Reflections On WWW9:Report on the 9th International WWW

Conference, Amsterdam, 15-19 May 2000

Brian Kelly

UK Web Focus

UKOLN, University of Bath

Bath, BA2 7AY

UKOLN is funded by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, 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.

Email: B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.ukURL: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/

Contents• About WWW9• Main Themes• W3C Highlight• Poster Session• Developers Day• WWW 10-12

Contents• About WWW9• Main Themes• W3C Highlight• Poster Session• Developers Day• WWW 10-12

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About WWW9

WWW9 conference:• Held in Amsterdam on 16-18th May• Tutorials and Workshops on 15th May• Developer's Day on 19th May

The conference:• Attracted about 1,400 delegates• About 100 from UK (~50% from HE)

This year only 2 papers from UK HE: Alison Cawsey, Heriot-Watt and ???

This year only 2 papers from UK HE: Alison Cawsey, Heriot-Watt and ???

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Conference Highlights

WWW9 was the key of the Mobile Web:• Keynotes from Psion and Ericsson • "Towards A WAP-Wide Web?" Forum• Another keynote from Philips (Digital TV)

Also more technical discussions and criticisms:• "Why have a WAP-Wide Web when we have a

World Wide Web?"• "The WAP Forum is too proprietary"• "We haven't got the resources to author for the

Web and the mobile phone"

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Will The Mobile Web Take Off?

Some comments:• It has done in Japan (more

mobile than PC Internet users: >10m according to ITWeek)

• Lot of investment• Some interesting prototypes

(e.g. <www.tomtom.com>)What should UK HE do?• Can't ignore it• Need to thing about use of

content management systems and structured file formats to author content for the Web, mobile phones, print, etc.

<www.tomtom.com><www.tomtom.com>

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http://mobile.ericsson.com/mc218/

http://www.nokia.com/3g/

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W3C Developments - XHTML

XHTML Tutorial session:• Ran by Dave Raggett, Murray Altheim & Frank

Boumphrey• "There will be no HTML 5.0. It would be too large

and cumbersome (only MS could implement)" • Need for HTML to be an XML application• Need for HTML to be modular:

– Add new modules (extended forms)– Remove modules (e.g. for embedded devices)

XHTML:• Satisfies these requirements• Is available now (XHTML 1.0 is a W3C Rec.)• Should be used now (with CSS)

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XHTML (cont.)

Converting from HTML to XHTML:• Can be done by Tidy• Can use editors such as HTML-Kit, which

embed Tidy

Finding Out More• XHTML-L Mailing list

<http://www.egroups.com/group/XHTML-L>• "Beginning XHTML" book• HTML Writer's Guild <http://www.hwg.org/>• W3C Web Site <http://www.w3c.org/>• XHTML Spec <http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/>

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XSLT

XSLT:• Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation • A Language for transforming XML documents• Can transform:

– XHTML WML– RDF text– Etc.

<xsl:template match="employee"> <fo:block> Employee <xsl:apply-templates select="name"/> belongs to group <xsl:apply-templates select="ancestor: department/group"/> </fo:block></xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="employee"> <fo:block> Employee <xsl:apply-templates select="name"/> belongs to group <xsl:apply-templates select="ancestor: department/group"/> </fo:block></xsl:template>

XHTML+XSLT =

Paper at WWW9 conf by Alison Cawsey, Heriot-Watt on "Presenting tailored resource descriptions: Will XSLT do the job?"

Paper at WWW9 conf by Alison Cawsey, Heriot-Watt on "Presenting tailored resource descriptions: Will XSLT do the job?"

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Poster Proceedings

I had two posters accepted and included in the Conference Poster Proceedings:

• Approach to Indexing In The UK• A Lightweight Approach To Support Of Resource

Discovery Standards

Papers and posters available at <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/papers/www9/>

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Approach to Indexing In The UK

Summary:• Survey of search facilities on UK HE Web sites

carried out (see Ariadne)• ht://Dig most popular – about 50 with none• But users want to find resources, not just

resources on the Web site• eLib phase 3 aims to allow users to search:

– OPACS on regional / subject basis (e.g CAIRNS)

– Web sites, gateways and OPACs (e.g. Agora)• DNER aims to provide integrated access to JISC

(and local) resource

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A Lightweight Approach To Support Of Resource Discovery Standards

Summary:• Dublin Core is known to be a good thingTM

But:• Authoring tools aren't available• Tools and services to exploit DC aren't available• What if the format changes (e.g <META> to RDF)?

