Web Application Workshop to Address Performance Challenges Across Platforms

W3C Focuses on Methods and Technologies that Help Web Applications Work Seamlessly, Regardless of Device

http://www.w3.org/ -- 5 June 2007 -- Today and tomorrow, Web application experts are coming together in Dublin, Ireland, to see how the use of declarative techniques that capture the application developer's intentions, rather than the exact means for how to realize them, could reduce the costs of developing and maintaining Web applications. The W3C's Workshop on Declarative Models of Distributed Web Applications is focused on making more effective Web applications available within a full range of environments - whether in the home, office or mobile settings. It is hosted by MobileAware with the support of the Irish State Development Agency, Enterprise Ireland.

"Developers spend a great deal of time and effort struggling with the details of how different browsers vary in their support for markup, stylesheets and scripting," explained Dave Raggett, W3C Activity Lead for the Ubiquitous Web Applications Activity. "This will get even more complicated with the increasing range of devices being used to access the Web. This Workshop explores the opportunities for allowing developers to focus on the application and end-user experience, leaving the details for how this is to be realized to tools that deal with the capabilities and shortcomings of each device."

Web applications currently involve a considerable amount of scripting both in the Web page and Web server. Often, this also means reworking applications for different devices and environments. This Workshop will look at the potential for applying declarative techniques to describing Web applications, as a whole rather than just the markup downloaded to each device.

Today, server-side scripts are used extensively to generate client-side markup on the fly, and the cost of developing and maintaining these scripts represents an opportunity for declarative based approaches. The emergence of XML databases and XQuery looks promising. Likewise, the Semantic Web can be applied to representing and reasoning over descriptions of device capabilities and access control rules. Security and usability are key themes for realizing the potential for new kinds of Web applications, particularly, those involving richer access to device capabilities and to personal or confidential information.

Important considerations for the Workshop are the challenges raised in dealing with trust, identity, privacy and security. As applications require interactions with multiple devices - such as remote printers or other application servers, or ubiquitous applications that are run in response to external events - there needs to be a way to provide secure access to those devices without prompting multiple logins with each transaction.

W3C will make the Workshop program, position papers and presentations publicly available from the Workshop page along with a summary of discussions.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. W3C primarily pursues its mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines designed to ensure long-term growth for the Web. Over 400 organizations are of the Consortium. W3C is jointly run by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan,and has additional Offices worldwide. For more information see http://www.w3.org/

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