Why Open Web Standards are cool and will save the world. Or the Web, at least.

Why Open Web Standards are
cool and will save the world. Or
the Web, at least.

Bruce Lawson / Leeds University 5 May 2011

Opera – one browser on many devices

"Our goal is to take the one true Web and
make it available to people on their terms."
Jon S. von Tetzchner, Opera Co-founder

"All I ask is access to the full Web, everywhere.
And some more beer."
Me

Executive Summary:

Open Web Standards make the Web open for
people with disabilities and people without
access to the latest expensive hardware.

Executive Summary continued:

Open Web Standards reduce reliance on any
single vendor.

Open Web Standards = profit!

Open Standards

Not the same thing as Open Source
Made out in the open
Royalty-free
Not tied to one vendor

The most important program on your
computer is your browser

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/05/123_52401.html

Legal and General's redesign
www.brucelawson.co.uk/pas78

By-products of the redesign:

● 30% increase in natural search-engine traffic
● 75% reduction in page load time

● No more browser-incompatibility problems

● Accessible to mobile devices

● Time spent to manage content “reduced from

5 days to 0.5 days per job”

No money, no honey etc

● Savings of £200,000 annually on site
maintenance
● 90% increase in online sales

● 100% return on investment in less than 12

months.

1. new web standards
2. adaptive content
3. browser as platform

HTML5 does not replace HTML 4.01

HTML5 is umbrella term:
markup elements and JavaScript APIs

Webforms – more powerful form elements

standardise commonly-used
rich form elements – without JavaScript

built-in validation
(of course you should still validate on the server)

<input type=email>
<input type=url required>
<input type=range min=10 max=100>
<input type=date min=2010-01-01 max=2010-12-31>
<input pattern="[0-9][A-Z]{3}" placeholder="9AAA">

http://people.opera.com/brucel/demo/html5-forms-demo.html

<canvas>
“scriptable images”

“...extending the language to better support Web
applications, since that is one of the directions the Web is
going in and is one of the areas least well served by HTML
so far. This puts HTML in direct competition with other
technologies intended for applications deployed over the
Web, in particular Flash and Silverlight.”

Ian Hickson, Editor of HTML5
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jan/0215.html

<video src=pudding.ogv
controls
autoplay
poster=poster.jpg
width=320 height=240>
<a href=video.ogv>Download movie</a>
</video>

video as native object...why is it important?

● “play nice” with rest of the page
● keyboard accessibility built-in

● API for controls

video formats

webM Ogg/ Theora mp4/ h264

Opera yes yes

Chrome yes yes Nope
(Chrome.soon)
Firefox Yes (FF4) yes

Safari yes

IE9 Yes (if installed) yes

audio formats

mp3 Ogg/ Vobis wav

Opera yes yes

Chrome yes yes

Firefox yes yes

Safari yes yes

IE9 yes yes

Towards a World-Wide Web

1.6 billion people are online, yet more than 4
billion people — two out of every three people
on Earth — have a mobile phone or access to
one.
www.opera.com/smw/2009/10/

China

“The proportion of [people] accessing the
Internet by mobile increased enormously from
39.5% in late 2008 to 46% in June 2009, while
the proportion of using desktops and laptops
decreased”. (close to 150 million people).
Statistical Report on Internet Development in China, p25-26, July 2009, www.ccnic.cn

India

There is one bank branch for every 14,000
people, one ATM for every 5000 people but a
mobile for every 2.3 people in India.

More people in India have access to a mobile
phone than even a proper toilet.

“One Web means making, as far as is reasonable, the
same information and services available to users
irrespective of the device they are using. However, it does
not mean that exactly the same information is available in
exactly the same representation across all devices.”
W3C Mobile Web Best Practices http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/#OneWeb

CSS 3 Media Queries:

@media screen and
(max-device-width: 480px) {

// insert CSS rules here

}
http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/

Demonstration of Media Queries

“…the browser run-time is
perfect…you’re out of writing for
Windows Mobile, Android, S60,
each of which require testing...we
want to abstract that.

All the cool innovation is
happening inside the browser –
you don’t need to write to the
native operating system
anymore.”

Mobile Entertainment Market, June, 2009

W3C Widgets – application development filled
with web standards goodness,
using browser engine as platform

www.opera.com/developer
bruce.lawson@opera.com
twitter.com@brucel

Why Open Web Standards are cool and will save the world. Or the Web, at least.

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