[proposed] Web Performance Interest Group Charter

The mission of the Web Performance Interest Group, part of the Rich Web Client Activity, is dedicated to creating a faster user experience on the Web. The Interest Group will produce use cases and requirements for future deliverables of the Web Performance Working Group.

Join the Web Performance Interest Group.

End date	30 June 2012
Confidentiality	Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs	Steve Souders, Google Jason Weber, Microsoft
Initial Team Contacts (FTE %: 5)	Philippe Le Hégaret
Usual Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: topic-specific calls may be held Face-to-face: some f2f may be scheduled

Scope

The Web Performance Interest Group is dedicated to creating a faster user experience on the Web. This is accomplished by providing a forum to discuss web performance initiatives across web publishers, vendors, developers, and users with the goal of identifying areas for standardization.

Initial focus is on these areas:

Terminology - Development of a common vocabulary for web performance is needed as a basis for discussion. For example, what does "page load time" mean?
Metrics - In addition to page load time, there are other metrics that are key to measuring the performance of web pages. The Web Performance Interest Group will work to identify what these other metrics are, and how they can be measured in a consistent way.
Browsers - Performance has been a key area of innovation amongst browser vendors. The Web Performance Interest Group will continue to foster performance in browsers by bringing vendors together with developers to identify the next key areas for performance optimization.
Benchmarks - The Interest Group will contribute to defining and developing tests that can be used as consistent benchmarks for performance.
Best Practices - Recommended techniques for building high performance web sites. (the mobile web application best practices contains some mobile-related performance advises)(
Performance Research - Jointly design and execute performance experiments and share the results.
Tool Sharing - Tools and frameworks for measuring performance.

Deliverables

The Interest Group will produce use cases and requirements for future deliverables of the Web Performance Working Group. It produce Primers or Best Practice documents to support web developers when designing applications with performance in mind.

Milestones

The Web Performance Interest group does not have a formal participation commitment and thus will produce deliverables as time, interest and resources permit.

Participation

Participation in the Web Performance Interest Group is open to W3C Members. Any person interested in this topic is welcome to to subscribe to the group's mailing list, which is publicly archived.

There are no minimum requirements for participation in this group. Participants are strongly encouraged to take advantage of frequent opportunities to review and comment on deliverables from other groups.

The Chair may call occasional meetings consistent with the W3C Process requirements for meetings.

Decision Policy

As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions, the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.

Since the Web Performance Interest Group will produce no Rec-track deliverables, consensus is not always required, especially in the case of conflicting uses cases and requirements. Multiple options may be presented to the Web Performance Working Group for evaluation.

Patent Disclosures

The Web Performance Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

About this Charter

This charter for the Web Performance Interest Group has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.