Editorial: Standards for web applications

In the medium term, the days of today's web applications are numbered. Current web
 applications have reached beyond what is possible with the technology 
 offered by today's browsers.

The general assumption is that the future lies in RIAs 
(Rich Internet Applications), which will use future technology to break through
 barriers that seemed insurmountable with HTML, the DOM, CSS and client-side 
 scripting.

None of this is new. It's just a quick introduction
 to the problem. There's a push for RIAs now, but there is no
 standard that lets us build them.

Where there are no firm boundaries, there is room to maneuver, to put it
 politely. One way to build better web applications is the 
 markup language XUL, introduced by the
 Mozilla project. Another option should come from the
 language XAML as 
 part of the upcoming Longhorn operating system. Macromedia has put forward its own technology,
 Flex.

Again, nothing new under the sun. There are, let's say, three main currents and a few smaller 
 streams, such as General Interface Objects.
 It's clear that none of these is an industry standard, so
 following one current or another could cause problems in the end.

Looking for standards

All this might leave you a little disillusioned. Fortunately, the major 
 players, or at least most of them, see the need to find a compromise 
 that will let people build the next generation of web applications in a standardized way.

That's why the W3C
 consortium took web applications under its wing and held the W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents.
 It's worth looking at the position papers from individual participants, as well as the 
 voting and summary.

The good news is that things have started moving, as the workshop shows. It's hard to make predictions at this point.
 We'll see where the effort goes. I was once very optimistic about this kind of thing 
 and predicted a future for Flex, a technology that Macromedia, in my humble opinion, 
 ended up squandering.

Related articles

• (Root.cz 07.07.2004) Petr Cimprich The X-Files 0406
• (Dagblog 04.01.2004) It's time for Flex 1.0
• (Dagblog 22.01.2004) Is the Flex Beta Program opening to the public?
• (Dagblog 02.01.2004) Internet browsers and the future
• (Dagblog 23.10.2003) The return of smart clients and the twilight of “HTML applications”?
• (Dagblog 01.12.2003) XAML — Microsoft's XUL
• (Dagblog 08.12.2003) The evolution of web applications in the age of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications)
• (Dagblog 19.12.2003) Flex and the web application framework