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Archive for the ‘WHATWG’ Category

WHATWG’s development model

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

You may be wondering just how do things work around here:

The process of writing the specs boils down to two general areas: defining the existing HTML language better and defining new features.

For defining the existing language better, the goal is to take the existing specs and reverse engineer the way existing browsers work and to do extensive research on existing documents to work out what the specs should say.

There are multiple aspects and phases to defining new features. Based on feedback from authors; what they are asking for that the existing specs lacked, forums, browser bug systems, common class names, support of features libraries like toolkits, the group tries to make a semantically clean, accessible, backwards-compatible solution - all while trying to remain consistent with the existing language.

You (yes, you!) are welcome to raise questions, concerns or leave comments on future WHATWG proposals by joining the mailing list; documented and wider reach, or join the live community at #whatwg channel on the freenode IRC network; hack and chat, or use the forums; perhaps less chaotic than the mailing list.

Just to give an idea on how all this works, we'll use the mailing list as an example on how a spec is defined in the proposal. Simply bring up an issue for a collective brainstorming session. It may seem confusing at first since there is no set structure in which these discussions take place, but note that the purpose of these open debates is to generate enough feedback where the community can refine the issue. The discussions in the mailing list are not meant to make a final decision on the issue but to clarify them. The editor then looks at all feedback and makes a decision on a spec.

If you keep this model in mind, it is not so chaotic after all.

Posted in WHATWG | 2 Comments »

The WHATWG Forums

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Let me introduce you to The WHATWG Forums! If you don't feel comfortable with mailing lists but still want to discuss the future of HTML, how to use HTML5, or ask for help, then these forums are for you.

More forums or sub-forums will be added as needed. Contact me (zcorpan) for administrative stuff (becoming moderator, etc).

Enjoy!

Posted in WHATWG | 1 Comment »

WHATWG Help Mailing List

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

The WHATWG Help Mailing List has been established for answering web developers’ general questions about Web Applications 1.0 (HTML 5 and XHTML 5) and Web Forms 2.0.

If you’ve read the specifications and The whatwg Mailing List Archives wondering, “When can I use HTML 5?”, this is the mailing list for HTML 5 help.

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Web Standards Group: HTML 5 Presentation

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

On Thursday evening (2007-01-25), at the Web Standards Group meeting in Sydney, I'll be doing a presentation about the future of HTML. It will be a 20 minute presentation giving an overview of the new features in HTML5. So, if you're in Sydney and interested learning more about HTML5, or maybe the other 3 topics being presented, RSVP now and come along!

For those of you who can't make it on the night, the slides, and hopefully a podcast of the event, will be made available afterwards.

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Proposing features

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

I'm happy to see the increased interest in HTML5 recently — especially with the amazing work Lachlan, Henri, and others are doing with this blog, the validator, feedback, and so forth.

Since the volume of feature requests is only going to increase in the near future, I thought I'd list some things that would make evaluating proposals easier. Here are some key things that any proposal should include:

Obviously, we want to keep the language as simple as possible. That means not everyone will get what they want. Having clear answers to the questions above will help all of us work out what is most important.

Posted in WHATWG | 5 Comments »