The results of this questionnaire are available to anybody.
This questionnaire was open from 2007-11-02 to 2007-11-09.
58 answers have been received.
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Shall we release HTML Design Principles as a W3C Working Draft? Specifically, version 1.18 of 2007-11-02 13:48:38 plus any publication-related changes (e.g. status section, typos, broken links) agreed by one of the editors (Maciej Stachowiak, Anne van Kesteren) and one of the co-chairs (Dan Connolly and Chris Wilson).
See also Results of a recent survey which shows considerable support for publication.
If you're not familiar with the process of Working Draft publication, see the list of W3C working drafts, section 7.4.1 First Public Working Draft of the Process document, and the heartbeat requirement.
Section 3.3 Consensus in the W3C process defines consensus as a "substantial number" in support of a proposal and no formal objections. In this survey, you may indicate disagreement without formally objecting. An individual who registers a Formal Objection should cite technical arguments and propose changes that would remove the Formal Objection. Please put your arguments (or a pointer to your arguments) in the rationale field.
| Choice | All responders |
|---|---|
| Results | |
| Yes, agree | 51 |
| Abstain | 4 |
| No, disagree | 2 |
| Formally Object | 1 |
| Responder | Release "HTML Design Principles" as a W3C Working Draft? | Rationale | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Geoffrey Sneddon () | Yes, agree | ||
| Edward O'Connor (Edward O'Connor) | Yes, agree | ||
| Daniel Schattenkirchner (Daniel Schattenkirchner) | Yes, agree | ||
| Erik van Kempen (Erik van Kempen) | Yes, agree | ||
| Roy Fielding (Roy Fielding) | Abstain | The document doesn't seem to understand the differences among design principles, requirements, constraints, and properties of the resulting artifact. But that can be worked on in future drafts. | |
| Brad Fults (Brad Fults) | Yes, agree | Release early and often. | |
| Stephen Axthelm (Stephen Axthelm) | Yes, agree | ||
| Asbjørn Ulsberg (Asbjørn Ulsberg) | Yes, agree | ||
| Bill Mason (Bill Mason) | Yes, agree | ||
| Google, Inc. (Ian Hickson) | Yes, agree | I would like us to add the Baby Steps principle too, as I said in: http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/dprv/results | |
| James Graham (James Graham) | Yes, agree | ||
| Robert Marshall (Robert Marshall) | Yes, agree | ||
| Arjan Eising (Arjan Eising) | Yes, agree | ||
| Sander van Lambalgen (Sander van Lambalgen) | Yes, agree | ||
| Cameron McCormack (Cameron McCormack) | Yes, agree | ||
| Opera Software (Anne van Kesteren) | Yes, agree | ||
| Shawn Medero (Shawn Medero) | Yes, agree | This document is certainly ready for Working Draft status... we need to let the public (those who are bit too busy to mine a 1000 emails) know what we are up to. | |
| Ben Boyle (Ben Boyle) | Yes, agree | ||
| John-Mark Bell (John-Mark Bell) | Yes, agree | ||
| Shunsuke Kurumatani (Shunsuke Kurumatani) | Yes, agree | ||
| Weston Ruter (Weston Ruter) | Yes, agree | ||
| Mozilla Foundation (Jonas Sicking) | Yes, agree | ||
| Danny Liang (Danny Liang) | Yes, agree | ||
| Rick Mans (Rick Mans) | Yes, agree | ||
| Raphael Champeimont (Raphael Champeimont) | Yes, agree | ||
| Steve Faulkner (Steve Faulkner) | Yes, agree | ||
| Ben Millard (Ben Millard) | Abstain | Each conversation where I've seen these principles used has got bogged down in debating the principles instead of resolving the issue. In these cases, the document was counter-productive. On the other hand, there are several Participants who are adamant about us needing it. So I don't know what to do. | |
| David Dailey (David Dailey) | No, disagree | While it has been argued that these Design Principles may serve to present needless reiteration of previous discussions, I have not seen any evidence that they do. I have merely observed a large amount of time spent debating them (reiteratively), absent final "consensus" (to use the vernacular sense of the term), in the end. I have seen, on several occasions, design principles misused (even prior to their "approval") to quash dissent, and fear the same being done again. I strongly feel that, if recommended by the W3C, they are in need of a very strong disclaimer about their limitations, the presence of strongly felt dissent, the potential impossibility of consistent implementation of them, examples of proper and improper applications of them, and a need for a periodic and systematic review of the principles as well as the methodology for their debate and approval. In the long run, the tyranny of the majority, that the climate surrounding their debate fostered, had a chilling effect on the group overall. The humor with which I raised my original objections has largely vanished, but my opposition to them has not. It is not so much the individual principles (which I chose not to vote on for various reasons in October) but the whole package that troubles me. Collectively, they seem rather like the Galactic Federation posting a note on a nearby planet that your own planet is soon to be destroyed. But then, I can be a pessimist at times. | |
