A community group to incubate work on MiniApps and serve as a base for analysis and proposals of specific work items
w3c/miniappGroup's public email, repo and wiki activity over time
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The WebEvolve Annual Event 2025, as part of the serial events of the “WebEvolve” open forum initiated by Beihang University (W3C Partner), will be held on 5-6 September in Hangzhou (China). This hybrid event will feature a session on high-performance, cross-platform web apps, which is particularly relevant for the MiniApps standardization, as most MiniApps are web-like apps that can be distributed across operating systems and run on embedded browsers.
We encourage participants from the W3C MiniApp Working Group and Community Group, web developers, super-app vendors, toolset developers, MiniApp publishers, and researchers in general to engage in discussions on the future of the MiniApp standardization.
During this event, we will foster discussions on interoperability, standardization gaps, and future directions for MiniApps within the W3C ecosystem.
Read more about the topics, agenda, and logistics on the official WebEvolve 2025 website.
The MiniApps Ecosystem Community Group provides a forum for global community to discuss, incubate and propose MiniApp related standard ideas with the goal to bring more interoperability and robustness to MiniApp ecosystem.
Background
MiniApp as a new form of mobile application, leveraging both Web
technologies (especially CSS and Javascript) as well as capabilities of native
applications, is gaining more and more popularities in Asian countries such as
China. To enhance the interoperability between different MiniApp platforms (AKA
the super application or host application), main stream MiniApp vendors has
been working together in W3C Chinese Web Interest Group
since May 2019 and published MiniApp Standardization
White Paper in September 2019 as the initial standardization
exploration for MiniApp technologies.
As more global companies get interested in joining the MiniApp related discussion, the MiniApp Ecosystem Community Group was proposed and approved during TPAC2019 so that global Web community can join the discussion.
Scope of Work
The MiniApp Ecosystem Community Group aims to discuss proposals for MiniApp features that would benefit the interoperability and robustness of MiniApp ecosystem, including:
Out of Scope
The group does not intend to discuss ideas related to MiniApp platform operation.
New projects or status changes are communicated to the group through the
public mailing list. Chairs and editors should publish status updates to the group
public mailing list to allow group participants to monitor progress without
having to directly watch every repo.
Coordination
It is anticipated that the group will collaborate with appropriate W3C
Working Groups and WHATWG work streams in order to transition spec proposals to
the Recommendation or Living Standard track. This group will probably get into
collaboration with the following groups:
Web Application Working Group
Web Performance Working Group
Service Workers Working Group
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Working Group
Devices and Sensors Working Group
Web Application Security Working Group
Immersive Web Working Group
Web Incubator Community Group (WICG)
Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group
Machine Learning Community Group
Internationalization Working Group
Privacy Interest Group(PING)
WHATWG
Community Group Process and Patent Policy
The group operates under the Community and Business
Group Process. Terms of in this charter that conflict with those
of the Community and Business Group Process are void.
As with other Community Groups, W3C seeks organizational licensing
commitments under the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement
(CLA) (Proposals in
this Community Group charter are applicable “Specification” in the
CLA). When people request to participate without representing their
organization’s legal interests, W3C will in general approve those requests for
this group with the following understanding: W3C will seek and expect an
organizational commitment under the CLA starting with the individual’s first
request to make a contribution to a group deliverable. The section on Contribution
Mechanics describes how W3C expects to monitor these
contribution requests.
Communication
The
group tends to have monthly teleconferences and conducts its work on the public
mailing list public-miniapps@w3.org as well as its GitHub Repository for
technical discussions. Other communication tools are allowed if considerable
number of the group participants decide to embrace them.
Participation and Contribution
Membership of the group is open to everybody but all participants will
have signed the W3C Community Contributor
License Agreement. Chairs and editors of feature proposals must
ensure that no contributions are adopted from anyone who is not a member of the
Community Group.
All Github repositories attached to the Community Group must contain a
copy of the CONTRIBUTING
and LICENSE
files.
Note: this CG will not use a contrib mailing list for contributions
since all contributions will be tracked via Github mechanisms (e.g. pull
requests).
Decision Policy
This group will seek to make decisions when there is consensus. consensus
decisions will be recorded through meeting minutes or its GitHub repo issue
list with assistance from the Chairs.
Any technical specification that is planned to be proposed to a W3C
working group should require:
About This Charter
This Charter can be amended by the Chairs with consultation of the
Community Group.
Charter History
The following table lists details of all
changes from the initial charter.
This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2019-09-18 by Charles ‘chaals’ (McCathie) Nevile. The following people supported its creation: Charles ‘chaals’ (McCathie) Nevile, Angel Li, Qing An, Michel Weksler, Chris Wilson. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.