W3C

**PROPOSED** Web Performance Working Group Charter

The mission of the Web Performance Working Group, part of the Rich Web Client Activity, is to provide methods to measure aspects of application performance of user agent features and APIs.

Join the Web Performance Working Group.

End date 31 December 2011
Confidentiality Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs Arvind Jain, Google
Initial Team Contacts
(FTE %: 5)
Philippe Le Hégaret
Usual Meeting Schedule Teleconferences: topic-specific calls may be held
Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; an additional face-to-face meeting may be scheduled by consent of the participants
IRC: active participants, particularly editors, regularly use the #webapps W3C IRC channel

Scope

As Web browsers and their underlying engines include richer capabilities and become more powerful, web developers are building more sophisticated applications where application performance is increasingly important. Developers need the ability to assess and understand the performance characteristics of their applications using well-defined interoperable methods.

The Web Performance Working Group's deliverables include user agent features and APIs to measure aspects of application performance. These deliverables will apply to desktop and mobile browsers and other non-browser environments where appropriate and will be consistent with Web technologies designed in other working groups including HTML, CSS, WebApps, DAP and SVG.

Success Criteria

In order to advance to Proposed Recommendation, each specification is expected to have two independent implementations of each of feature defined in the specification.

Deliverables

The working group will deliver the following:

WebTiming
This specification defines an interface for web applications to access timing information related to navigation and elements. The WebTiming proposal will serve as starting point.

Other Deliverables

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

  • Test suites for each specification;
  • Primer or Best Practice documents to support web developers when designing applications with performance in mind.

Milestones

Milestones
Note: The group will document significant changes from this initial schedule on the group home page.
Specification FPWD LC CR PR Rec
WebTiming Sep 2010 Jan 2011 Mar 2011 Jun 2011 Sep 2011

Dependencies and Liaisons

W3C Groups

Web Applications Working Group
This Working Group develops APIs for client-side development and for markup vocabularies for describing and controlling client-side application behavior. In particular, it develops DOM Core. The WebTiming proposal depends on the WebIDL specification.
HTML Working Group
This group will maintain and produce incremental revisions to the HTML specification. The HTML specification defines the window object.
CSS Working Group
The group develops and maintains CSS.
SVG Working Group
This group continues the evolution of Scalable Vector Graphics as a format and a platform.
Device APIs and Policy Working Group
This group create client-side APIs that enable the development of Web Applications and Web Widgets that interact with devices services.

External Groups

ECMA Technical Committee 39 (TC39)
This is the group responsible for ECMAScript standardization, and related ECMAScript features like E4X. As the Web Performance Working Group will be developing ECMAScript APIs, it should collaborate with TC39.
Internet Engineering Task Force
The IETF is responsible for defining robust and secure protocols for Internet functionality, in particular HTTP.

Participation

To be successful, the Web Performance Working Group is expected to have 10 or more active participants for its duration. The Chairs and specification Editors are expected to contribute one day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The Web Applications Working Group will also allocate the necessary resources for building Test Suites for each specification.

The group encourages questions and comments on its public mailing lists, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration, with the agreement from each participant to Royalty-Free licensing of those submissions under the W3C Patent Policy.

Communication

Most Web Application Working Group Teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-web-perf@w3.org (archive). The public is invited to post messages to this list.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Web Performance Working Group home page.

The group will use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Information about the group (for example, details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants) will be available from the Web Performance Working Group home page.

Decision Policy

As explained in the W3C Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus and with due process. The expectation is that typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required. However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress, but consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs should put a question out for voting within the group (allowing for remote asynchronous participation -- using, for example, email and/or web-based survey techniques) and record a decision, along with any objections. The matter should then be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available.

This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis.

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 Working 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.


Philippe Le Hégaret

$Date: 2010/07/09 16:42:18 $