[thelist] What shall we do with the W3C DOM?

[Ben Henick]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Peter-Paul Koch wrote:

> My sort of personalization would be different in one important respect: the
> user could get some wysiwyg-like environment where he could play with the
> layout of the site until it's completely to his taste. (is this a good idea?
> Dunno, but in any case it's different from server side personalization).
>
> Server side personalization works, of course, but it doesn't quite have the
> same possibilities as "W3C DOM personalization".

If you want an example of a baby step of what PPK's talking about, dig
into iht.com.  Between the pagination and the "clippings" functionality
(which has been since duplicated on a couple of other sites, I've noticed)
iht.com might be considered a proof-of-concept.

> It would have to be hassle-free, sure. It isn't yet practically possible, I
> just want a discussion of the theory: is it a good idea, how would one
> create such an interface, etc.

In terms of consequences... someobody's gonna have to fight the
resistance, sooner or later.  In any event, I agree with the poster who
said earlier that there would be resistance to the concept from all
sides... clients won't like the loss of control, users won't grasp what
can be done, and so on...

> >What I don't quite get is why wouldn't a web dev take advantage of
> >server-side techonlogies, considering it's so much easier and so much more
> >straightforward most of the time...
>
> More straightforward for the web developer, but not necessarily for the
> user.

Uh, what we're inching toward here is a significant mating of the two.

The first thought that crosses my mind is that for a lot of external
sites, this sort of personalization is more trouble than it's worth.

Now, with applications it's a different story.

For a working example (albeit one not Web-based) look at Adobe apps.  You
can choose which tools are available, and where they're placed on the
screen.

That would be a minor example.

Now, with the mating of DOM to a database... you can accomplish a lot of
the same kind of things.

What I see as a problem with the mating of DOM to the task of customizing
layout is not so much user or client resistance, but the flaws in existing
paradigms, which users would be forced to deal with yet once again... ;-)

<snip>
> I created a small form application that allows the user to choose exactly
> how many form fields he wants to see. This is the sort of thing I mean:
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/domform.html

Another useful application of DOM in such an environment is that when you
need to submit a list of items that doesn't (or can't) have an upper
limit, you can use DOM methods to add form fields on demand.  Getting the
server to grasp those is a challenge if you haven't done it before, but...
yeah.


--
Ben Henick
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persist1 at io.com                  bmh at digital-web.com
--
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