| David Håsäther (David Håsäther) | Yes, agree | ||
| Josh Lawton (Josh Lawton) | Yes, agree | ||
| Dannii Willis (Dannii Willis) | Yes, agree | ||
| Laura Carlson (Laura Carlson) | Yes, agree | Thank you for removing the escape clause of "when possible" from the accessibility principle and making it a principle in its own right, as well as splitting up the aspects of universality. There is still much work to do on this document (see my comments from the last survey on the subject [1]). But this is progress. http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/40318/dprv/results | |
| Mitsue-Links Co., Ltd. (Masataka Yakura) | Yes, agree | ||
| Marghanita da Cruz (Marghanita da Cruz) | No, disagree | Anne van Kesteren wrote: <snip> > The other thing that seems a bit weird about the current document is > that two principles cover several paragraphs where the others are just a > few sentences. I don't think this is problematic though and I suppose we > can always fix that if desired in an update of the document. <snip> Another inconsistency in the document is the use of examples. Examples do help the reader understand the intent of the principles and it would be useful to identify an application of each principle (perhaps in the move from HTML3.2 to HTML4). Note, I have commented previously that, the example for supporting existing content (the syntactically incorrect html), seems to me, to be more an application of degrading gracefully. Perhaps editing the principles down to one page/10 principles would make them more useful ie * 1. Support Existing Content * 2. Degrade Gracefully/Handle Errors * 3. Do not Reinvent the Wheel/Pave Cowpaths/Evolution not revolution * 4. Solve Real Problem/ Priority of Constituencies/Support World Languages * 5. Secure By Design * 6. Separation of Concerns * 7. DOM Consistency * 8. Well-defined Behavior * 9. Avoid Needless Complexity * 10. Media Independence/Accessibility | |
| David Andersson (David Andersson) | Yes, agree | ||
| Philip TAYLOR (Philip TAYLOR) | Formally Object | No, the Design Principles as currently formulated make reference to putative HTML 5 elements about which there is widespread disagreement (<i> and (b>, to name but two). The Design Principles should be cast in abstract language so as not to appear to lend support to any particular putative HTML 5 feature, element, attribute, etc. | |
| Marc Drumm (Marc Drumm) | Yes, agree | ||
| Jens Meiert (Jens Meiert) | Yes, agree | ||
| Thomas Broyer (Thomas Broyer) | Abstain | I haven't even read it in details. | |
| Arthur Jennings (Arthur Jennings) | Yes, agree | ||
| Philip Taylor (Philip Taylor) | Yes, agree | ||
| Michael Puls II (Michael Puls II) | Yes, agree | ||
| Dylan Smith (Dylan Smith) | Yes, agree | ||
| Sean Fraser (Sean Fraser) | Yes, agree | ||
| Doug Wright (Doug Wright) | Yes, agree | ||
| mTLD Top Level Domain Limited (Stephen Stewart) | Yes, agree | ||
| Tim McMahon (Tim McMahon) | Yes, agree | ||
| Disruptive Innovations (Daniel Glazman) | Yes, agree | ||
| Julian Reschke (Julian Reschke) | Yes, agree | ||
| Marek Pawlowski (Marek Pawlowski) | Yes, agree | Lot of work has been done. Let's inform people about it. Feedback is very important. | |
| Gregory Rosmaita (Gregory Rosmaita) | Yes, agree | although i still think that accessibility, interoperability and internationalization deserve a mention in Section 2.1, "Support Existing Content", as indicated in: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Sep/0340.html i do thank the editors for adding quote The top user agents designed to meet specific needs or address specialized markets, such as assistive technologies, mobile browsers or user agents targeting less typical media such as text-only terminals or print. unquote to Section 2.2. and appreciate the collaborative effort at strengthening Section 5. | i also think that Marghanita da Cruz's comments in response to this survey should be considered seriously by the editors, chairs, and working group, and i, like several other responders, am eager to receive feedback from a wider audience. |
| Dimitri Glazkov (Dimitri Glazkov) | Yes, agree | It's good enough. Trying to refine it any further will be an exercise in demagogy. | |
| Henk-Jan de Boer (Henk-Jan de Boer) | Yes, agree | ||
| Dominik Tomaszuk (Dominik Tomaszuk) | Abstain | I do not have opinion. | |
| Microsoft Corp. (Chris Wilson) | Yes, agree | ||
| Arne Johannessen (Arne Johannessen) | Yes, agree | ||
| International Webmasters Association / HTML Writers Guild (IWA-HWG) (Pasquale Popolizio) | Yes, agree | ||
| Michaeljohn Clement (Michaeljohn Clement) | Yes, agree |
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