The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is used in Navigator 5 for many purposes. Its a swiss army knife and we will use it wherever it makes sense to use the rdf data model as a representation language. In particular, it is currently being used NavCntr/Aurora and SmartBrowsing.

This image shows the relation between NavCntr/Aurora, the HyperTree abstraction layer and RDF.

NavCntr is a single UI widget for managing bookmarks, history, search results, file systems, ftp, sitemaps, ... All these "data types" are reflected into the RDF data model. Not just the data in the Aurora view, but even information such as the commands applicable to an object and the columns that make sense for it are all reflected into the RDF graph.

It is our goal that the core RDF module should not have any dependencies on the rest of navigator (other than nspr). So, you should be able to take the RDF module and use it elsewhere.

Here is some more information about RDF.

• RDF To do List
• Technical Overview of RDF
• RDF API
• Hypertree API
• Writing a new data source
• State of the code
• Roadmap for the future

Note : Note: RDF is in the process of being standardized by the W3C. You can take a look at the public drafts that are accesible from http://www.w3.org/RDF/. We expect Mozilla's RDF implementation to track the evolving RDF standard as specified in future W3C Recommendations. Aspects of the current draft could change, but we feel that the core data model that we rely on is unlikely to change in a fashion that is incompatible with our implementation.