We’re done arguing why web standards are important. Accessibility, stability, quality control, uncomplicatness and ease of use have all help us put this debate to rest a long time ago. Sites championing these ideas, creat just to promote web standards — such as Chris Heilmann’s Web Standards for Business or the Web Standards Project — haven’t had to change at all since their inception in the middle of the first decade of this century.
However, something has chang
The way standards are develop — a matter probably as important as the standards themselves. So the next community debate isn’t about web standards per se; but about how web standards should be standardiz.
What’s in the standard?
The idea that standardization is important is reflect in the language we use to describe projects and communities. For example, the home page of the JSON API states that it is a “Standard for building application programming interfaces in JSON”. The frequently ask questions (FAQ) page describes the JSON API as a specification , [1] developers talk about its use in terms of whether it is compliant . A competing project, HAL ,
These projects illustrate the unification
of ideas about standards that, if left neglect, could lead to confusion.
These projects illustrate the unification of ideas about standards that, if left neglect, could lead to confusion. Both the JSON API and HAL specifications are de facto standards — the idea of approaching a common problem with a best practice that spreads organically through the development community.
The specifications we tend to think of as more common, such as those for HTML an consensus specifications: one with the Ecma standards group , the other with the IETF.
All standards will have specifications, but not all specifications are standards.
Although we use the term “standard” in all cases here, not all specifications are creat equal. Sometimes we even come across requests for comments (RFCs) for technical specifications. Never become standards because they are theoretical ideas about how something. Might work; thus.
Creation of standards
“Official” standards are specifications that have gone through a voluntary consensus process. There is a usa phone number data potentially clear path for projects to evolve from a de facto specification to a project that is standardiz through voluntary consensus :
A developer identifies a problem and proposes a solution to the community;
The community will provide feback and suggest other potential workarounds in public channels such as GitHub or Google Groups;
The community reaches a mass consensus and submits the specification to some standards body;
Developers implement the solution, while is it a software the standards body formalizes and enacts the standard.
Most developers I know are smart, resourceful, and prefer the path of least resistance; due to the Open-source Software (OSS) community’s philosophy that all bugs are small , they tend to work together to solve problems of mutual interest. It’s a cz lists pretty obvious, not entirely new idea, and the Web Extensibility Manifesto is essentially a call to action to implement more develo.