[html5] Primordial question. Part II.

(beg my pardon, previous message went out unfinished)

Is html5.w3c has also an idea to be a platform for Web Applications?
If yes then what would be a definition of a Web Application?

So far I can see two major directions/domains/use cases.
I'll use WordPress (or any other blog engine) as an example of these
domains.

There are also two distinct type of actors in the Net:
"readers" and "writers" ("consumers" and "producers")
- users who at the given moment of time mostly reading
or mostly writing.

Back to the blog application. It has three major areas:

1) Environment. header, footer, sidebars with calendar, etc.
2) Article(s) / content area.
3) Administrative area (application management console)

In principle, articles area (#2) and at some extent environment
are the only place where classic html semantic rules are applicable
and really makes sense.

Administrative area (technological area)
where you can see various "technical stuff" like
list of users, list of comments awaiting moderation, "new article"
editing zone, etc. This area(s) has semantic and structure that
is far from classic meaning of this term in html. Probably semantic as
a term is not applicable for this area at all. Or at least semantic there
uses completely different vocabulary.

Compare <sidebar> and <p> - these are from different domains/languages.

I beleive that most of problems with semantic we are experiencing
theses days are in the technological areas and sites that was designed
as windows into some technic/technological systems.

E.g. if you will take something like gmail.com or pastie.caboo.se 
applications
then it is better to forget about semantic of html elements at all.
I mean there is no need (either for human or for some automata)
to analyze any internal semantic or structure of html this application is 
built from.
In fact markup used in such applications is not even html in common sense
- it is styled set of <div>s, <span>s and <table>s.

So why all this lyrics above?
To constatate simple facts:
1) html (v.4) serve need of classic semantic web content pretty well 
already.
2) conflict happens when html is used for technological purposes/areas - as 
a tool
for defining UI of applications - applications that aimed for the "writer" 
use
cases. I believe that these areas are what we need to focus on. If
we will have proper tools for defining/designing such areas then major
number (if not all) of problems will be solved.

Andrew Fedoniouk.
http://terrainformatica.com

Received on Friday, 11 May 2007 19:03:44 UTC