1 WWW 7 Trip Report Brian Kelly Address UK Web Focus UKOLN University of Bath UKOLN is funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

2 Contents Introduction Tim Berners-Lee's Keynote talk W3C Tracks at WWW 7 Conference Developer's Day Keynote on Java Papers Search engines Metadata Characterisation Markup Question See for trip report, these slides, etc.

3 About the Conference WWW 7 Conference: Held in Brisbane, Australia from April 1998 About 1,400 participants Exciting new technology - RDF See Conference papers online for short period

4 Evolvability (1) Tim Berners-Lee's opening keynote talk talked about "evolvability" of the web: Evolution of markup languages and data Goal: version 1 software partially understands version 2 data. Based on "we will be smarter in the future" Goal: version A software partially understands version B data. Based on "Others will be smarter than us" Use web as the registry (decentralised evolution)

5 Evolvability (2) RDF (Resource Description Framework ): See a document as a combination of logical assertions Draw conclusions by combining many documents Global reasoning engines, based on RDF could be "devastating" "Is there a green car for sale for around $15,000 in Queensland?" "Get involved in RDF, XML, Schemas" "Design for evolvability" See

6 W3C Tracks W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): Gives update on W3C activities in the W3C Track at WWW Conferences Covers: –User Interface Domain –Architecture Domain –Technology and Society Domain Talks available at

7 W3C - HTML Futures HTML Futures: Talk given by Dave Raggett HTML 4.0 now complete. Need to look at HTML futures. Workshop in US in May. See details, including position papers at See Dave's slides at

8 W3C - HTML Futures (2) Mobile Computers Importance of mobile computers (PDAs, phones, car computers, etc.)NOTE Dearing report Relationship with accessibility issues Challenges: –Small screens– Long round trip times –Limited processing power / memory Solutions: –Abbreviations for headings –Use of styles (rather than, e.g., tables) –Expanding and collapsing outlines –Aural and visual media (headings spoken, read body) –HTML 4.0 and CSS 2.0

9 W3C - Maths MML: Math(s) Markup Language An XML Application W3C Recommendation agreed on 7 April 1998 Java and ActiveX renderers Dave Raggett has written an authoring tool (Windows 95) See

10 W3C - Architecture Architecture Domain: Promote coherent Web architecture Automate information management - If a decision can be made by machine, it should Working on: HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/NG Jigsaw server (in Java, freely available) XML SMIL See

11 W3C - XML XML: Extensible Markup Language Addresses HTML's lack of evolvability XML 1.0 Recommendation in Feb 1998 Note well-formedness: Make end-tags explicit:... Make empty elements explicit: Quote attributes <IMG SRC="logo" HEIGHT="20".. Use consistent upper/lower case and valid: Need DTD

12 W3C - XML Extensible: M-471 Multiple names spaces: Insert M-471 Sharing document structures: –It's hard –It's necessary –It's worth it See

13 XML - Further Information Ariadne issue 14 includes article on "What Is XML?" Describes how XML support can be provided: Natively by new browsers Back end conversion of XML - HTML Client-side conversion of XML - HTML Java rendering of XML Examples of intermediaries See

14 W3C - HTTP HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1.0: Made the Web popular  Design flaws and implementation problems caused poor performance HTTP/1.1: Addresses some of these problems Performance benefits!  Is acting as fire-fighter  Poor usage counting  Not sufficiently flexible or extensible

15 W3C - HTTP/NG HTTP/NG: Based on convergence of Internet protocols Two W3C Working Groups: Protocol Design: Redesign Web as distributed object application Web Characterisations: Study Web usage and form requirements New log format for easier collection and anonymisation See

16 W3C - WAI WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative): Ensures web specs address accessibility issues Authoring: First draft of Page Author Accessibility Checklist and Guidelines available at Software User agent / Authoring tools guidelines being produced See

17 W3C - Technology and Society Domain activities cover: PICS Digital Signature Initiative Privacy (P3P) Metadata (RDF) Security Interest Group Public Policy Interest Group Electronic Commerce Interest Group See

18 W3C - Privacy P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences): Privacy concerns are a current barrier to Web development (Note Tim Berners-Lee's interview in Australian press) P3P project developing methods for exchanging Privacy Practices of Web sites and user Documents on architecture and vocabulary available P3P1.0 draft spec released on 19 May 1998 See

19 W3C - RDF RDF (Resource Description Framework): Highlight of WWW 7 Provides a metadata framework ("machine understandable metadata for the web") Based on ideas from content rating (PICS), resource discovery (Dublin Core) and site mapping (MCF) Applications include: –cataloging resources– resource discovery –electronic commerce– intelligent agents –digital signatures– content rating –intellectual property rights– privacy See

