Open Web Platform Weekly Summary - 2011-03-14 - 2011-03-20

This is the third edition of our weekly summary about the Open Web Platform. The intent is to give an overview of the discussions, proposals, decisions which have happened during the last week around HTML5 and sometimes more broadly the Open Web Platform. This weekly summary covers events in multiple W3C groups, and some outside events as well. Feel free to chime in the comments and add information or ask for more details.

HTML Working Group Decisions

This was a big week in terms of decisions. I recommend to read carefully the decision made by the HTML Working Group. They are always very detailed and give a very good overview about the issues. They also propose a way to reopen the issue with meaningful materials.

• poll on rel ownership is open until March 24.
• poll on examples for alt attributes is open until March 24
• poll on summary attribute on table is open until March 28

figure elements in a paragraph ISSUE-128

Should figure elements be allowed in a paragraph (<p> element)? It has impacts on the parsing algorithm. The issue 128 summarizes the discussion and the change proposals. The straw poll led to the decision to treat <figure> as being equivalent to <p> or <aside>. For reopening the issue, you might want to give concrete use cases that specifically require figures within a paragraph. Ideally this would be accompanied by a list of actual sites that actually demonstrate this need.

Parsing quotes in Content-Type headers - ISSUE 125

When parsing quotes in Content-Type headers in “meta” elements, there is now a consensus from browser implementers. IE9 Release Candidate implementing the same behaviour than others. The change proposal has been adopted for the issue 125 after a straw poll

Normative reference for US-ASCII - ISSUE 101

There was not satisfying free document for referencing precisely what is US-ASCII. It has been decided to retain references to free of charge documents for the issue 101 following the comments on the poll. To reopen the issue, we should be able to provide a stable, maintained, official reference that is made available royalty free that defines ASCII in terms of UNICODE code points. It sounds like there is a need for a W3C note such as the one which was made for date and time.

Progress element in HTML5 - ISSUE 96

You should read carefully the decision on issue 96 which has been documented at length. Following the poll, it has been decided to keep the progress element into HTML5. There is already support from authoring communities and implementers.

nofollow and noreferrer values on link - ISSUE 124

A few years ago, a group of companies introduced nofollow and noreferrer for the rel attribute values for fighting against spam. It has been questionned if these values should be allowed on link elements. After the straw poll, it has been decided that these values should not be allowed on the link element.

attribute values semantic diversity on a and link elements - ISSUE 127

The issue 127 summarizes if the a and link elements may have similar attributes with different semantics. It has been decided after the straw poll that the specification need to be clarified for legibility. The issue relates also to issue 27 about the convergence of Atom, HTTP, and HTML5 for these values.

Multiple language for HTML content - ISSUE 88

Is it possible to have multiple language in the content attribute of the meta element. Should the Content-Language pragma be treated as conforming. It has been decided on issue 88 following the straw poll that Content-Language would be non-conforming.

IRI and HTML5 - ISSUE 56

A RFC defines IRI, international URIs. The initial wording of the specification showed discrepancies in between the two. It has been decided on issue 56 following the straw poll to restore a text explaining how to translate input strings contained in text/html documents into URIs.

Conversations

Proposals

• Steve Faulkner proposed text examples for longdesc attributes.
• Markus Ernst proposed to set a restricted palette for input type=color
• Jeb Boniakowski would like to be able to paste images: Rich Paste & DataTransfer / DataTransferItems API
• PeerConnection: encryption feedback by Glenn Maynard
• HTML Editing Commands proposed by Aryeh Gregor.
• proposal by Tony Gentilcore for a searchbox API
• Tab Atkins proposed a CSS Mixins. A mixin is a block of rules that can be “mixed into” other declaration blocks.

Announcements

• March 17 HTML WG minutes
• W3C Workshop on Identity in the Browser - 24/25th May 2011, Mountain View (USA)
• W3C Workshop on Web Tracking and User Privacy, 28/29 April 2011, Princeton, NJ, USA
• HTML5 Web Messaging Last Call
• Media Fragments URIs Last Call

Hot Topics

• Component Model is not an Isolation Model
• Using ArrayBuffer as payload for binary data to/from Web Workers
• The device element was dropped from the specification. Ian Hickson explained why and proposed a detail Javascript API
• Ian Hickson sent a change proposal for Audio and Video Track Selection and Synchronisation for Media Elements (issue 152)
• Jonas Sicking is concerned about using ARIA to override semantics
• issue 147 about playback rate is highly debated, and Silvia Pfeiffer has sent a change proposal
• Daniel Glazman expressed a disagreement on the non validity of the name attribute in HTML5.
• Proposal about canvas src is still heavily debated on the HTML WG mailing list.
• Geoff Freed sent a long comment about longdesc attribute on the issue 30. You should read also Laura Carlson’s email.
• The license debate for HTML5 specification is still going on and not solved.

This column is written by Karl Dubost, working in the Developer Relations & Tools at Opera Software.