- From: Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com>
- Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:24:03 -0500
- To: public-webapps <public-webapps@w3.org>, Dimitri Glazkov <dglazkov@google.com>, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>
- Message-ID: <4D3D7D73.9020704@nokia.com>
[ Bcc: set to: public-forms@w3.org ; please set Reply-To: to just public-webapps@w3.org ] XBL Fans, In case you missed it, about a week ago, Anne van Kesteren wrote a nice blog about some of the recent activities with XBL including pointers to some related work by Dimitri Glazkov (e.g. Use Cases). Given AvK's blog is short-ish, I'll quote it here: [[ http://annevankesteren.nl/2011/01/xbl What is happening with XBL? 15th January 2011 What is happening with XBL? <http://annevankesteren.nl/2011/> Despite quite a bit of interest when XBL 2.0 <http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-xbl-20070316/> was developed it has not made it into browsers thus far. Perhaps because Jonas Sicking is too occupied, or perhaps it simply is too complex. The drive for XBL started moving again late last year when Ian Hickson simplified <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2010JulSep/0675.html> the specification. Instead of a new language XBL would become a set of extensions to HTML. In parallel, Dimitry Glazkov started drafting Component Model Use Cases <http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Component_Model_Use_Cases>, a WHATWG Wiki document anyone can contribute to. Effectively taking a fresh look at what we want nowadays from XBL. He also wrote a great post for anyone not familiar with the types of scenarios XBL will tackle: What the Heck is Shadow DOM? <http://glazkov.com/2011/01/14/what-the-heck-is-shadow-dom/> It is a complex subject, but the way he conveys it makes it look easy. Now I have been hopeful for XBL happening pretty much since we started working on HTML5 in 2004 so I am not too excited yet. But for the first time in almost four years we are making progress again. ]] I think there are at least four different versions of XBL specs with various levels of implementations: 1. Mozilla XBL: original, Mozilla-specific; Blue Griffon. Perhaps some XForms implementations also implement Mozilla XBL? 2. sXBL: first attempt at a standard XBL, aimed mainly at SVG. Lots of interest at SVG Open three or four years ago but apparently interest has died? 3. XBL2 CR: - some XForms implementations reported; Jonas announced some work (last report May 2010) http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/CR-xbl-20070316/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2010JulSep/1008.html [from Leigh] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2010AprJun/0485.html [from Jonas] 4. XBL2-cutdown: Hixie's September 2010 version. Not clear if there is any implementers support for this enough or if any prototyping/implementing has been done. http://dev.w3.org/2006/xbl2/ http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2010JulSep/0675.html It would be useful to get updated implementation plans/data, especially for #3 and #4 above. As Anne implies, Dimitri's work raises questions about whether XBL2 CR or XBL2-cutdown are the right approach or is a different approach is needed? Additionally, given the broad set of constituencies here, and the requirement to preserve implementation investment, is it realistic to expect one spec to satisfy all of the use cases and requirements? -Art Barstow
Received on Monday, 24 January 2011 13:25:04 UTC