Gary Edwards's Library tagged Open-Web →  View Popular

Great stats and charts!  Here comes the Android.

excerpt: Google's Android operating system has plenty to celebrate this holiday season -- and now, a new trio of studies suggests the platform is poised for even more success in 2010.

There's no question Android's been enjoying plenty of time in the spotlight since the launch of Motorola's Droid smartphone. But with dozens of new Android devices expected to debut in the coming months -- possibly even including the omnipotent "Google Phone" (have you seen the things that phone can do?) -- the biggest burst may still be ahead.

www.pcworld.com/...asion_prepare_for_phase_2.html - Preview

Open-Web Android iphone Google

excerpt: "Once upon a time, Microsoft bestrode the software world like a ruthless cartoon villain, gobbling up rivals and defying pleas for restraint from regulators. But the once-impregnable giant has now been humbled: following an acrimonious 10-year anti-trust battle with European regulators, Microsoft on Wednesday finally agreed to open its Windows operating system to rival web browsers in Europe."

Great opening line!  But they get the story wrong.  Woefully wrong!  Just the opposite is happening.  Microsoft has moved from the browser Web application to the Web itself.  It's the platform stupid!!!

No one understands platform better than Microsoft.  Control the platform's base formats, protocols, interfaces and internal messaging system, and you control all applications, services and devices using that platform.  

The problem for Microsoft has been that the Web is a platform used by all, but owned by none.  It's based on open standards that no one owns or controls.  So as the Web evolves into a universal platform for converged communications, content and collaborative computing, Microsoft was facing the one fate every monopolist fears - having to compete on a level playing field!

While it took them well over ten years to come up with a counter strategy and effective implementation, Microsoft has finally achieved the impossible.   They have carved out a huge section of the Open Web for their proprietary and exclusive use.  

www.time.com/...0,8599,1948381-1,00.html - Preview

ge Open-Web Open-Web-Ecosystem BPOS browsers microsoft-monopoly

excerpt: The trend in Office development is the migration of solutions away from in-application scripted processing toward more data-centric development. Of course this is a primary purpose of Open XML, and it is great to see the amount of activity in this area. We've seen customers scripting Word in a server environment to batch process / print documents or for other automation tasks. In reality Word isn't built to do that on a large scale, it is better to work directly against the document rather than via the application whenever possible.

The Open XML SDK unlocks a "whole nuther" environment for document processing, and gets you out of the business of scripting client apps on servers to do the work of a true server application (not to mention the licensing problems created by installing Office on a server).

comment:  Gray makes a very important point here.  The dominance of the desktop based MSOffice Productivity Environment was largely based the embedded logic driving "in-process" documents that was application and platform (Win32 API) specific.  Tear open any of these workgroup-workflow oriented compound documents and you find application specific scripts, macros, OLE, data bindings, security settings and other application specific settings.  These internal components are certain to break whenever these highly interactive and "live" compound documents are converted to another format, or application use.  This is how MSOffice documents and the business processes they represent become "bound" to the MSOffice Productivity Environment.

What Gray is pointing to here is that Microsoft is moving the legacy Productivity Environment to an MSWeb based center where OpenXML, Silverlight, CAML, XAML and a number of other .NET-WPF technologies become the workgroup drivers.  The key applications for the MS WebStack are Exchange/SharePoint/SQL Server.  To make this move, documents had to be separated from the legacy desktop Productivity Environment settings.

Note that OpenXML is the only document format supported by MS

blogs.technet.com/...the-sharepoint-conference.aspx - Preview

Open-Web MSOffice ge

Michael Hickins separates the platform forest from the application trees, putting the focus of the future where it belongs - the movement of the legacy MSOffice Productivity Environment to the Web.  The only question will be which Web?  The Open Web?  Or the MS-Web?

excerpt:  Microsoft and Apple have leveraged a particular dominant proprietary platform (Windows/Office in one case, the iPhone/iTunes duopoly in the other) to turn every other vendor into a bit player; and by allowing other vendors to sell products or services that integrate with theirs, they offer just enough incentives for the others to play along. Google is also leveraging a dominant platform (in this case, the Web, the largest platform there is) just as relentlessly as Microsoft and Apple have done, but with an open source philosophy that encourages others to compete.

The ecosystem includes everything from a development platform to application suites, but its strength emanates from a basic understanding of what it takes to dominate technology: you have to control what former Open Document Foundation director Gary Edwards calls the “point of assembly” — that crucial spot where end users have to come in order to save, share and retrieve their documents — the final work product that all this technology is meant to help create. What Google is in the process of doing is moving that point of assembly from the desktop, where Microsoft and Apple rule, to the Web, where Google is king.

