Talk:WHATWG

Contributions

"with the greatest contributors being Mozilla Foundation, Opera Software and Apple Computer."

This doesn't appear to be true, the greatest contributions are from Google representatives, and independants. --217.155.143.66

See #vendor-neutral. ¦ Reisio 19:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

How does that explain it at all? Contributions is something entirely different from "vendor neutral"... --anne —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anne van Kesteren (talk • contribs) 13:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

Canvas

Isn't Canvas another WHATWG proposal?--Hhielscher 17:37, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Canvas is part of HTML5, I believe. --minghong 09:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, it is part of HTML5. --anne

vendor-neutral

How is the W3C vendor-neutral? --anne

Well, let's compare...

W3C's info:

"The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international consortium where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards." [1]

"W3C has over 400 Member organizations from more than 40 countries…, with a broad range of interests…."

Apparently any organization can apply for membership to the W3C. [2]

Part of the member agreement states "a. MIT, ERCIM and KEIO shall use diligent efforts to provide the vendor-neutral architectural and administrative leadership required to accomplish the Consortium's goals." [3]

WHATWG's info:

Membership

Anyone can contribute by subscribing to the mailing list. The list of subscribers to the mailing list are termed the contributors.

Membership is by invitation only, and consists of a number of representatives from various browser manufacturers. This group, which is referred to as the members, will provide overall guidance as described in the charter above. The members currently consists of:

• Brendan Eich [ Mozilla (CTO), Netscape ]
• David Baron [ Mozilla ]
• David Hyatt [ Safari, Netscape ]
• Dean Edwards [ lots of 3rd party work on Internet Explorer & Mozilla ]
• Håkon Wium Lie [ Opera (CTO) ]
• Ian Hickson [ Opera, Mozilla ]
• Johnny Stenback [ Mozilla ]
• Maciej Stachowiak [ worked on Safari ]

...as the article says, in contrast to WHATWG, W3C is quite vendor-neutral. WHATWG is primarily a Mozilla & Opera party, with a little Safari thrown in; Internet Explorer is basically not represented, no others are represented, and nothing but browser vendors are represented (except that with the [little] information I have, I guess you could say Dean Edwards is one person out of eight that represents those who haven't worked for browser vendors). ¦ Reisio 08:40, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Actually, anyone can contribute. As you can clearly see on the page describing the process and membership. --anne —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Anne van Kesteren (talk • contribs) 13:39, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

My post acknowledged that - what's your point? ¦ Reisio 20:43, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the WHATWG "members" are most equivalent to the W3C "staff", which are also by invitation only (and far more secret than the WHATWG members). The WHATWG, as a completely open group, has no equivalent to the W3C's "members". There are no membership fees, like the W3C has -- anyone is able to contribute equally. --75.30.186.2 23:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

User:75.30.186.2 is right about WHATWG membership being akin to W3C staff, and much less secretive. It's ludicrous to call the W3C "vendor-neutral" when it is a consortium making money from various software vendor in the form of membership fees. The W3C produces specifications under process rules that are not open to the public, unlike the WHATWG. Web developers in particular are under-represented in W3C lists that I've observed. This page is not using accurate language. I'm no NPOV guru, but "vendor-neutral" is just misleading. --Brendan Eich 21:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, WHATWG is definitely not "vendor-neutral", too. It is heavily influenced by Google. See e.g. this post (and the whole thread) (Ian Hickson works for Google). Oh, and BTW -- you are probably not fully objective here... you are Mozilla Corp. employee after all... Mrs G. Crump 01:05, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The most pertinent aspect of whether it's vendor-neutral is regarding anti-trust. W3C, like similar organisations, is set up to assure that all parties have equal chance of participating; otherwise, it'd be blatantly anti-competitive. I'd be very interested to see an anti-trust lawyer's analysis of WHATWG, but of course IANAL. --mnot (talk) 05:40, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Why does it say I "worked on Safari"? I haven't stopped. --MaciejStachowiak 09:09, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't necessarily mean you stopped. IIRC it was harder to find information on you than the others, so I put down what I did find - that you at one point worked on Safari. ¦ Reisio 16:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

History?

Can someone shed light on when the WHATWG was first formed, links to earliest discussions, etc? Jeff schiller 20:00, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Web Applications 1.0

"Web Applications 1.0, which defines advanced widgets, like menus and toolbars. This draft is in active development."

Well, I've browsed through a specification and I think there is a lot more defined than only "advanced widgets, like menus and toolbars". It also defines things like cross-domain persistent storage or tracking clicking on links (obvious wet dream of advertising companies...). So, I think something should be added to the article regarding this, especially that few of this things are already implemented in at least one popular browser (e.g. support for "ping" attribute is already included and enabled by default in testing builds of Firefox 3 - Gran Paradiso). 193.219.28.146 18:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Why does HTML5 route here?

HTML5 != WHATWG

When I type HTML5 into Wikipedia, I expect to get an article detailing the HTML5 specification. If I wanted a description of the group that makes the HTML5 specification, I would go directly to WHATWG.

What gives, this makes absolutely no sense?? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gavin86 (talk • contribs) 23:01, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

This has been fixed now. (Not by me.) 213.236.208.22 11:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Chris Wilson

When I go to the pod cast that was cited concerning why Chris Wilson did not chair WHATWG, I find it an insufficient source. The podcast definitely covers Chris's concern about the lack of a patent agreement but later Chris goes on to say that he still intended to take on the position. It sounds like there had to be a bit more to the reason Chris decided not to lead this group as he was pretty interested in the charter.

Chairing is about the W3C HTML WG. The patent stuff is about the WHATWG. Hsivonen 21:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Video Autoplay tag CANCER

Since Autoplay ads now are a cancer and a plague. Questions needed to be asked who demanded autoplay in the standards. I could see Mozilla or another browser company who are paid by ADS to demand this inclusion --2605:6000:3D10:100:ECE3:C570:576F:FD8E (talk) 22:08, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Potential updates

I should not edit this article as I am too close to the source material, but I was told adding a note on the talk page could get things corrected.

"WHATWG has a small, invitation-only oversight committee called "Members", which has the power to impeach the editor of the specifications." This is not correct, and the linked source does not support it. This probably refers to the obsolete structure described in https://whatwg.org/charter.

"The editor has significant control over the specification, but the community can influence the decisions of the editor.[15]" This may benefit from an additional reference to https://whatwg.org/faq#control.

"The WHATWG has been actively working on several documents." This list is not exhaustive; it may help to link to https://spec.whatwg.org/ which is. I'm unsure whether the goal of this section should be to duplicate that page or not.

"The WHATWG specification for HTML is a living document that will have continuous changes as necessary." This applies to all of the Living Standards, so calling it out for HTML in particular is a bit strange. Maybe this should be pulled up into the general "Specifications" section. Also, a reference to https://whatwg.org/faq#living-standard, replacing or in addition to the reference to https://blog.whatwg.org/html-is-the-new-html5, may be useful.

"The URL standard defines how URLs are supposed to be parsed in web browsers and replaces the IETF RFCs.[19]" Although I help maintain the software cited in [19], I find it a bit strange to cite a Node.js implementation of the URL Standard for this bullet point, instead of e.g. citing the URL Standard itself. In general I am unsure why some of the living standards have references (e.g. Fetch and URL) but the others don't.

Thanks; I hope this is helpful! Domenic Denicola (talk) 17:01, 1 November 2019 (UTC)

@ 203.189.184.193 (talk) 15:19, 15 May 2023 (UTC)