Author Archive
Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
This week the HTML specification gained four new methods and also lost some weight due to higher quality “competing” proposals for editing related APIs.
registerProtocolHandler() and registerContentHandler() gained four complementary methods. isProtocolHandlerRegistered() and isContentHandlerRegistered() to determine whether the user is already using the site in question to handle the specified scheme or media type, and unregisterProtocolHandler() and unregisterContentHandler() to give the site the ability to offer an opt-out user interface.
Editing Exodus
The UndoManager proposal contained in the HTML specification has now been removed in favor of the work Ryosuke Niwa has been doing on UndoManager and DOM Transaction.
The execCommand() method and friends have also been removed from the HTML specification in favor of the work Aryeh Gregor has been doing on HTML Editing APIs.
Editing Meeting
A couple of people from Google and Mozilla came together in Canada to discuss the various challenges authors face with editing on the web and how they can be tackled. Ehsan Akhgari wrote a detailed report Future of editing on the web that is well worth reading.
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Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
WHATWG Weekly is somewhat irregularly updated as its writer has a somewhat chaotic vacation schedule. The specification meanwhile keeps getting refined, with the latest significant change being a security update to registerProtocolHandler() and registerContentHandler(). These methods provide better platform integration, by letting web pages become responsible for handling e.g. mailto or irc URLs. This security update introduces a whitelist for registerProtocolHandler() along with the ability for everyone to mint their own whitelisted URL schemes that are required to start with web+. registerContentHandler() meanwhile gets a blacklist for the time being as a suitable way to define a whitelist has not been found.
UndoManager and DOM Transaction
Ryosuke Niwa has been working on an API proposal to manage the undo transaction history. This proposal is deemed better than what is currently in the HTML specification and is being sorted out on the WHATWG list. Once this is completed web applications will finally get proper undo/redo behavior.
HTML/XML Task Force
A while ago the W3C TAG set up a Task Force to investigate how HTML and XML can be more closely aligned. A preliminary report is available: HTML/XML Task Force Report.
W3C Community Groups
The W3C set up Community Groups the other day making it easier for people to develop standards at the W3C without all the overhead that previously entailed. Aryeh Gregor already set up the HTML Editing APIs Community Group to work on HTML Editing APIs. Feel free to join the group or start your own!
Component Model Update
Dimitri “good morning” Glazkov posted an update on working out the component model for the web (formerly XBL). To learn more check out the component model page on the WHATWG wiki which contains a good overview of the technology.
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Monday, August 15th, 2011
WHATWG Weekly has been on a little summer break. Since we were gone over hundred changes were made to the HTML specification, the W3C HTML5 Last Call period is over, and Maciej solicited input on HTML.next.
The changes made to the HTML specifications have been in response to Last Call comments, making clarifications, fixing typos, and a couple of relatively major changes, such as having interfaces inherit (e.g. Window) from the EventTarget interface rather than implement it. Take a look at the HTML5 Tracker for more detail.
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Monday, July 25th, 2011
Next week Wednesday, August 3, the W3C HTML5 Last Call review period ends. Consider taking another look and giving some feedback!
Here is a quick rundown of what happened last week:
- The proposed
download attribute made it into the HTML specification. Specify it on an a element to force the referenced resource to be downloaded rather than navigated towards.
- The WebApps WG published a first draft of The From-Origin Header. It allows resources to declare they are unavailable within an embedding context. E.g. to prevent bandwidth leeching.
- The DOM Core draft now defines the
NodeIterator and TreeWalker features: Traversal chapter in DOM Core. These features have existed for ages, but details were not defined thus far.
- In a quest to define
window.find() Ian suggests that maybe it ought to be dropped. If you need it, speak up!
- In the light of a small vulnerability with allowing the
base element in the body element, we are taking another look at it. Because well, all your base are belong to us.
Since the summer causes a slowdown of everything standards, the next WHATWG Weekly is in two weeks.
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Monday, July 18th, 2011
The bits of HTML the W3C is publishing as HTML5 are getting ever more stable. Ian Hickson continued addressing feedback throughout last week. There are still some three hundred odd bugs outstanding, but mostly these are relatively minor problems. This does not mean that major changes might not happen of course. One discussion currently ongoing is whether the time element should be replaced with a more generic data element.
On the front of new features, Cisco and Mozilla put forward a new RTC API proposal. They also outlined how it is different from what is in the WHATWG specification. A long thread discussing the details followed. Video conferencing is the next big thing the web platform is going to tackle. Allowing for Chatroulette and Google+ Hangouts without plugins.
Ian Fette from Google proposed a new rel attribute value, attachment. A long thread led to the proposal of a new download attribute instead for the a element which allows specifying a filename. The attribute allows for specifying an implied Content-Disposition header on the retrieved resource. Darin Fisher outlines some of the advantages.
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