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Web-Productivity-Environment Open-Web MS-Web MSOffice-ecosystem Open-Web-Ecosystem Open-Web-Productivity

Well well well.  Doug Crawford is concerned about "breakign the Web".  He even mentions "avalon", otherwise known as the Windows Presentation Foundation layer of proprietary MS-Web technologies designed as rich-Web alternatives to Open Web Standards like AJAX, HTML, CSS, SVG/Canvas, and JavaScript.

excerpt:  Among the key issues in the Internet space today is the ongoing struggle between openness and stability in terms of standard Web technology, said a Yahoo Web technology expert. Doug Crockford, a JavaScript expert at Yahoo, calls on his company and others to not “break the Web” as they each vie for developer hearts and minds.

www.eweek.com/...ards-as-Key-to-Open-Web-522594 - Preview

yahoo open-web ms-web crawford

Google tests a service called Cloudboard, an online clipboard that should make it easy to copy data between Gmail, Google Docs and other Google services. The service is not publicly available yet, but there are many references to it.

lengthy comment from ~ge~

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ge Open-Web MS-WebStack Google unified-productivity

Microsoft to the world: Outlook's not broken and we aren't 'fixing' it!

Mary Jo has an interesting article over at ZDNet. She points out that Microsoft is refusing to restore support for HTML editing in Outlook. Instead, Microsoft intends on using the MSWord editor. I think that means a Microsoft desktop future based on Office OpenXML (OOXML). We shall see. But if this is the case, then i also think we are looking at how Microsoft will break the Web.

I've left an extensive comment to Mary Jo's article in the Talkback section, linked to above.

".... This is for all the marbles. The future of the Open
Web is at stake. If Microsoft is successful at carving
out and encoding an MS Web based on a document format
specific to their platforms, applications and services,
the Web will break. " <br>

"Looks like a plan to me."<br>

continued <a href="http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-12558-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=66060&messageID=1242881">here</a>

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html+ OOXML Microsoft Open-Web

Interesting article discussing the many ways Microsoft is using to improve the public perception that they are serious about interoperability and open formats, protocols and interfaces. Rocketman attended the recent ISO SC34 meeting in Prague and agrees that Microsoft has indeed put on a new public face filled with cooperation, compliance and unheard of sincerity.
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He also says, "Don't be fooled!!!"
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There is a big difference between participation in vendor consortia and government sponsored public standards efforts, and, actual implementation at the product level. Looking at how Microsoft products implement open standards, my take is that they have decided on a policy of end user choice. Their applications offer on the one hand the choice of aging, near irrelevant and often crippled open standards. And on the other, the option of very rich and feature filled but proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces that integrate across the entire Microsoft platform of desktop, devices and servers. For instance; IE8 supports 1998 HTML-CSS, but not the advanced ACiD-3 <i>"HTML+"</i> used by WebKit, Firefox, Opera and near every device or smartphone operating at the edge of the Web. (HTML+ = HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, JS Libs).
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But they do offer advanced .NET-WPF proprietary alternative to Open Web HTML+. These include XAML, Silverlight, XPS, LINQ, Smart Tags, and OOXML. Very nice.
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<i>"When an open source advocate, open standards advocate, or, well, pretty much anyone that competes with Microsoft (news, site) sees an extended hand from the software giant toward better interoperability, they tend to look and see if the other hand's holding a spiked club.
<br><br>
Even so, the Redmond, WA company continues to push the message that it has seen the light regarding open standards and interoperability...."</i><br><br>

www.cmswire.com/...-and-open-standards-004220.php - Preview

webkit interop open-web open-standards microsoft

written by Tim Bray, the Sun Open Cloud API is based entirely on pure and simple "REST":

"....All the resources in the Virtual Data Center (machines, clusters, networks, storage volumes) are "Resources" in the Web sense: that is to say, they are identified by URIs, and operated on by HTTP requests, chiefly GET and POST. Whenever you GET one of these resources, you receive a representation encoded using JSON."

"This walk-through should make it obvious that the cloud interface doesn't constrain the design of the URI space. URIs used for retrieving, creating, and controlling the resources are provided by the system; clients can make no assumptions as to their internal syntax....."

kenai.com/...HelloCloud - Preview

Cloud-Computing Cloud-API Open-API Open-Web

Excellent article on Cloud Computing and the need for an Open API from Dion Hinchcliffe. Solid analysis, deeply linked, with some good graphics:

"....The final outcome of this struggle, as it’s been in many earlier platform battles over personal computer hardware, operating systems, databases, and even the Web itself, will be the result of a fairly predictable and oft-repeated cycle of events (see diagram below) for which a small number of large winners are likely to emerge victorious...."

