WWW 8 Trip Report

1
WWW 8 Trip Report

• Brian Kelly
• UK Web Focus
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, BA2 7AY

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk URL http//www.ukoln.ac.
uk/
UKOLN is funded by the Library and Information
Commission, the Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC) of the Higher Education Funding
Councils, as well as by project funding from the
JISC 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
• Panel Session on Search Engines
• W3C Tracks at WWW 8 Conference
• Microsoft and Open Standards talk
• Papers
• Questions

See lthttp//www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/web-focus/gt
for trip report.
3
About UK Web Focus

• UK Web Focus
• Advises UK HE community on Web developments
• Funded by JISC
• JISC representative on World Wide Web Consortium
  (W3C)
• Note UKOLN also has the Interoperability Focus

4
About WWW8

• WWW 8 Conference
• Held in Toronto, Canada from 11-14 May 1999
• Smaller scale (no exhibition)
• More research-focussed
• No significant exciting new technology (unlike
  1998 - RDF or 1997 - XML)
• See ltURL http//www8.org/gt
• Conference papers online - see ltURL
  http//www8.org/fullpaper.html gt

5
Tim Berners-Lees Keynote

• This year is the tenth anniversary of the Web
• Original aim was to facilitate human
  communication through shared knowledge
• Have achieved much, but not yet universal writing
• Next stage is the Semantic Web
• RDF has important role to play
• Inappropriate patent claims are hindering
  development of Web
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999/05/www8-tbl/Ove
  rview.htmlgt

6
Finding Anything in the Billion Page Web
PANEL

• Panel session on Finding Anything in the Billion
  Page Web Are Algorithms the Key?
• Panelists from Excite, AltaVista (Compaq) and
  Yahoo!
• Hardware is not a significant barrier
• Improved software algorithms will be important.
  E.g
• Citation analysis (cf Google)
• User profiles
• Specialist search engines (implies 2-layer
  searches)
• Search engine vendors may discard embedded
  metadata
• Search engine vendors may make use of trusted
  third-party metadata
• Conclusions in line with UK HEs interests!

7
W3C Track
W3C Track

• Community Contributions
• Web Characterization Activity

WWW Access WAI Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines Internationalization Television and
the Web W3C, the Web, and mobility

• Web Technologies Society
• Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P)
• Report on Signed-XML99 Workshop
• Query Languages

• XML
• XML Update
• W3C HTML Activity
• RDF

• Developer's Day
• Towards CSS modularization
• Style sheets for Voice Browsers
• The CSS Object Model

• Multimedia Models and Management
• Style Sheets CSS, XSL and CSS-OMCurrent
  directions in Web style sheets
• SMIL Multimedia for Everyone

• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999gt

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WAI
W3C Track

• WAI
• Web Accessibility Initiative
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines now out
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0512-wai-www8-j
  bgt
• Need for accessibility audit of institutional web
  sites?
• Need for institutional guidelines / incorporation
  into training programmes, etc?

NOTE Gave talk on Accessibility and Metadata at
WAI meeting after WWW8 conference. Does
metadata have a role to play in providing
machine-understandable definitions relating to
accessibility? Should user profiles consider
accessibility aspects?
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SMIL
W3C Track

• SMIL
• Synchronized Multimedia Markup Language - an XML
  application
• Players (e.g. RealNetworks G2) and authoring
  tools available
• Microsoft have proposed HTML Time (scripting
  rather than declarative implementation)
• SMIL 2.0 may include MSs proposals
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0513-smil-www8/
  gt
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/AudioVideo/gt
• Michael Wilson (RAL) to give talk on SMIL at Web
  Managers workshop in Sept

10
Building Trust on the Web
W3C Track

• P3P
• Platform for Privacy Preferences
• Address need to address privacy concerns (esp. in
  US)
• Developments hindered by Interminds patent claim
  (see Trip Report in Ariadne)
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999/0511-www8p3p/gt

11
CC/PP
W3C Track

• CC/PP
• Composite Capability/Preference Profiles (CC/PP)
  A user side framework for content negotiation
• Driven by mobile phone companies
• Architectural framework for content negotiation
  for variety of client types?
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-CCPPgt

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HTML
W3C Track

• Challenges facing HTML
• Poor quality markup
• New kinds of browsers TVs, PDAs, phones, etc
• Pressure to subset HTML for simple clients
• Pressure to extend HTML for richer clients
• Combining HTML with other tag sets Math, Vector
  Graphics, E-commerce, Metadata, ...
• XHTML
• Reformulation of HTML in XML
• TIDY will help
• See lthttp//www.xhtml.org/gt
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Talks/1999/05/www8-html/sl
  die1.htmlgt

