Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Each new version of a specifi cation of a web technology has to be carefully vetted by W3C before it can
become a standard. The HTML and HTTP specifi cations are subject to this process, and each new set of
updates to these specifi cations yields a new version of the standard. Each standard has to go through
a working draft, a candidate recommendation, and a proposed recommendation stage before it can be
considered a fully operational standard. At each stage of the process, members of the W3C consortium
vote on which amendments to make, or even on whether to cancel the standard completely and send it
back to square one.
It sounds like a very painful and laborious method of creating a standard format, and not something
you'd think of as spearheading the cutting edge of technical revolution. Indeed, the software companies
of the mid-1990s found the processes involved too slow, so they set the tone by implementing new inno-
vations themselves and then submitting them to the standards body for approval. Netscape started by
introducing new elements in its browser, such as the <font /> element, to add presentational content
to the web pages. This proved popular, so Netscape added a whole raft of elements that enabled users
to alter aspects of presentation and style on web pages. Indeed, JavaScript itself was such an innovation
from Netscape.
When Microsoft entered the fray, it was playing catch up for the fi rst two iterations of its Internet
Explorer browser. However, with Internet Explorer 3 in 1996, they established a roughly equal set of
features to compete with Netscape and so were able to add their own browser-specifi c elements. Very
quickly, the Web polarized between these two browsers, and pages viewable on one browser quite
often wouldn't appear on another. One problem was that Microsoft had used its much stronger position
in the market to give away its browser for free, whereas Netscape still needed to sell its own browser
because it couldn't afford to freely distribute its fl agship product. To maintain a competitive position,
Netscape needed to offer new features to make the user want to purchase its browser rather than use
the free Microsoft browser.
Things came to a head with both companies' version 4 browsers, which introduced dynamic page func-
tionality. Unfortunately, Netscape did this by the means of a <layer /> element, whereas Microsoft
chose to implement it via scripting language properties and methods. The W3C needed to take a fi rm
stand here, because one of its three principal aims had been compromised: that of universal access.
How could access be universal if users needed a specifi c vendor's browser to view a particular set of
pages? They decided on a solution that used existing standard HTML elements and Cascading Style
Sheets, both of which had been adopted as part of the Microsoft solution. As a result, Microsoft gained
a dominant position in the browser war. It hasn't relinquished this position; the Netscape Navigator
browser never had a counter to Internet Explorer's constant updates, and its replacement, Firefox, was
slow to expand its user base. Other browsers, such as Opera, Safari, and Chrome, along with Firefox
continue to chip away at Microsoft's dominance in the market. However, Microsoft's Internet Explorer
is still the most widely used browser today.
With a relatively stable version of the HTML standard in place with version 4.01, which boasts a set of
features that will take any browser manufacturer a long time to implement completely, attention was
turned to other areas of the Web. A new set of standards was introduced in the late 1990s to govern the
means of presenting HTML (style sheets) and the representation of the HTML document in script (the
Document Object Model or DOM). Other standards emerged, such as Extensible Markup Language
(XML), which offers a common format for representing data in a way that preserves its structure.
The W3C web site (www.w3.org) has a huge number of standards in varying stages of creation. Not
all of these standards concern us, and not all of the ones that concern us can be found at this web site.
However, the vast majority of standards that do concern us can be found there.