"When we look back many years from now, it’s probable that cloud computing will be regarded as both a momentous and major change of course in the history of software; many future computing platforms will be created and operated by what seemingly amount to utility companies. While this might seem like a boring future for computing, it’s a necessarily pragmatic evolution as the very size and scope of modern software requires new economic models in order to remain cost effective. Virtually any online application these days has to scale to a few million users as quickly and inexpensively as possible....."

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Cloud-Computing Open-API Open-Web

Apple has posted an interesting page describing Safari technologies. Innovations and support for existing standards as well as the ACID3 test are covered. <br><br>

Many people think that the Apple WebKit-Safari-iPhone innovations are pushing Open Web Standards beyond beyond the limits of "Open", and deep into the verboten realm of vendor specific extensions. Others, myself included, believe that the WebKit community has to do this if Open Web technologies are to be anyway competitive with Microsoft's RiA (XAML-Silverlight-WPF). <br><br>

Adobe RiA (AiR-Flex-Flash) is also an alternative to WebKit and Microsoft RiA; kind of half Open Web, half proprietary though. Adobe Flash is of course proprietary. While Adobe AiR implements the WebKit layout engine and visual document model. I suspect that as Adobe RiA loses ground to Microsoft Silverlight, they will open up Flash. But that's not something the Open Web can afford to wait for.<br><br>

In many ways, WebKit is at the cutting edge of Ajax Open Web technologies. The problems of Ajax not scaling well are being solved as shared JavaScript libraries continue to amaze, and the JavaScript engines roar with horsepower. Innovations in WebKit, even the vendor-device specific ones, are being picked up by the JS Libraries, Firefox, and the other Open Web browsers. <br><br>

At the end of the day though, it is the balance between the ACiD3 test on one side and the incredible market surge of WebKit smartphones, countertops, and netbook devices at the edge of the Web that seem to hold things together. <br><br>

The surge at the edge is washing back over the greater Web, as cross-browser frustrated Web designers and developers roll out the iPhone welcome. Let's hope the ACiD3 test holds. So far it's proving to be a far more important consideration for maintaining Open Web interop, without sacrificing innovation, than anything going on at the stalled W3C.<br<br>

"..... Safari continues to lead the way, implementing the latest innovative web standards and enabling

www.apple.com/...features.html - Preview

webkit safari acid3 open-web interoperability

The NeuroCommons project seeks to make all scientific research materials - research articles, annotations, data, physical materials - as available and as useable as they can be. This is done by fostering practices that render information in a form that promotes uniform access by computational agents - sometimes called "interoperability". Semantic Web practices based on RDF will enable knowledge sources to combine meaningfully, semantically precise queries that span multiple information sources.<br><br>

Working with the Creative Commons group that sponsors "Neurocommons", Microsoft has developed and released an open source "ontology" add-on for Microsoft Word. The add-on makes use of MSOffice XML panel, Open XML formats, and proprietary "Smart Tags". Microsoft is also making the source code for both the Ontology Add-in for Office Word 2007 and the Creative Commons Add-in for Office Word 2007 tool available under the Open Source Initiative (OSI)-approved Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL) at http://ucsdbiolit.codeplex.com and http://ccaddin2007.codeplex.com,respectively.<br><br>

No doubt it will take some digging to figure out what is going on here. Microsoft WPF technologies include Smart Tags and LINQ. The Creative Commons "Neurocommons" ontology work is based on W3C RDF and SPARQL. How these opposing technologies interoperate with legacy MSOffice 2003 and 2007 desktops is an interesting question. One that may hold the answer to the larger problem of re-purposing MSOffice for the Open Web? <br><br>

We know Microsoft is re-purposing MSOffice for the MS Web. Perhaps this work with Creative Commons will help to open up the Microsoft desktop productivity environment to the Open Web? One can always hope :)<br><br>

