- From: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@mit.edu>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2015 10:19:04 -0400
- To: "public-web-perf@w3.org" <public-web-perf@w3.org>
Dear group, At this point there is quite a number of web performance specifications, some of them with multiple draft versions. They have non-obvious dependencies on each other, and making sense of them is _very_ difficult. I've seen multiple engineers try to make sense of them, fail, and give up and move on to something they perceived as a better investment of their time. This is, of course, not conducive to actually getting them implemented, to address Philippe's concern at <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-web-perf/2015Jun/0052.html>. I think it may help to do the following: 1) Get rid of implicit behaviors in favor of explicit ones. For example, and addressing Philippe's concern again, I _think_ that http://www.w3.org/TR/2015/WD-navigation-timing-2-20150604/#processing-model steps 2-4 is what's supposed to make window.performance.getEntriesByType("navigation") return the relevant PerformanceNavigationTiming object. But that's not at all obvious from reading this processing model, nor indeed really stated explicitly anywhere; you kind of have to read between the lines of 3 separate specifications to realize it(!). Simply having an explicit "add to the performance timeline" step which links to the text that talks about what it means to be added to the performance timeline would help a good bit. Assuming I understand correctly how the current setup is meant to work, at least, which I'm not more than about 60% sure about. 2) An explicit dependency graph between the various specifications would be very helpful (whether in the form of an explicit dependency listing in each spec or a summary page linked from each spec or something). That would make it clear where to start to disentangle this ball of string (e.g. which specifications need to be implemented first because other ones depend on them). In general, the goal should be that it's possible to read a specification and have a clear idea of what needs to be done to implement it, including which other specifications it depends on and in what ways... -Boris
Received on Wednesday, 10 June 2015 14:19:34 UTC