Software vendors have come under heavy fire for failing to implement the extensible markup language (XML). Tim Bray, a key editor of the XML specification adopted as a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation back in February (CI No 3,345), has put the boot into the browser companies for making grand claims and not following up. Summing up a years’ worth of XML development, Bray had praise for other areas of the XML world. It seems to me that the server- side stuff is looking really good and the authoring picture is getting better, Bray wrote. The browsers, though, just aren’t where they should be, he said. For browsers, read ‘Microsoft and Netscape’, although if these guys don’t get with the XML program, there may be an opening for lightweight fast-moving players to come up the middle. Bray says he is very disappointed with the XML support in the second beta release of Internet Explorer 5 (IE5b2). Yes, IE5b2 does CSS-driven display – but with bullet holes in vital organs, Bray says. As evidence, he cites the report by the Web Standards Project on deficiencies in IE’s support for W3C standards. Like many others, though, Bray says his main criticism of the XML implementation in IE is its lack of support for the document object model (DOM). As for Netscape: I have, at various times over the past few months, downloaded Mozilla, and more recently NGLayout, and it is nowhere near ready for prime time, he concludes. Glenn Davis, CTO of Project Cool Inc and a co-founder of the Web Standards Project, tried to launch an XML demonstration page written by the Mozilla team into IE5b2. First, Davis says, he had to correct Mozilla’s XML. Then IE5b2 refused to run code in the browser. When push comes to shove what I really want is a web in which we write once and view many, he wrote. That’s the promise of standards support and XML. Shouldn’t that be what everyone is working toward? One day, maybe.
