CHRIS WILSON

IE PLATFORM ARCHITECT

MICROSOFT

Tags: chriswilson, internetexplorer, movingthewebforward

MOVING THE WEB FORWARD

Who Is This Character?An unknown member of Flock of Seagulls?

Browser guy since 1993(NCSA Mosaic for Windows)

Joined Microsoft in 1995 IE 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0

Web standards guy - HTML, CSS, DOM, I18n, XSL

Now IE “Platform Architect”

…and HTML WG co-chair

Winner: 2007 Ajax Experience SF “Best Hair” award

What I’m here to talk about

The challenges we face in moving the web forward

What I’m not here to talk about

IE.Next features, release date, or name

the vision of the web (ca 1993)

Make it SimpleSimple to create, simple to serve

Share: everyone can be a content producer…but not everyone WAS.

Driven by the need to interconnectHyperlink referencing, not folder structure

“Web 2.0” is…

“Caring about the quality of web UI” Better user experience

Rich social experiences to make the web immersive Connecting people to people, not just information

Portable across platforms and devices And languages, cultures, etc.

3 types of people

Web developers

Browser vendors

Everybody else.

The World as a Web Developer

Is painful.

Browser Deployment

Data from www.netapplications.com

The World as a Browser Vendor

Pure bliss.

hacking is lucrative

Security isn’t just buffer overruns

Exploits target complex interactions (between features and applications)

“Trustworthy Browsing” means protecting against web fraud too

Don’t Break the Web

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IE has over half a BILLION users

Compatibility prevents browser upgrade

“The bar” is different for each browserBecause current sites expect IE 7 to work like

IE 6, and Firefox 2.0 to work like Firefox 1.5

Don’t Break the Web

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IE6 -> IE7 cycle allowed solidification

May not know you rely on bad behavior

We can’t break my mom’s banking siteShe takes away “IE’s broken”

The question is…

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Who do we listen to?

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Users: don’t break anything, Tabs, printing, streamlined experience, search

Web developers: Fix your bugs! New features! Make it follow the standards, who cares about compat! But don’t break my page.

Hackers: We Will pØwn You!

Everybody else

Banks DNS Servers, CAs, other infrastructure System admins/IT managers Web development tool makers Governments and their mandated guidelines My mom The rest of humanity

Where is our common ground?

Leave the web better than we found it

Define “Better”

SecureStable InteroperablePerformantPowerful

“Secure”…

…is difficult in a world with complex interactions and trust relationships

Security is everyone’s problem

Increased attack vectors with AjaxCode sharing requires Trust (or sandbox)Proxying or script inclusion requires trust

Have a security model for your codeThink about how people would abuse it.

Privacy

Aggregation of user information without user consent or knowledge is a problem Privacy is not just cookies!

Syndication and mashups are catalysts External code or data puts your customers’ privacy in the

hands of a third party

Apps & Services need privacy models.

Stable

Chris’ Rules of Compatibility

If a page works in Browser x version y, it has to still work in Browser x version y+1

If a page only uses standards, and it works in one browser, the effort to get it to work in another browser should approach zero.

Don’t needlessly multiply the test matrix(don’t trickle out standards support)

Browser Compatibility

Data from www.netapplications.com

"Quirks" mode

“Standards mode” is increasingly popular

50% of US top 200 are in “standards mode”

There’s no clear “contract” – should you hack around browser bugs in standards mode?

“Quirks” no longer protects compatibility

As the web moves to “standards” mode

IE will need authors to opt in to standards

Interoperable

The standards need to reflect reality, and reality needs to reflect the standards. Work to be compliant to the standards. Stamp out ambiguities in the standards. Expand the standards together.

We need to work together That doesn’t just mean sit on the same groups, it means

working to common solutions that satisfy all needs

Moving the Web Forward (examples)

DOM level 1 – good

XHTML 2.0 – bad

WebAPI WG & XMLHTTPRequest – good and bad

Powerful (== new functionality)

Interoperable power is the important bit That’s why we created…

HTML WG deliverables

A language evolved from HTML4 for describing the semantics of documents and applications XML *and* “classic HTML” syntaxes Document Object Model (DOM) APIs for the language

New forms and UI widgets such as progress bars, datagrids, menus, and other controls

APIs for the manipulation of linked media Editing APIs, WYSIWYG editing features

Intellectual Property

Operates under the W3C Patent Policy. Goal: Assure that HTML can be freely implemented This is hard work

Intellectual Property does matter (And it’s different for large vendors)

Open standards need to be free

So free standards can’t afford to ignore IP

HTML5 Design Principles

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-design-principles/Overview.html

CompatibilityUtility Interoperability

Compatibility

Support Existing Content Degrade Gracefully Do not Reinvent the Wheel Pave the Cowpaths Evolution Not Revolution

Utility

Solve Real Problems Priority of Constituencies Media Independence Universal Access Support World Languages Secure By Design Separation of Concerns

Interoperability

Well-defined Behavior Avoid Needless Complexity Handle Errors

Challenges

“Openness” is somewhat misleadingLots of people talkingWhat does “consensus” mean?

Continuing problems with tone/politenessHard to fairly police 400 people and be inclusive

Relationship with WHATWGPeople still sometimes confuse the two

What about Microsoft?

We are working on IE.Next

We are committed to standards

Web 2.0 changes the assumptions for us

IE.Next

Huge investment in interoperable layout Challenging to not break the web

Programming model interoperability & perf Also challenging to not break the web

New “Web 2.0” needs –mash-ups, etc.

Opting in to standards-compliant behavior

Think global, act local

Web 2.0 is an evolution, not a revolution

Don’t Break the Web – browsers must support “old” content

New standards must be backward- and forward-compatible

Our goal: leave the web better than we found it

Help develop standards - http://www.w3.org/html/wg

Me: Chris.Wilson@microsoft.comhttp://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso

IE Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie

Wikipedia Cookie article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie

LOLCATS: www.icanhazcheezburger.comTags: chriswilson, internetexplorer, movingthewebforward