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SVG
W3C Track

• SVG
• Scalable Vector Graphics
• Most impressive demo at conference
• See lthttp//www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/gt

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Other Comments
W3C Track

• Appears to be a slowing down in development of
  protocol and data formats
• Increasing complexity and inter-dependence means
  more time must be spent in reviewing work of
  other working groups (cf XML and RDF Schemas)
• Patent and IPR concerns (CSS, XLink, P3P)
• HTTP/NG work seems to be slowing down

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Papers
PAPERS

• 48 papers accepted (304 submitted)
• Areas included
• Searching Discovery l Searching Querying (1
  2)
• Searching Mining the Web l XML
• Electronic Marketplace l Links
• Web Server Performance l Customising Web Sites
• Hypermedia Video l Hypertext Hypermedia
• Electronic Commerce, Security Applications
• Web Document Management
• Multimedia User Interaction
• Protocols Performance

• Panel Sessions
• Mobiles and Accessibility
• Web-based Everything
• Finding Anything on the Web
• Web Design
• Agent vs Direct Manipulation
• Web as Application Platform

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Automatic RDF Generation For Resource Discovery
PAPERS

• Paper by Charlotte Jenkins, Wolverhampton Univ.
• Automatic metadata generation may provide a
  solution to the problem of inconsistent,
  unreliable metadata describing resources on the
  Web.
• As Nicky Ferguson commented in his trip report
  Exactly the right paper at the right time
• See lthttp//www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/ex1253/rdf_paper/
  gt

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Improving Web Usability with the Link Lens
PAPERS

• Paper by Rob Procter, Edinburgh University
• URL as a user interface
• http//www.lmnet.com/bobh/shakeit.avi - Shall I
  follow this link?
• Uses link lens to display characteristics of
  link destination before going there

See lthttp//www8.org/w8-papers/4b-links/improve/gt
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Visual Preview for Link Traversal on the Web
PAPERS

• Similar to Link Lens paper
• Provides thumbnail preview of link destination
• See lthttp//www8.org/w8-papers/4b-links/visual/vis
  ual.htmlgt
• Live demo at lthttp//www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/theo/
  demonstrations/scientific/VPLT_Demo.htmlgt

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Adding Support for Dynamic Focused Search with
Fetuccino
PAPERS

• Development from work on site maps (Mapuccino)
• See lthttp//www8.org/w8-papers/5a-search-query/add
  ing/adding.htmlgt
• Post-processes search engine results
• Q Is this legal?
• A Simulates end user session
• AltaVista involved

See lthttp//www.ibm.com/java/fetuccino/gt
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Posters
POSTERS

• Proceedings of posters (short papers) were
  published
• Posters were displayed, with two hour period in
  which authors were available
• See list of posters at lthttp//www8.org/posters-f
  inal.htmlgt

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Subject-Based Information Gateways in the UK
POSTERS

• Poster by Brian Kelly and Roddy MacLeod (EEVL)
• Documented work of Subject Gateways (SOSIG,
  ROADS, etc) and suggested areas for future work
• Documented work for web research community
• Attracted interest and provided useful feedback
• Nicky Ferguson and Dan Brickley (ILRT) provided
  help

See lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/www8/
gt
22
Microsoft Open Standards
INVITED TALK

• Invited talk on Microsofts view of Open
  Standards
• Talk by Mark Ryland failed to provide any
  insights - simply repeated contents of poster
  (and T-short)
• There are consensus-driven and market-driven
  standards - Microsoft supports both
• Question from Hakon Lie (formerly W3C, now
  Opera) Why still incomplete support for
  CSS1?Answer Giving priority to user-requests

23
WWW 9

• WWW 9 conference
• To be held in Amsterdam from 15-19 May 2000
• SMIL presentation given at end of WWW8
• Conference web site ltURL http//www9.org/gt
• Preliminary topics include E-Commerce - XML -
  Multimedia - Web Server Performance - Searching
  and Querying - Web Document Management -
  Protocols - Java - Web Site Design - Web
  Security - RDF - Database and Directory Services
  - Collaboration - Accessibility - Metadata - New
  Languages
• Deadline for papers 22 November 1999
• Deadline for tutorials and workshops 10 September
  1999
• Deadlines for posters to be announced

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Commercial Break

• The third Institutional Web Management workshop
  takes place at Goldsmiths College, London on 7-9
  September.
• Main annual event for members of institutional
  web teams
• Topics includeDesign - Web Site Navigation -
  Web Tools - Personalisation - Intranets and
  Extranets - Cultural and Legal Issues - Web
  Editor Career Development - etc.
• See lthttp//warriormac.gold.ac.uk/webconf/gt for
  details