Developers News

by Jan Egil Refsnes

This news section will only contain news of important relevance to Web developers trying to look into the future. It will not contain advertisements for new products. The news in this section are collected and hand picked by Jan Egil Refsnes. News can not be submitted to this section.

XHTML is now official

XHTML 1.0 became an official W3C Recommendation on 26 January 2000. A W3C Recommendation means that the specification is stable, that it has been reviewed by the W3C membership, and that the specification now is a Web standard..

XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 in XML, and can be put to immediate use with existing browsers by following a few simple guidelines. Check out the XHTML School  tutorial to find out how to convert to XHTML.

Resources: W3C Press Release and W3C Testimonials.

Preview release of new MS XML parser

On January 26, Microsoft will release a technology preview version of their XML parser. This will be the first in a series of technology previews Microsoft is making available and includes updated support for the W3C's latest recommendations for XSLT and XPath.

Read the latest news from Microsoft 

BizTalk

The BizTalk Framework™ is a set of guidelines for how to publish schemas in XML and how to use XML messages to integrate different software systems.

The BizTalk initiative was started by Microsoft. It is supported by vendors like SAP and CommerceOne and users like Boeing and BP/Amoco.

At the BizTalk Web site you can share and publish information about XML, XSL, and applications that support the BizTalk Framework.

Internet Explorer 5.5 beta

A beta of Internet Explorer 5.5 is now available from Microsoft.

IE 5.5 has improved support for DHTML behaviors and Cascading Style Sheets. It also has a new print preview feature.

The final IE 5.5 is not expected to be included in Windows 2000, but will be released later. 

Grip the SOAP

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a new XML based protocol which lets software components communicate over the Internet. SOAP is a key element of Microsoft's Windows DNA 2000 architecture for future Internet application development. The draft specification has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force.

Read our article about SOAP.

SML a simpler XML?

XML is a technological revolution, and XML is easy to use. But is it easy enough? Could we have an even simpler standard? An XML without DTD, without attributes, entity references and CDATA sections? A Simple Markup Language called SML?

Read our article about SML.

XSL is Official !

16. November 1999

World Wide Web Consortium has finally issued the two parts of XSL - XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XML Path Language (XPath) - as official W3C Recommendations.

From the press release:
"These new specifications represent cross-industry and expert community agreement on technologies that will enable the transformation and styled presentation of XML documents. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C membership"

Read the Press Release and the Testimonials. 

References:
XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0.
XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0.

For a complete XSL reference go to : http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/.

Both recommendations are parts of the W3C XML Activity and the W3C Style Activity.

Internet Explorer is winning the Browser War

StatMarket - who publishes statistics based on the combined data from tens of millions of daily Internet users - reports that Microsoft now accounts for 75% of all browsers used on the Internet.

In the meantime, a year after being acquired by America Online, and nearly two years after forming its open-source browser development group, Netscape Communications has yet to produce its fifth-generation browser.
Read about it.

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