Re: Re: several messages about WHATWG and XUL

Hi,

Well, if a web application document loads in Netscape 4 it will probably 
stop to be a web application, so I don't get the point why it needs to 
be backward compatible. Mozilla has XUL and yet it can display any html, 
xhtml page and much more.

I tend to Mozilla XUL because it exists and looks promising, though I am 
not a Guru to judge of how good or bad it is or if there will be 
something better available in short.
That Mozilla XUL did not succeed to mass is probably not a Standard 
issue but the problem that it is only supported in Mozilla, if Opera and 
Safari would also support it then things would probably be different.

However, I hope that browser and plug in vendors know what they are doing.

Thanks,

Karl


Ian Hickson wrote:

>On Sun, 13 Jun 2004, Karl Pongratz wrote:
>  
>
>>XUL Basic sounds really cool.
>>    
>>
>
>Great -- start up a new body to standardise it (since the "XUL alliance"
>has failed to get any standardisation done in its years of existence) and
>go with it.
>
>Many people agree with you -- for example the SVG folk agree (and think
>SVG is the way to go), the XForms folk agree (and think XForms should be
>the key part of the solution), Microsoft agree (Avalon, XAML, etc),
>Macromedia agree (Flex), etc.
>
>
>  
>
>>Can't WHAT just forget about the html thing? I don't require to run my
>>web apps in IE 5, Opera 5 or Netscape 4 and who wants html in 2 years
>>from now?
>>    
>>
>
>You may not require that your Web applications work in IE5, Opera 5 or
>Netscape 4 (or more to the point IE6, Opera 8 and Mozilla 2) but many
>people do, and they are the people whom the WHATWG group are targetting.
>
>Similarly, while you may not want HTML to exist two years from now, we
>(the WHATWG group) see no evidence that it is going away, and see no
>reason to require that all current developers use a new language now.
>
>
>On Sun, 13 Jun 2004, Charles Goodwin wrote:
>  
>
>>I really don't understand what this solves.  If your advocating that
>>HTML support basic XUL (which is the implication) then you may as well
>>just advocate that all browsers support XUL.  In which case, XUL doesn't
>>need to be part of HTML but instead an alternative markup for web apps.
>>And you do a full circle.
>>    
>>
>
>The WHATWG is not suggesting that HTML should "support basic XUL". We
>simply intend to introduce to HTML some of the more commonly requested
>features, including some that XUL (and XAML, and XForms, and SVG) happen
>to already support in non-backwards-compatible ways.
>
>The point is, HTML has been a wild success with developers, while the
>other technologies that try to address these problem really haven't, at
>least not on the same scale. WHATWG members noticed this, and decided that
>if everyone else had not had much success with a non-backwards compatible
>solution, maybe we would have more success with one that _was_ backwards
>compatible, and that concentrated on the same basic principles as HTML
>itself did.
>
>WHATWG has no official status. It claims even less of an official status
>than, say, the laughable "XUL alliance". You are just as able to create
>other working groups with similar goals but different basic principles if
>you think you can do a better job.
>
>  
>



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