WebPlatform Browser Support Info

Hi, folks-

I'd like to start this discussion again, now that we have more 
interested people and more resources.

The idea is to have a central repository of browser support information, 
i.e. what features are supported by which versions of which browser on 
which OS. We want to have a shared data model that combines the best 
features of all the browser compatibility sites out there, and to 
provide an API for anyone to use that information.

On this list, we have the folks behind the best sites for this 
information on the Web:
* Alexis Deveria, CanIUse.com
* Peter-Paul Koch (PPK), QuirksMode.org
* Niels Leenheer, HTML5Test.com
* Max Firtman, MobileHTML5.org

(BTW, why are 3 people on that list from the Netherlands??? Max, are you 
secretly Dutch, too?)

We also have permission to use the data from MDN and W3C's test suites; 
the former will be good to fill in any gaps left by the sites above, and 
the latter is backed by detailed tests (which will be useful in a later 
phase, but for now, it's too fine-grained).

Ronald Mansveld, who has backend skills, has volunteered to help us with 
creating the data model, creating scripts to scrape or request data from 
different sources, and normalize the data.


Current Goals:
* create unified data model (probably JSON)
* integrate data from different sites into that data store
* provide an API for that data
* create a scalable extension for WebPlatform.org to show compat data on 
our pages
* find the right level of granularity to display results in different 
contexts (e.g., quicklook, detailed tables of current information, drill 
down view into different data sources)
* help automate QuirksMode's infrastructure

Non-goals for WebPlatform.org:
* testing user's browsers
* collecting stats on browser usage for compat (uselessly skewed on a 
site aimed at web developers)

Possible future goals:
* report browser statistics (from best source... Akamai? netstats?)
* report results for game consoles, set-top boxes, TVs, etc.


Random notes:
* We need to decide the granularity of support result values, such as:
http://www.quirksmode.org/key.html
* My initial prototype [4] for generating and displaying compatibility 
information in pages will not scale without a major restructuring; I 
haven't had time to do that; I hope Renoir (WebPlatform's devop) can 
help a bit with that, but he is busy


I'm really excited to see this moving forward! We'd like to have a rough 
version ready for WebPlatform.org's upcoming beta launch.


[1] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Compatibility_Info
[2] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Compatibility_Info/Phase_1
[3] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Compatibility_Info/Phase_2
[4] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/WPD:Compatibility_Info/Test


Thanks-
-Doug

Received on Thursday, 17 October 2013 06:12:42 UTC