Dr Dobbs has the Microsoft - Creative Commons announcement; <a href="http://www.ddj.com/windows/215802114">Microsoft Releases Open Tools for Scientific Research ...... Joins Creative Commons in releasing the Ontology Add-in</a>

neurocommons.org/Main_Page - Preview

msoffice creative-commons neurocommons open-web rdf semantic-web

Like someone finding out that the rapture has happened, and they've been left behind, Tim O'Reilly shakes his fists and shouts to the heavens that Amazon must support open standards. He argues that in-spite of incredible market success, the Amazon Kindle will fail because the document format is not Open. He even argues that Apple, with the iPod and iPhone, have figured out how to blend Open Web formats and application development with proprietary hardware initiatives.... <br><br>"The Amazon Kindle has sparked huge media interest in e-books and has seemingly jump-started the market. Its instant wireless access to hundreds of thousands of e-books and seamless one-click purchasing process would seem to give it an enormous edge over other dedicated e-book platforms. Yet I have a bold prediction: Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years."<br><br>

TO points to ePub as an open format, apparently not realizing the format falls far short of Open Web advances designed to enable a complete publication-typesetter model. The WebKit and Mozilla open source communities are pushing the envelope of Open Web development with an extremely advanced document model based on HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, and JavaScript4+. ePub on the other hand is stuck in 1998, supporting the aging HTML4 - CSS2.1 specs. Very sad.<br><br>

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amazon-kindle ePub Tim-OReilly Open-Web documents

Awesome commentary in the must read category. JC nails it; starting with "layout"! ....... "We were both part of the same team and he was creating some UI elements that I was to wire up. As I sat there (in awe) watching him work I realized that much of his considerable skill was rooted in fundamentals not unlike the art of programming. Of course, there are design skills that are intuitive that can't be "learned." But, that can also be said of the logical clarity found in a really elegant data model or a brilliant inheritance tree. I am certainly no designer, but I have observed the more creative among us for several years and have gained some insight into their world. In this article I'll share some basic principles that can help raise your design acumen and improve the experience of your users...... "

Layout
I'd like to attack my goal of imparting design wisdom by breaking the topic into four buckets. The first is layout.

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ajax open-web ria silverlight layout air webkit

Just because the web has been open so far doesn't mean that it will stay that way. Flash and Silverlight, arguably the two market-leading technology toolkits for rich media applications are not open. Make no mistake - Microsoft and Adobe aim to have their proprietary plug-ins, aka pseudo-browsers, become the rendering engines for the next generation of the Web.

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open-web flash silverlight ajax html-css ria

Excellent "quick" explanation of basic Web technologies like HTML, XHTML, CSS, SVG PNG, etc.

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tutorial open-web css3 html5

One of the best ways to create that perception (and reality) is to get more mobile developers building for the Web instead of any specific platform. It's a win for developers looking to reach the broader market. It's a win for end-users who shouldn't be forced into picking a specific platform or network (eg: iPhone/AT&T) just to get access to certain applications. It's a win for Google. Who is it not good for? You don't have to look far.

www.informationweek.com/...could_there_be.html - Preview

chrome ria web-apps mobile open-web

Response to two ZDNet articles about Google Chrome. The first article, "Who Wins with Google Chrome" is very positive, but for mostly all the wrong reasons. The second article, "Five reasons why Chrome will crash and burn" is very critical; again for all the wrong reasons. Clearly much of the world doesn't get RiA. Not do they have a clue as to why it's so important to the future of the Open Web.

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open-web ria chrome webkit

One of the comments to this post really caught my eye: ...... "Flash has always had better rendering consistency across platforms. However, HTML is much easier to build.

I always wondered why someone (Adobe?) doesn’t build a HTML/CSS/JS to Flash bridge. Sort of like sIfr but for the whole page. I really thought AIR could be that bridge. Write once, and render anywhere. :) ......... "

The thing is, the Adobe AiR runtime implements the WebKit layout engine. Whcih means WebKit documents based on HTML/CSS/JS should render just fine.

The real question will be how Adobe AiR handles the EcmaScript mess! Will they go with the ActionSript 3 version of JS - the one that is optimised for Tamarin? Or will they scale back to the MIcrosoft-Yahoo crippled version of official EcmaScript? My guess is that they push forward with ActiveScript 3 and try to convince WebKit and Mozilla groups to carry the open sourced Tamarin JiT. That would protect AiR developers as well as those who are seriously concerned about the future of the open web going forward.

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open-web webkit ajax flash air

Look at the date on this! A full year has passed and we now can clearly see the importance to Microsoft of ISO approval for MSOffice-OOXML. The MSOffice SDK provides an easy to implement OOXML <> XAML conversion component, pavign the way for billions of complex, business process rich MSOffice documents to be used by IE-8 and the emerging MS Web-Stack. XAML is proprietary and exclusive to the Microsoft Web.

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xaml xhtml wpf ooxml open-web html css