Re: Next Web Focus

On 1/25/14, 4:28 AM, "Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com> wrote:
>
>The work described in the Extensible Web Manifesto has only begun.  The
>virtuous cycle of API development through polyfills still needs a
>serious jumpstart.  I agree that it's the way forward, and would much
>rather see focus on building a polyfill ecosystem than pushes for
>changes to the basic structures of HTML/CSS/JS/DOM interaction.
>
>Browsers certainly are exposing more functionality through APIs, but are
>regions really a "low-level capability"?  It seems unlikely to me.

The regions proposal came about in large part because fragmentation can
not be polyfilled effectively. The decisions a browser makes in multicol
or printing are complicated and fiddly enough that trying to re-create
that functionality results in an ocean of script. In order to have
performant, extensible fragmentation we need the browsers to do the work
and expose the results in an API.

I don’t think regions are a ‘low-level’ capability (they’re lower than
multicol, but higher than a lot of other things), but they do provide a
useful extensibility point for the fragmentation layer.

>
>>  > Is that really the purpose of this group?
>>  >
>> I hope i have clarified my original intent in posting this to the
>> group.  If not, I'm happy to have a more rapid exchange directly if you
>> feel that would be  more helpful and we can always loop it back in if we
>> come to any form of resolution.
>
>For now I plan to return to observer status, and will work outside of
>this group to promote what I thought it was trying to do.  I've been
>doing that anyway, for a very long time.

I hope that you can continue to work inside the group. Your posts on this
thread have been quite helpful to me. They have clarified the significance
of what I’m asking for in the regions proposal (much more than anything
else I’ve read on the issue). Other extensible web projects do not run
afoul of SoC, so I hope you can continue working with this group on the
parts that you find acceptable (and continue to point out when we’re
running in the wrong direction).

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Saturday, 25 January 2014 15:12:20 UTC