HTML Technical Review

The [back] button works unintuitively in many cases.
You cannot bookmark a collection of documents in a frameset.
If you do a [reload], the result may be different to what you had.
[page up] and [page down] are often hard to do.
You can get trapped in a frameset.
Searching finds HTML pages, not Framed pages, so search results usually give you pages without the navigation context that they were intended to be in.

XFrames (more)

Since you can't content negotiatiate, noframes markup is necessary for user agents that don't support frames. However, almost no one produces noframes content, and so it ruins Web searches, since search engines are examples of user agents that do not support frames.
There are security problems caused by the fact that it is not visible to the user when different frames come from different sources.

XFrames defines a separate XML application, not a part of XHTML per se, that allows similar functionality to HTML Frames, with fewer usability problems, principally by making the content of the frameset visible in its URI.

Already have 2 implementations (XSmiles, DENG)

XML Handlers

This is part 2 of XML Events.

XML Events defines the binding between event, DOM tree and handler, without specifying exactly what a handler is. This was deliberate, since several existing specs already had event bindings, and by splitting the spec into two it allowed specs to transition more easily.

But now people are clamouring for part 2, that defines handlers. This is particularly being called for by browser builders, like Mozilla, XSmiles, DENG.

(Others, for instance WAI, DI, XForms, SVG, are clamouring for even more: a standard set of device independent events, a binding to DOM manipulation APIs, and namespaced event bindings)

XHTML2

In designing XHTML2, a number of design aims were kept in mind to help direct the design. These included:

As generic XML as possible: if a facility exists in XML, try to use that rather than duplicating it.

Less presentation, more structure: use stylesheets for defining presentation.

More usability: within the constraints of XML, try to make the language easy to write, and make the resulting documents easy to use.

More accessibility: 'designing for our future selves' – the design should be as inclusive as possible.

XHTML2 (more)

Better internationalization.

More device independence: new devices coming online, such as telephones, PDAs, tablets, televisions and so on mean that it is imperative to have a design that allows you to author once and render in different ways on different devices, rather than authoring new versions of the document for each type of device.

Less scripting: achieving functionality through scripting is difficult for the author and restricts the type of user agent you can use to view the document. We have tried to identify current typical usage, and include those usages in markup.

Working method

Based on identified shortcomings of HTML (usually as a result of coordination), try to solve each problem in as simple and XML-like manner as well, while trying to keep the HTML community happy.

Where solutions are more widely applicable, separate them into separate specs. A major example of this is XML Events. (Another is XFrames).

XHTML2: Coordination

The HTML WG has an immense list of groups for coordination. Examples:

Semantic web: better integration with RDF through meta and link

Internationalization: Ruby, bidi, whitespace

Accessibility: access[key], navigation lists, img, longdesc, role attribute, XML Events

CSS: media types, whitespace

DI: img, XML Events, role

XHTML2 status

XHTML2: putting it all together: RDF stuff, XForms, accessibility stuff, DI stuff, XML Events...

Plan to go to last call this month.

Remaining small amount of work to do: access[key], role attribute, whitespace preservation, improve description of relation to RDF

Problem area: media type

How do you identify different profiles via the media type?

WAP2: uses a parameter

XHTML Print: was planning a completely new media type

Profiles: XHTML2+SVG, XHTML2+SMIL etc.: how should we do it?

One suggestion has been to add a parameter that lists the DOM hasfeature strings of the (compound) document.

HTML Technical Review

Overview: Work completed

Work nearing completion

Work to be finished

XFrames