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The W3C has started developing a new Activity in this area called Web Applications. The intention is to have a Working Group doing Combined Documents with a focus on Mobile Computing, and a Working Group to begin examining requirements for Web Applications. The public are encouraged to give feedback on the mailing list.
Note: I won't go into details of the discussions here. For that you'll have to check the minutes (Tuesday, Wednesday) and IRC logs (Tuesday, Wednesday). This summary will only describe the conclusions and possible next steps.
There were three topics raised for straw poll:
Should the W3C develop a specification that combines "profiles" of W3C Technologies (choosing from XHTML, SVG, CSS, SMIL and XForms), primarily focused at the mobile market space with a conformance test suite? (proposed by Dean Jackson, W3C)
Results: 19 voted Yes. 0 voted No.
Sub question: Should this work start as soon as possible?
Results: 21 voted Yes. 0 voted No.
Should the W3C charter a group to address the use cases for applications on the Web and a strategy for where the work should proceed (ie. roadmap)? (proposed by Dean Jackson, W3C)
Results: 23 voted Yes. 2 voted No.
Sub question: Should this work start as soon as possible?
Results: 23 voted Yes. 2 voted No.
Should the W3C develop declarative extension to HTML and CSS and imperative extensions to DOM, to address medium level Web Application requirements, as opposed to sophisticated, fully-fledged OS-level APIs? (proposed by Ian Hickson, Opera Software)
Results: 8 voted Yes. 11 voted No.
Should the W3C develop declarative extension to HTML and CSS and to address medium level Web Application requirements, as opposed to sophisticated, fully-fledged OS-level APIs?
Results: 8 voted Yes. 14 voted No.
Some other important remarks about the outcomes: TV Raman (IBM) raised the point of producing W3C Notes rather than W3C Recommendations. Many participants supported the development of test suites. Suresh Chitturi (Nokia) encouraged that any work in this area attempt to gain endorsement from OMA and 3GPP.
As the straw poll above only gives an indication of what the participants felt, the results are not binding. The W3C is still discussing the resourcing of any future work in this area and nothing has been finalized at present.
However, it is likely that the W3C will charter new work in the two areas that received overwhealming support in the straw polls: work on a specification that describes the combination of existing W3C formats, focusing on the mobile market, and starting a group to gather requirements for Web Applications and suggest a possible roadmap for future work in the area. W3C Process requires the W3C Team to inform the Membership of any proposed charters.
At present, W3C does not intend to put any resources into the third straw-poll topic: extensions to HTML and CSS for Web Applications, other than technologies being developed under the charter of current W3C Working Groups.
About 60 people attended the workshop. There were 43 position papers. Of those, about 20 made presentations.
$Date: 2004/07/21 07:21:41 $ by $Author: dean $