On Extending HTML
Stéphane Curzi,
Jul 09, 2004
Part 3. Now here's where it really gets interesting. As Dave Green in NTK writes, "Apple made a deal with Opera and Mozilla the same week to add enough to the browser plugin API to provide the same javascript objects on other platforms and browsers." What this means is that HTML will be extended, a move defended in this article, to include slider controls, search fields, a composite attribute on the img tag, and a canvas tag. Normally these would go to the W3C, but the W3C is more interested in XML and SVG and other stuff for which it takes years to develop. So the Apple, Mozilla and Opera people formed something called the Web Hypertext Application Technology (WHAT) group to formalize these extensions; the idea is to punt them to W3C when they're ready.
CRLFSo why was this so important I took three parts to describe it all? Well, first, it's the first major advance in HTML for years (assuming it all comes together, and it probably will). Second, it creates a new form of web browsing: essentially, it's browsing without the browser through specialized applciations that can just sit on your desktop. Third, though it will be available on all platforms (Windows, Apple, Linux), it leaves Microsoft (which has 'frozen' Internet Explorer, remember) out of the loop. And finally, because they are written in Javascript and HTML, anyone can author these useful widgets.
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