about:standardization Elika J. Etemad aka fantasai W3C CSS Working Group Invited Expert

What is a standard?

A standard is an agreed, repeatable way of doing something. It is a published document that contains a technical specification or other precise criteria designed to be used consistently as a rule, guideline, or definition.

A standard is an agreement on technically precise criteria so that we can consistently repeat something.

Like what? Hot water knobs. Paper sizes. Measuring soil properties. Displaying a Web page.

Open Standards

• Publicly Available
• Freely Implementable
• Transparent Process
• Public Participation

Benefits of Standardization

Process Benefits

Collaboration + Wide Review → Technical Merit

Consensus + Documentation → Interoperability

Ecosystem Benefits

Openness & Vendor-Neutrality
🠿
Competition & Diversity
🠿
Quality & Longevity

Longevity

Method of Standardization

Standards are created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators of a particular material, product, process or service.

Standardization Roles

• Community Member
• Working Group Member
• Chair
• Editor
• Reviewer
• Tester
• Implementer
• End-user

How to Participate in Standards Development

1. Step One Read the spec
2. Step Two Complain about it
3. Level 2 Opine in issues
4. Level 3 Suggest improvements
5. Level 4 Edit the spec

Jobs of a Spec Editor

• Editing Specs
• Triaging Issues
• Designing Proposals
• Evaluating Proposals
• Soliciting Reviews
• Driving Consensus
• Responding to Feedback

Types of Review

• Deep [Expert] Review
• Wide [Community] Review
• Horizontal [Specialist] Review

Formally Addressing a Comment

• Understand the feedback
• Analyze the problem
• Design and evaluate possible solutions
• Discuss and resolve the issue
• Edit the spec
• Respond with rationale
• Solicit commenter verification

Making Decisions

• Delegation to Editor
• Consensus of Working Group
• Working Group Vote

CSSWG Delegation Model

Communication Methods

• email / bug tracker
• chat
• telecon
• F2F

Advantages and disadvantages to each: find a good balance for your group

How to Run a Good Meeting

Have a clear agenda

with a discussion goal for each item

Have an empowered chair

to evaluate consensus, manage time + on-topicness + queuing, and shut people up when needed

Have a scribe

to clearly record the conclusions and, ideally, what led to them

Support each others’ participation

by voicing your opinions and helping others speak up

Types of Standardization Efforts

• Designing New Features
• Bugfixing Existing Features
• Documented Reverse-Engineering

Interoperability

• Specifications
• Implementations
• Test Suites
• Web Content
• 

Questions?

Common Standardization Failure Modes

• No shared vision / goals / values / principles
• Bad chairing
• Nobody does actual work
• Failing to solicit adequate review
• Ignoring feedback

Shared Vision: Example from CSSWG

5 Principles of Web Architecture

Web Architecture Cross-Device & Cross-Platform

• Screen / Print / Braille / Terminal / Speech / Mobile / ...
• Landscape / Portrait / High-res / Low-res / Widescreen / Phone screen / ...
• NeXT / MacOS / Windows / Linux / Irix / Solaris / Symbian / Android / iOS / BeOS / ...
• Gecko / Presto / Trident / WebKit / Servo / ...
• Mouse / Keyboard / Touchscreen / Wiimote / Voice nav / ...

Web Architecture World-Wide Web

• All Writing Systems
• All Languages
• Handle Hybrids

Web Architecture Forwards- and Backwards-Compatibility

• Forwards-compatible Parsing
• Levels, not Versions
• → Enable Progressive Enhancement & Graceful Degradation
• → Don't Break the Web&tm;

Web Architecture No Dataloss

• Visible By Default
• Readable By Default

Web Architecture Separation of Content & Style

• HTML for content & structure
• CSS for presentation

Why? Separation of Content & Style

• Efficiency of Implementation, Maintenance, Memory/Bandwidth
• Accessibility for Speech, Search, Reader Mode and Other Re-use
• Variability Exploring Choices, Changing over Time

Principles of Web Architecture

• Cross-Device & Cross-Platform
• World-Wide
• Forwards- and Backwards-Compatible
• No Dataloss
• Separated Content & Style

Fundamental Goal of the Web = Accessibility of Information

Constraints of CSS

• Unknown display size and orientation
• Unknown font availability
• Unknown content (user-generated, database-generated)
• Unknown language / writing system (localization, translation)
• No post-processing

Design Principles of CSS

• Flexible
• Powerful
• Robust
• Understandable
• Performant

Automatic Sizes

Resizable Typography Experiment using “Intrinsic Design” (Jen Simmons)

Automatic Sizes

grid-template-columns: max-content max-content 1fr min-content

fin