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2005/06/tracker/waf/actions/142
>
>