Moving the Web Platform forward

The Web Platform keeps moving forward every day. Back in October last year, following the release of HTML 5.0 as a Recommendation, I wrote about Streaming video on the Web as a good example of more work to do. But that's only one among many: persistent background processing, frame rate performance data, metadata associated with a web application, or mitigating cross-site attacks are among many additions we're working on to push the envelop. The Open Web Platform is far from complete and we've been focusing on strengthening the parts of the Open Web Platform that developers most urgently need for success, through our push for Application Foundations. Our focus on developers led us to the recent launch of the W3C’s Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG). It gives the easiest way possible for developers to propose new platform features and incubate their ideas.

As part of the very rapid pace of innovation in the Web Platform, HTML itself will continue to evolve as well. The work on Web Components is looking to provide Web developers the means to build their own fully-featured HTML elements, to eliminate the need for scaffolding in most Web frameworks or libraries. The Digital Publishing folks are looking to produce structural semantic extensions to accommodate their industry, through the governance model for modularization and extensions of WAI-ARIA.

In the meantime, the work boundaries between the Web Applications Working Group and the HTML Working Group have narrowed over the years, given that it is difficult nowadays to introduce new HTML elements and attributes without looking at their implications at the API level. While there is a desire to reorganize the work in terms of functionalities rather then technical solution, resulting in several Working Groups, we're proposing the Web Platform Working Group as an interim group while discussion is ongoing regarding the proper modularization of HTML and its APIs. It enables the ongoing specifications to continue to move forward over the next 12 months. The second proposed group will the Timed Media Working Group. The Web is increasingly used to share and consume timed media, especially video and audio, and we need to enhance these experiences by providing a good Web foundation to those uses, by supporting the work of the Audio and Web Real-Time Communications Working Groups.

The challenge in making those innovations and additions is to continue to have an interoperable and royalty-free Web for everyone. Let's continue to make the Open Web Platform the best platform for documents and applications.