Metadata-Data-Presentation: a three layer application to kill HTML!
Well, I am quite monotasking, but in these days I am really thinking hard to the bulls****s like the faboulous “Web 3.0″ (?!?!?), Ajax, browser compatibility and all the things involved in my everyday job.
The last interesting thought is a sort of three layered application to replace the actual http/html standard. (Yes, I’m quite pretentious, I know). Think about the common information you can have in you everyday life. They are composed by data (information) and presentation. You can find the sane things in every newspaper, but also in every website. What is the difference? well, the net should be flexible, searchable, indexable.
As Jason said talking about the misterious “Web 3.0″: “The hope is that you could type in a question like ‘I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child,’ and get a real answer.”
Now, the better solution to grant this Star Trek technology to work in this world is to add metadata to the data: semantic! Could we use semantic in the newspaper? Yes and No. Metadata are not thought to be readable as the article you are reading now. Semantic (Metadata) should be analyzed, not read.
Nowadays on the web we have the Metadata, the Data and the Presentation. We have everything, but there is something that is not working: the way of delivering the whole. Today you get everything in one shell, like a newspaper, but what difference can you find between a web page and a newspaper (apart from paper and pixels)? You can find that on the web there are giants like Google and Yahoo! that reads every webpage, extrapolating the metadata in order to create a set of semantic to link to the specific webpage.
What if these three information would come separated one to the other? What if we would put more attention to the metadata and the indexing?
…I have a dream…
Metadata: Think about a flux of information that are created to identify the real information. Semantic. Think about these information as the credential to the data you are proposing: you could be able to create complex structures that would be able to answer to complex questions.
No more searches like “Carlo+London+MIDDLE” but like “which is the page of the MIDDLE Framework, developed by Carlo, living in London?”
Complex metadata could answer complex questions, could be more accurate!
Data: Today’s information flow is fragmented. When you load a Web Page, you do not load the information, you load everything: Metadata, Data and Layout. Do we need it? Metadata are information to get information, are unfriendly data that could address us to the real data.
Presentation: Presentation is a key to sell. The Presentation of the data is very important, but what do we have now? We have a paper thing that has been moved in pixel. Is it dynamic? No. The tricks used to create a sort of dynamism works? Not so good. Do presentation affects data? Yes (try to change browser for a while)
So, these three things shapes the way we interact with the information, from the search to the availability and the readability. We have a static technology (HTML) that transports everything like an image. Probably if images were lighter than text we would have only images as information holder.
Think “out of the box” for a while, if you want, if you can…
We don’t need new technologies to carry out this idea. C++, Java, C#, XML, whatever we have is good enough. Full Stop.
We need a new way of organizing “information“, dividing the domain of Metadata, Data and Presentation.
When you ask for a web page, your browser opens a connection to the port 80 (or 443, or whatever but one port only) to retrieve EVERYTHING in one big shell.
Why aren’t we allowed to ask only what we need, reusing what we already have (or have found, if we are talking of a search)? Think of a “Next generation Browser” that is able to understand your needs, that is able to understand what you are looking for.
The metadata (light, unreadable) are downloaded to find what we are searching for, the minimal Presentation layer is retrieved to be the main data container, and the set of information required would come down in another connection (three different ports?).
Moving the mix of metadata, data and presentation to the client would mean dynamicism. The integration could be managed by the browser, not by the server. What? Heavy weight for the client? Come on, we have computers with Gigabytes of RAM, with processors that ten years ago would have been considered Science Fiction, and in other ten years we would laugh thinking what we are using today. This is not the problem!
Creating a standard is a Problem!
Managing a common line between the “Big” of the sector is something bigger than a dream, is something that touches the market share of Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Mozilla, Adobe and thousands more. What am I thinking about? Come on, Carlo, try to think, not to dream…
…No! Because I have a Dream!
Standardization, layer separation, metadata improvement, “user experience” (nice things these days) improvement. This is what I’d Love to draw.
Will I ever find someone so Crazy as I am to support this kind of vision, extending it, making it better?
I’d like to left you this video, again, because it supports me a little bit!
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