Re: "one web requirement" for widgets from December workshop

On 27/1/09 13:02, Arthur Barstow wrote:
>
> Hi Thomas,
>
> I'm not convinced there is a need to explicitly capture such a
> Motherhood and Apple Pie requirement?
>
> IMHO, the Design Goals as codified in the Reqs doc [1] e.g.
> Compatibility with other standards, Interoperability, etc. are
> sufficient. Agreed?

May I offer a concrete coordination scenario / opportunity?

Right now there are (at least) 2 major things called 'widgets' in the 
Web technology scene. Things that run embedded in Web sites / pages, and 
things that "run in a runner". For the latter, W3C Widgets are the best 
current bet; for the former, it seems that Google's OpenSocial platform 
is making fast progress, especially via the open source Shindig project 
at Apache. There is plenty of overlap. Both are built with html/js/css, 
and both need data and service APIs to be interesting. Widgets of both 
flavours will want to know things about people; on a phone, they might 
want to negotiate with the user to get information about location, or 
from the addressbook, or devices. On a Web site, the widget will want to 
know about the person whose page it's installed on, and the person 
viewing, and various other things. In this world, OAuth seems to be the 
main technology people are focussing on, both within OpenSocial and more 
broadly. I don't know of anyone who is simultaneously active in the 
OpenSocial and W3C Widgets scenes. I try to keep an eye on both, but it 
needs much more attention.

I'm not sure what can be done about such divergence, but it's real and 
will cost money / time from those who are writing 'widgets' of both 
flavours. To get away from 'apple pie' generalities, would the W3C 
Widgets effort consider reviewing externally-produced technologies like 
OAuth, or is this conversation (which I'm jumping into middle of - 
sorry!) more about internal W3C dependencies?

cheers,

Dan

> -Art
>
> [1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets-reqs/#design>
>
>
> On Jan 27, 2009, at 6:54 AM, ext Thomas Roessler wrote:
>
>> Hi Art, Marcos,
>>
>> as you'll remember, there was pretty strong agreement in the room at
>> the December workshop that widget technologies should stay as close as
>> possible to Webapps, and that no gratuitous differences should be part
>> of the technology. At the time, you said that this is a requirement
>> that should go into the Widgets requirements draft. Has that happened?
>>
>> FYI, here's the text that I'm currently planning to have in the
>> workshop report:
>>
>>> <p>Workshop participants strongly agreed that APIs and security
>>> models used for widgets and more classical Web applications should
>>> be aligned as closely as possible. This requirement is expected to
>>> apply to current and future work in the <a
>>> href="http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/
>>> ">Web Applications Working Group</a>, and to additional work that
>>> might be chartered as a result of this workshop.</p>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Thomas Roessler, W3C <tlr@w3.org>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2009 12:22:07 UTC