In a surprising coalition, all the major competing players in open web platform such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Mozilla and W3C joined hands to announce the creation of WebPlatform docs. The website, which has been jointly supported by these stewards is still described to be in its alpha form and is aimed at being a one stop always up-to-date comprehensive documentation for all web developers. Explaining the aim behind the website, Lars Erik Bolstad, VP Core Technology, at Opera Software said, “Web developers often struggle to find decent information on all the newest technologies that they need to know about; having a single site to turn to that they can trust will save them a lot of time.” Alex Komoroske, Product Manager at Google also reiterated this fact in a blog post saying, “When you want to build something for the web, it’s surprisingly difficult to find out how you can implement your vision across all browsers and operating systems. You often need to search across various websites and blogs to learn how certain technologies can be used.”
The docs website is based on the MediaWiki platform that is used by Wikipedia, which means any web developer will be able to add, edit and maintain documents on the wiki, provided the contributor has an account and a verified email address registered on the website. It has however not yet opened up for such community participation yet and is expected to be available “soon”. All major content on the website is to be made available in some form of Creative Commons license, the exact details of which depend on the source or organization contributing the documentation. Despite being a wiki, the website will have its own funding and dedicated staff to maintain the content and ensure that it always remains up to date.
Along with the documentation, the website is also accompanied by a stack overflow style question and answer forum and a chat channel for interaction among web developers so that they will be able to get their problems solved easily. The accompanying blog on the website took the vision a step further by stating that, “It will have in-depth indicators of browser support and interoperability, with links to tests for specific features. It will feature discussions and script libraries for cutting-edge features at various states of implementation or standardisation, with the opportunity to give feedback into the process before the features are locked down.”
As of now the website is populated with articles related to HTML, CSS, Javascript, SVG, accessibility and other basic concepts related to the internet which have been contributed by the documentation from steward organizations such as Microsoft and Mozilla. There is already a getting started guide set up in order to invite contributions in advance before it actually opens up for public editing. Hopefully, this effort will see web developers getting easier access to information related to web development and will provide a good platform for developers and organizations to collaborate on web standards which often change very frequently.
