Proposals from the task force

Hi all,

Last Friday was the deadline I had set for getting more fleshed out
proposals that could be adopted as the recommendations from this task
force; here is a summary of where I think we stand on those as of today
— in short, I think there are good ideas but some of the proposals lack
concrete action plans. And feedback on the proposals that are more
advanced, and the priority among them would be very useful — I am to
report on this at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting on June 11.

Offline support
---------------
Alex and Jonas are working on complementary proposals that among other
things should make it easier and more reliable to provide Web apps that
keep working offline. 
Jonas' proposal has been brought to the WebApps Working Group, and
bringing NavigationController to WebApps is part of Alex's roadmap.

My understanding is that right now there isn't much that is directly
needed, but I feel that the following actions would be useful
contributions once the work is further advanced:
- a devrel campaign to draw attention to the proposal on the table,
including dedicated resources for describing the tech on
WebPlatform.org, drawing attention to it in our devrel talks and
communications (e.g. A List Part chronique?), possibly organizing local
meetups to get hands-on feedback from developers
- dedicated staff resources on developing test cases for the technology

Handling background download/upload
-----------------------------------
Marcos hasn't been able to produce a proposal in this space; based on
previous and more recent discussions, this still seem a fairly important
use case to address; Tobie had sketched a possible approach on this,
NavigationControler is also relevant, and the Web Performance Working
Group has potentially relevant work items in its new proposed charter.

I think a good proposal in this space would still need someone to dig a
bit deeper into it to find out what resources would be needed to do what
and when; the alternative is simply to put the WebPerf Beacons spec on
the "highly-wanted" list, but that seems pretty handwavy without more
concrete suggestions.

Responsive images
-----------------
Marcos brought up responsive images as a space where additional
resources to get faster convergence among browser vendors would be
needed, possibly through a W3C Workshop; I heard also discussions on how
NavigationControler could also offer new possibilities in this space.

Feedback on that idea would be most welcomed.

Delta updates
-------------
Tobie and Charles have argued this would be an important addition to the
platform, and Alex pointed out that getting this right will be hard, and
dependent on first getting NavigationControler and Fetch out of the way.

I think we should flag this as a future work item, but probably not ask
for specific resources at this stage.

Security
--------
Virginie sent a list of topics that might be worth further attention to
the Web & Security Interest Group:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-security/2013May/0014.html

That sounds like a good start, but doesn't quite include yet a list of
possible actions that would be useful or needed to improve the
situation.

User Experience
---------------
Scott sent a document that aims at framing the various types of Web Apps
user experiences that can be designed:
https://docs.google.com/a/jenson.org/document/d/1wcXubh-yUtViwtUG4o43v3jeO6P1T63EWTh4iw2iHy8/edit?pli=1

I think it offers at the very least an excellent starting point for a
document that would settle terminology and define the landscape of what
Web apps are capable of — something that I could see be taken up by the
under-discussion Web & Mobile IG:
https://www.w3.org/2013/04/webmobile-ig-charter.html

But ideally, I would still like to see derived actions from that
landscape; also, Scott is still awaiting for specific comments from the
task force :)

Developer relationship
----------------------
We had good and frank discussions on the difficulty of getting W3C as an
organization to recognize and handle feedback from developers.

A number of proposals that were advanced:
* an elected developer representative that would gain some rights in
W3C,
* a bug squad that would act as a more welcoming interface to feedback
from developers,
* running surveys that would highlight aggregate feedback from
developers on the priority and quality of our various specs.

All these proposals have had push back, although I think the bug squad
was probably the one were the push back was mostly on ensuring we make
it right rather than on fundamental issues with it; I would welcome
feedback on that analysis, and thus on the opportunity to including this
in our recommendations.

Data-based spec development
---------------------------
Marcos brought up the value of getting good deployment data to guide our
progress on spec development:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-closingthegap/2013May/0050.html

The conclusion seemed to go toward interfacing with existing projects in
this space — but we're still short of a concrete action plan as far as I
can tell.

Developer tools
---------------
There is the Web Diagnostics proposal that we could offer to push for
standardization:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yw_qNMCnGsWQRsdcrifzh_kzFey-ThQ3yp-DmxuJxvg/edit?usp=sharing

Again, feedback on that idea would be useful.

The following topics that had been brought up have found no one willing
to contribute follow up action plans, so it seems unlikely they'll be
included in our recommendations at this stage:
* Searching Web Apps
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-closingthegap/2013Mar/0063.html

* Functional Web / Web Intents / Web Activities
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-closingthegap/2013Mar/0063.html

* in-context discovery
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-closingthegap/2013Apr/0015.html
(although that notion is part of Scott's landscape document)

* Consistency and dependency
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-closingthegap/2013Apr/0022.html

Thanks again,

Dom

Received on Wednesday, 29 May 2013 14:53:52 UTC