Exploit Interactive• EU-funded Web magazine produced by UKOLN• Available at <http://www.exploit-lib.org/>• Provides information on Telematics for Libraries

projects and other topics of interest to library community

• Also acts as test-bed for UKOLN's research interests

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A Lightweight Approach To Support Of Resource Discovery Standards

Solution:• DC stored in neutral format• Transformed into <META> tags• Used by MS SiteServer

Solution:• DC stored in neutral format• Transformed into <META> tags• Used by MS SiteServer

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Exhibition

Two interesting exhibitors:• Nedstat: Externally-hosted statistical service,

based in Holland• AltaVista:

Indexing Tool:– 80% discount for HE (+ T shirt)– Can be used to index remote sites (price per

resource indexed)

Search service:

– Want to index everything that's not spam– Different indexing policy for altavista.co.uk (indexes deeper)

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Developers Day (AM)

Semantic Web Track"Using Z39.50 and RDF to Support the UK Mirror Service" – Dave Beckett

RDF used in a large-scale service environment (200 mirrors, 440 Gb, 2-3 M files). Little mention of Z39.50

"Collaborative Web Authoring" – Jose Kahan, W3C

Amaya used to store annotations on annotation server. Other users linked to same annotation server can see annotations.

DOM used to update document with icons once HTML page rendered.

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Developers Day (PM)

Web Publishing Tools and Techniques"InfoSite Content Manager"

A web-based content management system <www.infosite.com>

"WebLogs in Manila – Tools for Writers", Dave Winer

Manila is a web-based content management system <manila.userland.com>It is targeted at the mass market ($799 per server)Can be used to created "weblogs" – see <www.weblogs.com> and <http://www.userland.com/>It appears to be very standards-based

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Developers Day (PM)

XML Publishing Applications"XML At the Koninklijke Bibliotheek", Simon Bosse

KB (National Library of the Netherlands) are taking a centralised approach to providing access to KB resources.

This contrasts with the UK's distributed approach taken nationally using Z39.50

The difference is due to KB's concerns over the costs and difficulties of deploying Z39.50, although a distributed approach is recognised as better

Slides at <www.kb.nl/persons/simon/kbc-en/>

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Developers Day (PM)

XML Publishing Applications"Using XML for News Aggregation and Delivery", Dave Galbraith

Described how the Moreover Newsfeeds service makes use of XML, RDF and RSS

See <www.moreover.com>See <www.moreover.com>

CommentUK Universities, JISC services, etc. should have an interest in newsfeeds (both receiving commercial feeds and providing feeds internally and externally).

CommentUK Universities, JISC services, etc. should have an interest in newsfeeds (both receiving commercial feeds and providing feeds internally and externally).

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RSS

Much discussion about RSS (Rich Site Summary):• XML application initially developed by Netscape for

their personalised My.Netscape service• Very popular

But:• Ownership unclear (AOL/Netscape quagmire)• Is being extended• Standardisation process unclear ("W3C would insist

on RDF!")See:

• http://www.perl.com/pub/2000/01/rss.html?wwwrrr_20000126.txt

• http://my.netscape.com/publish/help/mnn20/quickstart.html• http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/resources/rss/

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Lunch With Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee acting as lunchtime TV chat show host:

• The Web is broken / The Web is developing nicely – discuss.

• "Is the Web like Visicalc / Apple? Version 1 was great, but the founder failed to deliver with version 2? The Semantic Web = Apple III

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WWW 10, 11 and 12

WWW 10 Hong Kong, 2001

WWW 11 Hawaii, 2002

WWW 12 To be decided. Possibly the UK (Birmingham) or Hungary