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Firefox 3 – Plays Well With Others

Mozilla endeavors to promote open standards, while at the same time, create a better Web, even if it means using the “other guys” specifications and DOM extensions. Here is a summary of features added to Firefox 3 (Gecko 1.9) that either implement a good open specification or someone else’s DOM extensions – for the betterment of the Web:

WHATWG Web Applications (link)

Internet Explorer DOM Extensions (link)

  • clientTop and clientLeft DOM extensions are now supported.
  • elementFromPoint DOM extension is now supported (bug 199692).
  • oncut, oncopy onpaste, onbeforecut, onbeforecopy and onbeforepaste DOM event extensions are now supported (bug 280959).
  • getClientRects and getBoundingClientRect DOM extensions are now supported (bug 174397).
  • The HttpOnly cookie extension attribute is now supported (bug 178993).

Yes, some of the Internet Explorer extensions are also WHATWG specs.

Not Invented Here? Not a problem 🙂

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Of RIA, Open Web and Plugins

Adobe’s Ryan Stewart has a post on the friction between Open Web advocates and “RIA vendors”. I think Ryan does a good job describing the work being done at Adobe (and Microsoft) to become active in a larger ecosystem, namely open source and cross-platform. There are a couple bits I want to respond (emphasis mine):

I think it’s indicative of wider problems between the “open web” and RIA vendors. The basic issue is that everyone’s too combative. I wish more open web people would look at what both Microsoft and Adobe are doing and see that all in all, the RIA solutions are becoming more open, not less. In fact, I’d argue that RIAs have moved the entire web in a more open direction.

I think Ryan’s use of the term “RIA” to indicate a “proprietary vendor plugin” will cause confusion. Rich Internet Applications can be created without the need for proprietary vendor plugins. Also, what Adobe has done around open sourcing parts of their plugin system has been welcomed by everyone. However, there are still large chunks of closed source and encumbered file formats that work against the Open Web.

I’m not sure if RIAs will ever be as fully open as the open web advocates want, but think how far applications in the browser have come (as far as openness) since the days of ActiveX enhancements in IE.

As I have stated, RIAs can be fully open and, as a card carrying Open Web advocate, those make me happy. However, how far have Adobe and Microsoft come from the days of ActiveX vendor plugins? Last time I checked, ActiveX was still the technology of choice for Flash and Silverlight on IE. Honestly, even if Flash and Silverlight were completely open source, the fact they are plugins and not native Web standards will be a stumbling block for many Open Web folks.

They’ve [Flash and Silverlight] pushed the web forward in a way that it seemed the open web groups couldn’t (video, vector graphics, easy cross platform/browser development).

Yes, they have pushed the Web forward, I’ll admit that. The resurgence of SVG and the new & elements are evidence of that. But then Linux is a platform too, and I suppose that Mozilla could market Firefox as the one, true cross platform Web platform – but we don’t. We encourage choice and competition. We want developers to have choice too and not be locked into a single stack. Let me know when Flash can run a Silverlight application.

Mike Shaver responds in a comment to the post.

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Joel Spolsky and Weak Metaphors

Joel’s latest strategy letter is a long-winded diatribe on the current state of browser-based application development. There is some good stuff in there, but some of the metaphors are really stretched and the comparisons between desktop and web-based applications is a bit broken. Joel seems to think that web-based applications should support the same kind of features as desktop applications. This line of thought can only go so far.

For example, cut and paste between applications. I assume Joel wants to copy more than text from edit boxes and selected HTML from the page. No reason this couldn’t be done today (Live Clipboard anyone?) but doing so requires cooperation between the applications in question. The Web platform already supports it. And hey, the same kind of limits occur on desktop applications. Try pasting an Outlook contact into Quicken. On the Web right now, microformats and mashups provide functionality not easily possible in desktop applications.

Joel also brings up lack of UI consistency in web applications. Not so sure about this one. I believe a little bit of consistency goes a long way and many web applications share common UI elements and concepts. Let’s not forget just how consistent desktop applications can be. Microsoft Office seems somewhat consistent with its applications, except for the ribbon is missing from some. Sure, it may not be appropriate in all applications. I’m fine with that – just not overly consistent. And take a look at the UI’s of “web-style” desktop applications and media players and tools like Microsoft Expression (best if viewed with Silverlight). Again, just saying a little consistency goes a long way.

Finally, we get to the “NewSDK” concept. The super-do-it-all framework that all web applications use and Joel compares this to Microsoft Windows and the Windows SDK. Personally, I would be comparing the Web to Windows, not some framework that runs on the Web. Compare that “NewSDK” framework to MFC or WPF. In a followup post, Joel responds to readers who forwarded their version of the “NewSDK” by saying:

Indeed countless people have already emailed me to say that “NewSDK is here, it’s (choose one) Flex Builder, Google Web Toolkit, Java Web Start, Silverlight, JavaFX, Flash, ActionScript, MORFIK, OpenLaszlo, … (many omitted)” Ahem. These are not HERE until your TAXI DRIVER has heard of them, because I assure you he’s heard of Microsoft Windows.

Again, he’s comparing apples to oranges. Ask your TAXI DRVIER if he’s heard of the Internet. And again, I’d use MFC, WinForms, VCL as desktop examples of the “NewSDK” examples listed in the quote. Ask him if he’s heard of WPF.

Here’s another quote that rubbed me the wrong way:

If you’re a web app developer, and you don’t want to support the SDK everybody else is supporting, you’ll increasingly find that people won’t use your web app, because it doesn’t, you know, cut and paste and support address book synchronization and whatever weird new interop features we’ll want in 2010.

The ideas in this quote are exactly NOT what the Web is about. This is anti-Web. Forcing interop by mandating a framework is ridiculous in a place where open standards and formats are embraced. Web development can and is improving, but let’s not try to turn the Web into Windows. Of course, some people already are.

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Firefox 3 – ContentEditable

Firefox 3 is expanding its rich WYSIWYG editing capabilities by adding support for the contentEditable attribute. Setting contentEditable to “true” allows you to make parts of a document editable. Firefox already supports using designMode to make an entire document editable. Here is a previous post about using designMode.

Here is an example of using contentEditable to make a simple rich editor in HTML: contenteditable.htm
(NOTE: requires Firefox3.a6+ or a browser that supports contentEditable)

The new contentEditable features support the same API as designMode for interacting with the editable element:

  • document.execCommand – Executes the given command.
  • document.queryCommandEnabled – Determines whether the given command can be executed on the document in its current state.
  • document.queryCommandIndeterm – Determines whether the current selection is in an indetermined state.
  • document.queryCommandState – Determines whether the given command has been executed on the current selection.
  • document.queryCommandValue – Determines the current value of the document, range, or current selection for the given command.