Re: [apps-discuss] IETF technical plenary: the end of application protocols

[Dave Cridland <[e-mail]>]

On Tue Mar 22 07:49:22 2011, Graham Klyne wrote:
> FWIW, I can think of two simple (to describe) capabilities that  
> would help to make the web more widely usable as a application  
> platform:
> 
> (a) a *simple* mechanism for pushing asynchronous notifications to  
> a web application (browser-based or otherwise).  I had early hopes  
> for HyBi, but have somewhat given up.
> 
> 
As have many.

Another option would be to use XMPP directly in the browser - not  
some hacked down variant communicating only with the webserver's  
approved domain, but full XMPP. This has different properties  
entirely from WebSockets, but those properties give rise to some  
interesting concepts.


> (b) a well-founded security model to permit controlled relaxation  
> of the same-origin restrictions on web applications in browsers.   
> Many of the current proposals I'm aware of seem to lack a coherent  
> security analysis (though, when I last looked, HTML5 may be an  
> exception in this regard).  I think this could make it easier to  
> separate data storage from applications, opening the way to give  
> users back control of their data.

Right - and full XMPP would also allow this, and single-identity, and  
your own [choice of] server/provider. In fact, it'd even allow a  
decoupling between the application and its UI, which'd make many of  
us happier.

Oddly, I'd have thought this would be embraced both by the "big  
players" and end-users with concerns about them.

I would love to see a world where the Web does what it's good at -  
that is, delivering static content, including application code and UI  
content - and protocols such as XMPP do what they're good at - that  
is, providing dynamic data between known federated entities.

Sadly, I suspect that there is sufficient inertia involved that  
maintaining the emerging status quo of HTTP for everything will prove  
impossible to break.

Dave.
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