Re: follow up on the discussion in HTML5 about metadata access

On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 07:32 +1000, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> Only in the way that PDF, smil, flash, or any other non-HTML content can be called "web content".

I don't think that the folks involved in svg, css, or js would be happy
to read this. :)

Anything that can be put on an HTTP server is contributing to the
content of the Web. For sure, some data formats have more value than
others, because they have different properties (open, hypertext links,
widely used, supported in major Web browser, etc.), but there's still on
the Web and are still Web content. For example, the content provided by
sites like youtube is web content, whether you like their use of flash
or not. Web applications are also part of the Web as well, despite the
fact that most of them don't provide links to reference their state, and
therefore are unfriendly to HTTP cache servers or SEO engines.

>  IMO they are not a native part of the web, but an adjunct and require extra plugins to work in the Web browser.

They're part of the Web, but they are certainly not as valuable as the
most deployed features of HTML. The HTML track element has currently
less value than XSLT on the Web, just because it's not as well deployed,
but still it's part of the Web and its value will increase in the
rapidly upcoming years. SMIL never found its way into major Web browsers
nor did it manage to deploy a significant set of clients, thus its value
is more limited than HTML. Content that is served by a Web server and is
only usable in one specific iphone app has almost no value on the Web,
but the value of this web content is still not 0.

For sure, the most valuable Web content is content that is specified by
a royalty-free widely-used interoperable deployed and well implemented
HTTP-friendly IRI-friendly open standard specification.

Philippe

Received on Tuesday, 10 May 2011 23:33:00 UTC