The W3C Web Application Formats Working Group Working Group has published a note effectively cancelling work on Declarative Formats for Applications and User Interfaces:
On 15 November 2005 the W3C announced the decision to start the Web Application Formats (WAF) Working Group (WG). This WG's Charter includes a deliverable named Specification of a declarative format for applications and user interfaces (called DFAUI in this document) and it is defined as follows:
- This deliverable should be based on an existing application/UI format, such as Mozilla's XUL, Microsoft's XAML, Macromedia's MXML or Laszlo Systems' LZX, provided the owners of the format are willing to contribute. The format should allow embedded program code. This format, combined with the deliverables below and existing technologies including XHTML, CSS, XForms, SVG and SMIL, should provide a strong basis for rich client application development.
- Tentative milestones: First draft of requirements during October. First draft of specification during November. Candidate Recommendation 4th quarter of 2006.
This Note includes a recommendation that the Working Group formally stop its work on this deliverable and consider this Note as the one and only document the WG will publish for the DFAUI. The document also includes the status of this deliverable and some options if Members choose to do DFAUI-related work.
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For all practical purposes, worked on the DFAUI deliverable stopped after the WG's April 2007 face-to-face meeting.
The primary reasons and factors that contributed to the slow progress on, and low participation in the DFAUI are:
- Insufficient resources - only two members of the WG actively contributed (via significant contributions) to the DFAUI work
- Work on the DFAUI deliverable detracted from the WG's other specification work (see above) and this other work has active support and contributions from more WG members
- Lack of key industry participants and stakeholders to pro-actively drive the DFAUI
- Some members of the WG asserted the identified Use Cases and Requirements can be addressed by existing open standards (i.e. HTML4.01, CSS2.1, JavaScript, etc.) and/or by open standards in progress (i.e. HTML5, CSS3, XBL2, etc.). Other WG members asserted the existing specifications cannot meet some of the Use Cases and Requirements
- Most WG participants could not make a prolonged (i.e. multi-year) resource commitment to create a new DFAUI language
