This document summarizes major web technology milestones from the first half of 2008 and previews developments to watch for in 2009. Some key points covered include: - The first beta release of Internet Explorer 8 in March 2008 was a major milestone. - CSS support is now largely consistent across major browsers, including support for CSS Selectors and the Selectors API in IE8. - HTML5 offline applications and client-side storage are implemented in multiple browsers. - SVG support continues to improve with the Tiny 1.2 recommendation and plans to add support to IE via behaviors. - The Geolocation API specification was published and implemented in several browsers in 2008. - Newly developed JavaScript

1. Web standards & the browser landscape
The year in review, the year ahead

2. Michael(tm) Smith
mike@w3.org
http://people.w3.org/mike
東京 (I live in Tokyo)

3. http://slideshare.net/sideshowbarker

4. http://slideshare.net/sideshowbarker/
mikesmith-wnd09-presentation

5. For overview of first 6 months of 2008:
http://slideshare.net/sideshowbarker/
xtech-may-2008

6. The single most significant Web-
technologies milestone of the first
half of 2008 was the first beta
release of IE8, in March 2008.

7. Other major Web-technologies
milestones of first half of 2008...

8. CSS3 Selectors support now
complete in most major browsers.

9. CSS Selectors API now
implemented across all major
browser engines? (including IE8)

10. ARIA support now implemented
across all major browser engines
(including IE8).

11. HTML5 offline applications and
client-side data storage features
now implemented in multiple
browsers (for good overview, see
Brad Neuberg slides for WDN09).

12. Milestones after May 2008, and
what to pay attention to in 2009…

13. SVG

14. SVG (ScalableVector Graphics) enables
you to create images & animations that:
• automatically scale up & down to
any size
• as with HTML5 <canvas>, are
fully dynamic and JavaScript
scriptable

15. December 2008: SVG Tiny 1.2 published
as full W3C Recommendation (which
means it is a final Standard)

16. http://www.w3.org/TR/SVGTiny12/

17. December 2008: Brad Neuberg (Google)
announces he is working on using IE
Behaviors to enable SVG support in any
Flash-enabled browser — so you can have
SVG support in IE 6 (or IE 8, or whatever).
• not just static SVG, but also dynamic,
JavaScript scriptable SVG
• aiming for public release by late
summer/autumn 2009

18. 16 Jan 2009: SMIL patch lands in Mozilla
• Brian Birtles and Daniel Holbert
• provides necessary base to enable Moz/
Firefox to be brought on-par with SVG
animations support in Opera and WebKit
• Mozilla already has better SVG filters
support than WebKit, so after Moz gets
SVG animations, their SVG support will
gaining on Opera’s

19. http://codedread.com/svg-support.php

20. Autumn 2009: SVG Open event will
take place in San Francisco Bay Area.

21. W3C
Geolocation API

22. The W3C Geolocation API enables you to
create location-aware Web applications that
provide things like:
• turn-by-turn route navigation (just like
GPS navigation systems in cars)
• location-tagged status updates in social
networking applications
• much more…

23. December 2008: W3C Working Draft
of Geolocation API published.

24. http://w3.org/TR/geolocation-API/

25. Support for Geolocation API in browsers:
• February 2009: Lars Erik Bolstad
announces Geo API support in Opera
• October 2008: Greg Bolsinga lands Geo
API support in WebKit
• August 2008: Doug Turner lands Geo
API support in Mozilla
• August 2008: Andrei Popescu (from
Google, editor of W3C Geolocation API
spec) lands Geo API support in Gears

26. JavaScript
engines

27. • Feb 2009: Opera announces new JS
engine, Carakan
• Sep 2008: Google Chrome released,
withV8 JS engine
• Sep 2008: WebKit project lands
SquirrelFish Extreme
• Aug 2008: Mozilla TraceMonkey lands

29. Q: Why do we really need JavaScript engines
that are so blazingly fast? (JS speed in current
browsers seems quite fast to me.)

30. A: Mobile.
A high-end smartphone is likely to have, say, a
400MHz ARM CPU.
WiFi-enabled gaming device like the Nintendo
DSi is likely to have a 133MHz ARM CPU.
While you may find speed of JS engines to be
quite fast in desktop browsers, you won’t find
it quite so satisfyingly fast in browsers running
on those kinds of devices…

31. Chromium
(Google Chrome)

32. September 2008: Google Chrome
first beta release.

33. Things to consider:
• Google poached^w recruited some of
the brightest browser engineers in the
world to work on Chrome/Chromium.
• Dev team has solid commitment to
standards.
• Browser competition is a good thing.
• Chrome/Chromium work will bring new
innovations, help to drive new standards.

34. How to keep up
with browser news

35. One-stop shopping:
http://ajaxian.com/
Who to thank: Dion Almaer,
Ben Galbraith, Chris Heilmann et al

36. See also:
Simon Willison
http://simonwillison.net/
http://friendfeed.com/simonw

37. Developer tools
in browsers

38. • Firebug, etc., in Mozilla: talk with Ben
Galbraith and Dion Almaer
• Dragonfly in Opera: talk with David Storey,
Lars Erik Bolstad, and Chris Mills
• Developer Tools feature in IE8: talk with
Joshua Allen,Will Mason, Chris Wilson, Pete
LePage
• Web Inspector in WebKit (also in Chrome):
nobody fromWebKit here atWDN to talk with :(

39. Sun
OMS Video

40. December 2008: Rob Glidden announces
publication of OMSVideo draft spec.

41. http://www.robglidden.com/2008/12/
oms-video-draft/

42. What is it? A new specification for a
royalty-free video codec, essentially
competing with MPEG4 AVC (H.264).
Sun is spending large amounts of money to
do a very systematic review of patents and
prior art (to ensure that it does not infringe
on any existing intellectual property.)

43. Significance: OMSVideo could help
tremendously to change the state of video
on the Web in a very positive way (and also
IPTV — which is likely the real reason Sun
is spending so much money to develop it).

44. W3C Validator

45. August 2008: Olivier Théreaux announces
HTML5 support in W3CValidator (using
Henri Sivonen’s validator.nu backend code).

46. If you use the W3C Validator, consider
donating/sponsoring to help support it.
http://w3.org/QA/Tools/Donate

47. Come to Web Directions North 2010!

48. Thanks for your attention.
Questions? Comments?