Report by Molly Holzschlag

The morning session was an open discussion regarding the current status of browser and device implementation in the current environment of changing specifications. Specifically, the issue is how HTML in regards to the W3C and the adoption of the WHAT WG’s HTML 5. There were some concerns voiced regarding current leadership and organization of the group as well as concern over the difficulty of W3C processes. Add to that the opening of the group to the public, which raised specific issues for some attendees who fear that vendors would not adopt HTML 5 fast enough, or at all.

Anne Van Kesteren, who works with Opera Software and is an active member of the WHAT WG commented that he felt these concerns were far less problematic than people think, and that with the commitment from the W3C’s HTML WG to adopt the WHAT WG’s HTML5, this was a very positive step forward for the future of HTML. Of course, arguments, particularly regarding <canvas> and accessibility, remain at the heart of the debate with no clear solutions in sight.

There is already an implementation for the Web Forms 2.0 portion of HTML5 in Opera and it’s currently being implemented in Mozilla.

Interestingly, there was precious little conversation about CSS implementation. The focus has clearly shifted back to markup, and the desire to repair HTML so it can address future concerns as well as providing backward compatibility. One concern that was raised by representatives from Nokia was regarding a general disinterest in the mobile space for adoption CSS media type “handheld” on mobile platforms. The extent of this issue is still unclear, but raised a few alarms for folks who are attempting to deliver CSS to numerous media types.

The afternoon session focused on interoperability concerns between vendors. A great deal of the discussion focused on the acceptance that there is a real need to create test suites that are developed and shared between interested and participating vendors. An interesting and potentially pivotal suggestion from Bennet Marks of Nokia and The Open Mobile Alliance, who described a method being used by vendors in the mobile space. In that model, a “cocoon” of vendors create test suites, and a third party oversees the process so the environment is moderated. The end goal is to agree on common baselines, common test suites, and protected discussions between vendors in order to improve interop without compromising individual company and organization goals.

Attendees of the summit agreed that discussions external to vendor specific environments, the W3C and other standards organizations are valuable and necessary to gain broader perspectives along with more specific goals in relation to browser and device interoperability. Everyone agreed that vendors aside, web developers and designers need to begin examining the HTML5 specifications and observe or actively participate in the W3C’s HTML working group so as to keep as current with the emerging specification as possible.

Attending

• Tristan Nitot, Mozilla Europe
• Henri Sivonen, Independent Developer, WHAT WG
• Bennett Marks, Nokia and Open Mobile Alliance
• Brian Suda, W3C, Microformats
• David Storey, Opera Software
• Arve Bersvendsen, Opera Software
• Karl Dubost, W3C
• Ted Drake, Yahoo! Europe
• Daniel Glasman, W3C
• Anne Van Kesteren, WHAT WG and Opera Software
• Molly E. Holzschlag, Vendor Liaison on behalf of Microsoft
• Fraser Pearce, BBC
• Hakon Wium Lie, W3C
• Mike Smith, W3C
• Edwin Aoki, AOL

Related information

• Summit announcement

Interviews from XTech

Ian Forrester from BBC Backstage has posted several video interviews he conducted at XTech, including chats with:

• Steven Pemberton (CWI W3C) and Michael Smith (W3C)
• Ralph Meijer of Jaiku
• Jeremy Keith of Clearleft
• Kevin Anderson (Guardian) and Suw Charman

One old friend at XTech familiar to the XML community was Peter Murray-Rust, founder of the XML-DEV mailing list. Professor Murray-Rust’s interests now range widely around Open Data topics.

XTech sponsors Talis conducted an interview with Professor Murray-Rust, available as a podcast. Topics covered include the changing nature of academic publishing, the importance of primary data to the process, and the potential of the Semantic Web in both streamlining and enriching the endeavour.

Expectnation launches

Expectnation, the speaker, schedule and web site management software behind XTech, has now launched. The brainchild of conference chair Edd Dumbill, Expectnation is now available as a web service for other conferences.

Welcome to the first of two updates of news items from XTech 2007.

Presentations and papers available on web site

To find the papers or slides from XTech 2007 presentations, just visit the relevant session’s page on the schedule. If materials are available, they will be shown linked at the top of the talk summary. (Please bear with us as some speakers are still sending us their slides.)

AMEE launched by Gavin Starks

AMEE — or the Avoiding Mass Extinction Engine — was announced during his XTech keynote by Gavin Starks. AMEE is an online platform focused on tackling climate change. It addresses three main areas:

• Measurement — access to standardised CO2 data and calculations (including the official UK Government figures)

• Profiling — storage and retreival of personal footprints, with reports and analysis

• Sharing and transparency — AMEE is open for collaboration. Users and developers can help develop, extend, and share the measurement of energy consumption around the world

If you’re a software developer, AMEE is a way you can be involved and make a difference in combating climate change.

Microsoft building “Windows Live Europe” in Dublin

Conference sponsors Microsoft announced they were hiring for software developers in Dublin, Ireland. In particular opportunities are available working on adCenter Analytics visualization tools, for software engineers, technical-leads and program managers with a visualization background, artistic sense, and wide development experience.

Jaiku XTech channel

Jaiku is a shared presence service, available online and through mobile phones. During XTech, Jaiku set up a special channel where attendees could converse and share information. For more information, check out Jaiku’s presentation.

To read aggregated coverage of XTech 2007, head over to Planet XTech. Featuring blog posts, bookmarks and photos from the conference, Planet XTech is a good way to get a snapshot of what people are seeing and saying.

