Webapps/Status-2015-May-07

Background

• Group started in 2008 (charter history)

• Current charter (#5) runs through June 2016

• Scope remains Web application APIs and data formats (f.ex. Web Components)

Participation

• Broad and active participation by browser vendors and other industry segments
• 33 Members
• 170 formal participants
• 8 Invited Experts

Collaboration

WebApps actively collaborates with:

• CSSWG - Shadow DOM, view-mode, FullScreen
• HTMLWG - Editing APIs, DOM
• I18N - Web application manifest
• PING - spec review
• TAG - Service Workers, URL, Application Packaging, etc.
• WAI/IndieUI - Editing APIs TF
• WebAppSec - CORS, etc.

Specs and Publications

• Over 150 publications since WG started.
• Publication status / roadmap: https://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/PubStatus.
• Twelve Recommendations Published
  • Implementation Reports: [1]
  • Timeline from FPWD to REC: [2]
  • Most are in maintenance mode
• Currently working on over 30 standards
  • ~25 APIs
  • 3 Web Components specs
  • 3 Editing API Task Force documents not yet published
• Work on ~20 specs has stopped (see Specs no longer active)
• Now using the Automatic WD Publication mechanism aka Echinda for several specs

Work Mode

• Pioneered asynchronous decision making f.ex. using e-mail driven Call for Consensus (CfC) to formalize group decisions.

• Key operating principle: if something is important -> JDI!

• Editing policy: Edit First, Review Later.

• Mail lists: 6, all Public (public-{webapps,script-coord,editing-tf,webapps-bugzilla,webapps-github} and www-dom).

• F2f Meetings
  • F2F Meetings are generally group-wide, meeting annually at TPAC and zero or one other times
  • Some topic-specific meetings f.ex. Web Components (April 2015)

• Distributed meetings / voice conferences
  • There are No regular group wide calls
  • Topic specific call when needed: UI Events, Web Components, Editing TF

Spec Repositories

• Github: most specs use Github (see WebApps' Github specs) and all new specs will use it.

• Hg/Mercurial: only 2 specs left in Hg (both in CR) and these will eventually move to Github.

• CVS: only the five (legacy) HTML 5 APIs (Web Storage, Web Sockets, Web Messaging, etc.) and they will eventually be moved to Github.

Bugs, Issues, Testing

• Tracker: only for group-wide admin type actions (not for specs).

• Bugzilla is still used by most specs.

• Github Issues is used by several specs.

• Testing: the group uses the web-platform-test testing infrastructure.

Group Challenges

• Synching with WHATWG and ECMA
  • Streams (dependency for WebRTC, Media Extensions)
  • Fetch (dependency for XHR, ...)

• Finding qualified Editors that can commit to actively driving a standard to Recommendation.

• Testing: getting a test suite sufficient to prove interoperability can take a very long time.

Consortium Wide Issues

• Issue #1 - W3C is a Pay to Play Standards Organization. The consortium's Pay to Play structure resulted in at least one Invited Expert application being rejected. (An active Editor left a Member company and now works for a non-Member company and BizDev thinks this company should be a member so the staff blocked the IE application.)

• Issue #2 - Invited Expert Agreement. The IE agreement prevents Invited Experts from keeping their copyrights and rights for their contributions and this can prevent the right people from participation.

• Issue #3 - External Errata Are Not Useful. In the age of Living Standards, external errata are make work and useless to active actors.