Don’t call me DOM

I gave a couple of talks over the past month, where I chose not to use the W3C-traditional HTML-based slides (using Slidy), but instead to use a more graphical approach, using two different tools:

• Prezi, a Flash-based commercial tool that I used for a presentation I gave on Web 2.0 and beyond
• JessyInk, an open-source extension to the open-source SVG editor InkScape, with which I built the presentation I gave on W3C and the Social Web.

I’m summarizing below my experiences with both these tools.

Prezi

Prezi is a Flash-based tool, that allows both to build and show 2D-presentations.  Read more... (1384 words, estimated 5:32 mins reading time)

A growing number of W3C groups are in the process of developing JavaScript APIs: the HTML Working Group, the Web Applications Working Group, the SVG Working Group, the Geolocation Working Group, and the newly created Device APIs and Policy Working Group of which I am one of the Staff Contacts.

The Web Applications Working Group has been developing a common IDL format to define these APIs, called WebIDL, which basically takes the OMG IDL format and extend it to make it more useful and informative in the context of JavaScript APIs.  Read more... (369 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

I have just reported the bug in the w3c-dtd-xhtml Ubuntu package that had prevented me from using the Apache XML Catalog resolver to use local XHTML DTDs rather than the on-line ones when using the Saxon XSLT processor.

Hitting the on-line DTDs on every invokation of Saxon unnecessarily burdens the W3C Web site. I had already found guidance on how to use the Apache XML Catalog resolver to avoid that, but it wouldn’t work with the default XML catalog list provided by Ubuntu in /etc/xml/catalog for the XHTML DTDs.  Read more... (165 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)