response to 'Call for Review: Rich Web Clients Activity Proposal'

[ Below are our comments on the Rich Web Clients Activity Proposal
  just submitted as part of the Advisory Committee review.  There
  isn't an option in the form to send them automatically to the
  public list, but I don't see any reason not to, so I'm sending
  them here as well. - David ]

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Call for Review:
Rich Web Clients Activity Proposal' (Advisory Committee) for Mozilla
Foundation by David Baron.


The reviewer's organization suggests changes to this Activity Proposal,
and only support the proposal if the changes are adopted.

Additional comments about the proposal:
   Comments on the Web Apps Charter
================================

Should the charter specify deliverables for both a current level of
XMLHttpRequest (defining what is currently used on the Web) and a new
level (adding new features, such as integration with Access Control)? 
That was my understanding of the group's current plans.


Comments on the CDF charter
===========================

Comments on http://www.w3.org/2007/11/CDF_rechartering/CDF-proposed.html
follow:

Most of the second paragraph of the charter seems like carryover from
the previous charter that is no longer appropriate (e.g., "primary
short-term goal is").

In Section 1 (Scope), the list of architectural constraints should also
mention that behavior required by the specifications must be
sufficiently compatible with existing Web content and browsers.

Section 1.1 (Technical Items) is unclear on whether the goal of the
group is to produce profiles that simply list items to be combined, or
is producing specifications that define how existing document formats
interact where that behavior is currently undefined.  W3C does not seem
to be an appropriate forum for developing profiles, given that W3C
working groups (at least, the CDF working group under its first charter)
tend to attract advocates of particular existing specifications rather
than a representative sample of Web authors/developers and browser and
authoring tool implementors.  I would suggest that the production of a
general-purpose Web browser profile in this forum would not be useful. 

The lists of specifications to be combined seem like an odd mix of
specifications widely implemented in browsers (XHTML, HTML, CSS, SVG)
with others (XML Events, SMIL, XForms).

Then again, section 1.1 (Technical Items) and section 2 (Deliverables)
seem to conflict with each other.  My understanding from conversations I
had about the charter at the AC meeting is that the latter is more
accurate than the former.  But it's still rather hard to tell without
descriptions of the deliverables.

Section 6 (Communication) says the technical work of the group is
public, but implies that face-to-face meetings and teleconferences are
member-only.  That seems like a contradiction.  I would encourage all
the techincal discussion to be public (including minutes of meetings).
The wording in the Web Apps Charter on public vs. member-confidential
communication seems both clearer and preferable.


The reviewer's organization intends to participate in these groups:
   - Compound Document Formats WG
   - Web Applications WG

The reviewer's organization:
   - intends to review drafts as they are published and send comments.
   - intends to develop experimental implementations and send experience
reports.
   - intends to develop products based on this work.


Comments about implementation schedule:
   We would like to implement Access Control this year, preferably this
summer; we had an implementation for Firefox 3, and dropped it partly due
to the spec being in flux.  We also plan to implement Selectors API this
year (that implementation is also mostly complete).  We are also expecting
to implement Element Traversal, and are likely to implement a number of the
other deliverables of the Web Apps WG.

As far as CDF, we already implement namespace-based dispatching for a
number of XML MIME types that includes support for XHTML, SVG, and MathML.
 We hope to implement those parts of the CDF deliverables that would help
improve interoperability of that implementation with other browsers. 
(That doesn't mean we won't implement other parts, but we don't know yet
what they will be.)



General comments:
   Despite checking both boxes under "Participation", I'd note that our
intent to participate in Web Apps (we have existing participants who
intend to stay in the group) is significantly firmer than our intent to
participate in CDF (which is still uncertain).

Received on Saturday, 10 May 2008 02:27:47 UTC