20 W3C - RDF RDF: Based on a formal data model (direct label graphs) Syntax for interchange of data Schema model Resource Value PropertyType Property page.html £0.05 Cost 11-May-98 ValidUntil RDF Data Model page.html £ May-98 Property Cost InstanceOf ValidUntil Value PropObj Cost PropName

21 W3C - RDF Example Example of Dublin Core metadata in RDF John Smith John’s Home Page

22 Browser Support for RDF Mozilla (Netscape's source code release) provides support for RDF. Mozilla supports site maps in RDF, as well as bookmarks and history lists See Netscape's or HotWired home page for a link to the RDF file. Trusted 3rd Party Metadata Embedded Metadata e.g. sitemaps Image from

23 W3C - RDF Conclusion  RDF is a general-purpose framework  RDF provides structured, machine- understandable metadata for the Web  Metadata vocabularies can be developed without central coordination  RDF Schemas describe the meaning of each property name  Signed RDF is the basis for trust

24 Developer's Day - XML "So You Want To Be An XML Developer" Talk by Tim Bray, Textuality See Useful resources: Annotated Spec at XML FAQ at Other pages at

25 Developer's Day - XLink XLink Aims to provide sophisticated hyperlinking functionality missing in HTML Formerly known as XML-LINK and XLL See XLink working draft is stable, though new versions due out

26 Developer's Day - XLink XLink provides: Links that lead to multiple destinations Bidirectional links Links with special behaviors: –Expand-in-place (similar to ) –Replace (similar to ) –Create new window –Link on load (similar to or redirect) –Link on user action Link databases England France

27 Developer's Day - XPointer XPointer: Based on TEI work XPointer specifies location in XML tree structure For example: ID(foo).CHILD(4,SEC).CHILD(1,ABSTRACT) addresses the first XML ABSTRACT element within the fourth SEC element within the element with ID attribute " foo " in a document To use: Note the working draft is not stable Interesting IPR implications?

28 Random Thoughts on Software Development for the Web Keynote talk by James Gosling: Positive about Java futures "This is the year the performance problem disappears." JIT compiler performance is close to C. Betters JVMs available (e.g. HotSpot). Java ports to PDAs, phones, smart cards, … Q.How serious are browser incompatibility problems? A. Netscape made serious error at one point. There are also bugs in IE. Java Plugin (was Activator) may enable a functioning JVM to be installed (note supports tag). See

29 Research Papers 218 papers submitted. 54 papers, 43 short papers, 13 posters, 5 doctoral consortium papers and 6 panel abstracts published Brief comments on papers of interest to web software developers and information providers. General themes: Java was widely used to implement ideas Several papers on analysis of link structures to improve searching "Intermediaries" seem to be an interesting concept See

30 Metadata Systems Three papers. Specifying Metadata Standards for Metadata Tool Configuration by Andrew Waugh, CSIRO, Australia Excellent paper showing how the expense of producing metadata requires a generic metadata editor The Limits of Web Metadata and Beyond by Massimo Marchiori, MIT, USA This paper describes how fuzzy techniques can be used to automatically generate metadata for existing resources Structure Graph Format: XML Metadata for Describing Web Site Structure by Liechto et al Producing site maps based on linking and directory structures

31 Markup An Extensible Rendering Engine for XML and HTML by Ciancarini et al, Bologna University Describes how Java can be used to provide browser support for new HTML / XML tags <PARAM NAME="def" VALUE = " ">... Text is displayed as white text on black See Example of an intermediary

32 Search and Indexing Techniques The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine Brin & Page, Stanford Univ Describes Google, a large- scale search engine developed for research purposes Uses link information Use of service and feedback is encouraged

33 Characterisation Summary of Web Characterisation by Pitkow An excellent review of web characterisation studies, including: –Client studies –Proxies and gateways –Server –Websites Some conclusions: No. of page requests per siteMode of 1! Site popularity25% of servers 85% traffic Document life spanAbout 50 days

34 Web Management One paper, in Hypertext and Hypermedia session, on web management WSDM: A User Centred Design Method For Web Sites by De Troyer et al This paper proposes a design methodology for web-kiosks. The paper gives references on methodologies for website design.

35 Observations The following comments are made: There were several papers on how link information (e.g. "who is pointing to this page?") can be used to improve searching (e.g. Google) and user navigation (e.g. SGMapper). The possible importance of intermediaries for deploying new technologies to current browsers: –In proxies (e.g. WBI) –In Java (e.g. displets, MML support) –In JavaScript (e.g. XML -> HTML / CSS)

36 Conclusions WWW 8 to be held at Toronto in May 1999 WWW 9 to be held in Amsterdam in 2000 Call for papers for WWW 8 shortly Closing date December 1998 For information on WWW protocol developments see list