If you’re attending XTech, there’s an easy way to get your coverage on to Planet XTech: just tag your blog posts, Flickr pictures or del.icio.us bookmarks as ‘xtech’, and the planet will pick them up.

In Paris this May 15th, XTech 2007, Molly.Com, Inc. and Useful Information Company have combined resources to join industry influentials and peers for the first annual Browser, Standards and Interop Summit in parallel with the XTech conference.

The Summit will consist of an open meeting of as many browser vendors, standards advocates, W3C and related standards supporters as we can gather. We will also have workgroups and an open mike session so everyone can be heard.

The day will be open to observation for interested journalists (particularly bloggers, podcasters and videocasters) based on available space. Participants will include representatives from Opera Software, Mozilla, Microsoft Corporation and others. It’s an opportunity to make voices heard in a more neutral, open discussion outside the vendor or standards groups themselves.

As Web developers and designers are all too aware, a lot of our effort goes into skirting round the inconsistencies in web browsers. We care about giving our users the best experience possible, so we take the time. A lot of time.

We can save a lot of that time if we also tackle the root causes: unclear, problematic standards and related issues with browser interoperability. While standards can provide the palette from which the next revisions of browsers take features, interoperability work can fix things in the near term, and for the future, getting us back to the original platform and user agent agnostic vision of the Web.

Both Useful Information Company and Molly.Com, Inc. are splitting the event room cost. Vendors and participants will be required to provide their own travel and lodging, there will be no sponsorships taken from anyone although volunteer opportunities to assist with the Summit in a number of ways, such as providing refreshments, are available.

• When: Tuesday 15 June 2007
• Location: Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel / XTech, Paris, France
• Room: Details will be posted at registration desk
• Cost: FREE
• Time: 09:00 – 17:00, interested attendees are welcome to join at any point during the day

Hope to see you there! Please do let us know via comments on Molly.com if you’re interested.

You can now plan your own version of the XTech 2007 schedule. Just click on the star next to a talk to create your personal timetable.

Once you’ve flagged the sessions you’re interested in going to, the personal schedule will show you a single page view of your week. You can even add the schedule to your calendaring program thanks to the iCal export.

Next week’s XTech 2007 birds-of-a-feather (BOF) sessions will be open to public participation at no cost. Sessions include:

• BarCamping and co-working, Parisian style

• Online distribution of scientific research

• Widgets: the small, cute, powerful side of webapps

• Geolocation

The BOF sessions take place from 17.30 to 19.00 on Tuesday, May 15, and will be held at the conference hotel: Novotel Paris Tour Eiffel, 61 quai de Grenelle, 75015 Paris.

It’s a great opportunity for the Parisian tech community and the speakers and attendees at XTech to mix and learn from each other.

BOF attendees should check in at the XTech registration desk.

A number of O’Reilly authors will be presenting at XTech 2007.

During the reception on Wednesday 16th May, come and meet Priscilla Walmsley, Matt Webb, Eric van der Vlist, Jo Walsh and Edd Dumbill around the O’Reilly table.

There you will be able to ask them their latest plans, talk about the latest technologies they are involved with or even ask them what it is like to write a book for O’Reilly.

Online registration for XTech 2007 is closing in a day’s time, on May 2. So hurry now to make sure you don’t miss out.

Highlights of XTech 2007 include:

• Keynotes from Gavin Starks, Adam Greenfield and Matt Webb
• Ubiquitous Web Day, providing a special focus on the spread of the web outside of the desktop browser
• Tutorials covering Web 2.0, OpenStreetMap, XForms, XQuery and XML Schema
• Four conference tracks covering the full gamut of web development: from backroom to public policy.

Register now and we’ll see you in Paris on May 15!

Steve Coast is the founder of OpenStreetMap, an open data challenger to commercial maps. Steve will be presenting a tutorial on OpenStreetMap at XTech 2007, on 15 May, during which attendees will get hands-on experience of creating and working with mapping data.

XTech programme chair Edd Dumbill spoke to Steve about the OpenStreetMap project.

Edd Dumbill: Many of us have heard of OpenStreetMap, but what exactly is it?

Steve Coast: OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a freely available map of the world which anyone can edit. Of course, we don’t have most of the world yet so we need your help to get there. It’s a bit like Wikipedia but for maps.

ED: What made you start OpenStreetMap?

SC: Map data tends to be quite expensive and have lots of legal restrictions. Even ‘free’ maps like Google Maps actually have a lot of restrictions on usage, and the underlying data is hard to get your hands on, if at all.

So it seemed like a fairly simple thing to let people build the data themselves and sew up each individual’s map in to a tapestry and map the whole world.

ED: How has the established geo-world, e.g. the UK’s Ordnance Survey, reacted to what you are doing?

SC: Some guys, like Multimap.com, are really positive and sponsor us. Others take a bit of a dim view — for all the same reasons Wikipedia gets criticism now and in the past. It will never work. It will never be accurate. A lot of this stems from people not being exposed to Free Data before — people are scared about how they’re going to compete with free.

ED: As a developer, what sort of things could I do with the data?

SC:As an open source developer you basically don’t have access to any map data other than OpenStreetMap, so it fulfills all the traditional things. Maps on your website, in your application, routing, geocoding… but you can do more. You can derive work from it, make pretty animations of progress and so on.

ED: What will attendees at your tutorial be able to do?

SC: They’re going to learn how OpenStreetMap works from top to bottom and then they’re going to go on to the streets of Paris and capture some data. They can then come back and learn how to add this to OpenStreetMap and collaboratively build up the data available. It should be a lot of fun!

• Read about the tutorial and register for XTech 2007 now!