Webapps/Status-2015-May-07
< Webapps
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
- 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- Work on ~20 specs has stopped (see Specs no longer active)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.