Link tags: w3c
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Harnessing groupthink: fine-tuning CSS specifications | Clearleft
In order to thoroughly attend to every pertinent aspect of the spec, fantasai asked us each to read one sentence aloud to the group. At which point we were all asked whether we thought the sentence made sense, and to speak up if we didn’t understand any of it or if it wasn’t clear.
Rich documents the excellent and fascinating process used in a recent W3C workshop (though what he describes is the very opposite of groupthink, so don’t let the title mislead you):
I’d never come across the person-by-person, sentence-by-sentence approach before. I found it particularly effective as a way of engaging a group of people, ensuring collective understanding, and gathering structured feedback on a shared document.
Patterns | APG | WAI | W3C
This is a terrific resource! A pattern library of interactive components: tabs, switches, dialogs, carousels …all the usual suspects.
Each component has an example implementation along with advice and a checklist for ensuring its accessible.
It’s so great to have these all gathered together in one place!
Reinventing W3C Governance
To be honest, I’m not all that convinced by Robin’s arguments here about overhauling the governance model at the World Wide Web Consortium (partly because the way he describes the current model sounds pretty okay to me). But I’m very interested in what he has to say in the broader philosophical sense about using values to solve problems:
A value is worth something if it’s there to help you when the rubber hits the road and starts hydroplaning. Sure, you’ll need a handful of high-level lofty values as reminders, if only because there’s always a vocal guy (it’s always a guy) who thinks it’s just outrageous to put people before profits. But mostly you want Values You Can Use.
That might be the best description I’ve come across yet for design principles: values you can use.
When we say that engineering is about trade-offs, we’re saying that engineers solve their hardest problems using values (which they call “heuristics” because everyone’s entitled to be fancy some). In implementing a system, you might need to decide between an option that provides people with the best experience, another that delivers the greatest value to the shareholders, and yet a third one that makes the control centre blinkenlights dance in the prettiest way.
Web Platform Design Principles
Principles behind the design of web APIs:
- Put user needs first (Priority of Constituencies)
- It should be safe to visit a web page
- Trusted user interface should be trustworthy
- Ask users for meaningful consent when appropriate
- Support the full range of devices and platforms (Media Independence)
I should add these to my collection.
On not choosing WordPress for the W3C redesign project - Working in the open with W3C and Studio 24
The use of React complicates front-end build. We have very talented front-end developers, however, they are not React experts - nor should they need to be. I believe front-end should be built as standards-compliant HTML/CSS with JavaScript used to enrich functionality where necessary and appropriate.
Let’s Define CSS 4 · Issue #4770 · w3c/csswg-drafts
Jen kicked off a fascinating thread here:
It’s come up quite a few times recently that the world of people who make websites would greatly benefit from the CSS Working Group officially defining ”CSS 4”, and later “CSS 5“, etc.
The level is discourse is impressively smart and civil.
Personally, I don’t (yet) have an opinion on this either way, but I’ll be watching it unfold with keen interest.
Old CSS, new CSS / fuzzy notepad
I absolutely love this in-depth history of the web, written in a snappy, snarky tone.
In the beginning, there was no CSS.
This was very bad.
Even if you—like me—lived through all this stuff, I guarantee there’ll still be something in here you didn’t know.
[css-grid-2] Masonry layout · Issue #4650 · w3c/csswg-drafts
This is an interesting looking proposal for CSS grid to be ever so slightly extended to enable Masonry-style auto placement—something’s that tantalisingly close right now, but still requires some JavaScript to do calculations.
W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles
- There is one web
- The web should not cause harm to society
- The web must support healthy community and debate
- The web is for all people
- Security and privacy are essential
- The web must enable freedom of expression
- The web must make it possible for people to verify the information they see
- The web must enhance individuals’ control and power
- The web must be an environmentally sustainable platform
- The web is transparent
- The web is multi-browser, multi-OS and multi-device
- People should be able to render web content as they want
Transcript of Tim Berners-Lee’s talk to the LCS 35th Anniversary celebrations, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1999/April/14
Twenty years ago—when the web was just a decade old—Tim Berners-Lee gave this talk, looking backwards and forwards.
For me the fundamental Web is the Web of people. It’s not the Web of machines talking to each other; it’s not the network of machines talking to each other. It’s not the Web of documents. Remember when machines talked to each other over some protocol, two machines are talking on behalf of two people.
Web Developer Representation in W3C · An A List Apart Article
This is an excellent initiative by the Dutch Fronteers group to have professional web developers represented in W3C working groups. In this particular case, they’re funding Rachel for the CSS working group. This sets a great precedent—I really hope the W3C goes for it!
Inside CSS | Clearleft
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall at a CSS Working Group meeting, Richard has the inside scoop.
The consensus building is vital. Representatives from all the major browsers were in the room, collaborating closely by proposing ideas and sharing implementations. But most fundamentally they were agreeing together what should go in the specifications, because what goes in the specs is what gets built and ends up in the hands of users.
Distributed and syndicated content: what’s wrong with this picture? | Technical Architecture Group
Hadley points to the serious security concerns with AMP:
Fundamentally, we think that it’s crucial to the web ecosystem for you to understand where content comes from and for the browser to protect you from harm. We are seriously concerned about publication strategies that undermine them.
The anchor element is designed to allow one website to refer visitors to content on another website, whilst retaining all the features of the web platform. We encourage distribution platforms to use this mechanism where appropriate. We encourage the loading of pages from original source origins, rather than re-hosted, non-canonical locations.
That last sentence there? That’s what I’m talking about!
Web Publications for the Open Web Platform: Vision And Technical Challenges
Given my experience publishing Resilient Web Design as a web book, I think I should take a good look at this nascent spec.
What we envision for Packaged Web Publications is similar to the goals and techniques of Progressive Web Apps: breaking the boundaries between web sites and mobile apps, an emphasis on “offline” paradigms, and so on. The time is right to broaden the scope and power of the web to include publications.
Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Eulogy for Flash
Web developers aren’t going to shed many tears for Flash, but as Bruce rightly points out, it led the way for many standards that followed. Flash was the kick up the arse that the web needed.
He also brings up this very important question:
I’m also nervous; one of the central tenets of HTML is to be backwards-compatible and not to break the web. It would be a huge loss if millions of Flash movies become unplayable. How can we preserve this part of our digital heritage?
This is true of the extinction of any format. Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to tackle this problem head on.
Let small include subheadings? · Issue #929 · w3c/html
Here’s an interesting proposal to slightly amend the semantics of the small element so it could apply to the use-case that hgroup was trying to cover.
Micropub is a W3C Recommendation • Aaron Parecki
I was just talking about micropub …and now it’s officially a W3C spec. Great work!
If you’re building a blogging platform, you can allow your users choose from a wide variety of posting clients by implementing the Micropub spec.
If you’re building a posting client and want it to work with many different server backends instead of hard-coding it to Twitter or other proprietary APIs, implement the Micropub spec and you’ll quickly have people eager to start using the app!
DRM for the Web is a Bad Idea | Internet Archive Blogs
The Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) addition to HTML is effectively DRM with the blessing of the W3C. It’s bad for accessibility, bad for usability, bad for security, and as the Internet Archive rightly points out, it’s bad for digital preservation.
Cascading HTML Style Sheets — A Proposal
It’s fascinating to look back at this early proposal for CSS from 1994 and see what the syntax might have been:
A one-statement style sheet that sets the font size of the h1 element:
h1.font.size = 24pt 100%The percentage at the end of the line indicates what degree of influence that is requested (here 100%).