WHATWG Weekly: Subscribe to the specification & XMLHttpRequest merger
Next to @WHATWG, we now have +WHATWG. Hopefully ?WHATWG is next. Not to dispair, WHATWG Weekly will remain right here, without funny characters preceding it.
HTML is big, so follow what interests you!
Ian Hickson announced a new system on the mailing list that allows people to subscribe to specific sub-topics in the HTML specification, such as <canvas> or the HTML Syntax and Parsing sections. You can do so right from the specification itself. If you are interested in topics that are not yet a sub-topic, please let us know.
XMLHttpRequest
XMLHttpRequest is now developed as a single specification again, to reduce confusion, and make it easier for everyone to look at the same copy. Some subtle changes have been made as well, such as allowing responseType to be set before invoking open(), and restrictions on synchronous usage outside a worker context are planned. Synchronous in the main thread is bad, and you will not find any new XMLHttpRequest goodness there real soon now.
Emails
Because not everyone writes sites in a way that prevents future specifications from breaking them, Cameron McCormack has thought up a proposal that should help to make API design less restrictive. Karl Dubost pointed out that using GET when you mean POST is a bad idea.
Ryosuke Niwa is still working on the UndoManager and DOM Transaction specification and posted about a re-introduced AutomaticDOMTransaction interface. He also announced an updated draft and summarized the changes thus far.