Re: Rough first draft of Level 0

On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 15:15, Tobie Langel wrote:

> On 4/1/12 3:41 PM, "Marcos Caceres" <w3c@marcosc.com (mailto:w3c@marcosc.com)> wrote:
>  
> > This is an aspirational document/wish-list (probably shouldn't even use
> > RFC2119 language)
>  
>  
>  
> That's certainly not the goal of Level 0 which is just busy describing the
> current state of the Mobile Web Platform.

If that is the case, then this should not be written to look like a spec. I would expect to see something like  
caniuse.com or Opera's MAMA.  
  
> Features which are out of the
> scope of said goal made it there by accident and will be removed.

That's great.  
  
> > I can't speak for browser vendors, but having worked for one for 3
> > years, browser vendors already know all this stuff (and I can feel them
> > shaking their heads again and saying "oh yay, another 'industry' wish
> > listŠ put it there, in the bin, with the others."). Browsers process and
> > render billions of web pages every day - and browser vendors talk to web
> > developers every day - there is nothing really new in this document to
> > get excited about or that they don't already know.
>  
>  
>  
> That's absolutely true and not really surprising given the descriptive
> purpose of this document.


I think many people will be confused, as I was, by the use of RFC2119 terminology. Can we change is to show stats instead?   

> > I think for this effort to have any significant impact, then it should
> > focus on the use cases (i.e., what do we want to build that we can't do
> > today (but we can do on iOS and Android)?) and where are the gaps in
> > interoperability in the platform that is holding back real progress. Long
> > lists of MUST, MUST, MUST, don't strike me as particularly helpful (and
> > it's just a rinse and repeat of every other industry wish list that has
> > been provided to browser vendors since the beginning of time). This is
> > where I think the -apple-* stuff is of value, in the sense that "oh look
> > at this awesome stuff we can do with Apple's proprietary stuff, which is
> > completely missing from the Web Platform as defined by the W3C/WHATWG".
>  
>  
>  
> > If you want to do this right, we need some real apps that show where
> > browsers fall on their asses: show where it is slow and painful and just
> > can't compete with iOS and Android. If you can do that, then you have
> > something new and of value that no other effort has been able to do.
>  
> Yes, that is the purpose of Cormob level 1, which will go in the details
> of the features missing to build around 90% of the top 100 "native"
> applications on the Mobile Web Platform.

That's excellent to hear, Tobie. This is not captured very well anywhere and I think it should be (hence my little skeptical outburst). After a million failed efforts of this sort, I really just want to see this "done right" (tm) for once. I think we have the right people to do it right here - but right now I fear we've already started down the wrong path with the way level 0 is being written.

Received on Sunday, 1 April 2012 14:22:29 UTC