How does the W3C work, and what does Yandex do there? Interview with Charles McKathy Nevil
In late August, Yandex joined the World Wide Web Consortium . Then, including in the post on Habré , we were asked many questions about why we need the W3C, and what we are going to do there.
Charles McKathieNeville became our W3C representative , and I took advantage of his visit to YaC 2012 to ask some of these questions live.
Charles has been involved with the Web standards at the W3C for almost 14 years. Previously, he was director of web standards at Opera Software, and since July 2012 he has been working at Yandex, learning Russian, and even leading his Russian-speaking twitter in Russian .
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By the way - if you have questions to Charles that we have not asked yet, feel free to ask them in the comments. I promise to get his answers to those who stand and add them to the interview and / or answer in the comments.
Hi, Charles. Tell me first, what is W3C? Why did we join the consortium, and why does Yandex matter?
W3C is an organization that develops the basic standards of the Web. For example, HTML, CSS, SVG, many kinds of APIs. Most of what works in browsers or on sites is determined by a consortium. Individuals and organizations can join it. Basically, the participants and determine the work of the W3C. Yandex is the leader in Russia. But he is already globally a significant player on the Internet, so he should - and will - influence how the standards of the Web are developed. Indeed, in the process of creating new services we find new ways of how to do them. Something from this is new only within the framework of Yandex, but there are things that should determine what the Web will be like. It is important for us to show them to others, it is important that they become the standard on the Internet. This is what other companies have been doing for a long time. And they can come and offer their development that we have to use. Therefore, we want to create the technologies that we need and are important.
And what is the most important thing we should do in this case?
What is most important? All the most important. I am the head of the Web Applications team that develops many API standards. For example, XMLHTTPRequest . He himself has existed for several years, but there was no standard for him. As well as a good specification that everyone would understand and implement in the same way. We almost wrote this. Simple pieces: ElementTraversal and QuerySelector . These are examples of small specifications that make web development easier. Next are other types of similar things and an API. This is what is important to us. Html HTML5. HTML 5.1 - this is what the next version will be called - an important task for the W3C right now. And it matters to us what gets into it and what doesn't. Of course, we can either participate in any specific discussions or not. But in any case, we have the opportunity to look at what people are working on and say, "Cool, go ahead." No problems. But for something else, we can say: “No, no!” It so happens that it is important that something be done in one way, but not in any other way. This may also apply to the development of CSS or SVG.
How does the W3C work? How is everything going there?
A W3C member says: we want to do something. A specific example is geolocation. Someone said: we would like geolocation to work on the web. In this, for example, a couple of browsers and a couple of telecommunication companies were interested. There were people who already dealt with this issue, so that specific ideas already existed. They created a working group - actually a mailing list. Identified the head of the group that will coordinate its work. After these procedures, W3C members who are interested in technology begin to argue about how it should be arranged. They write the specification, I post it publicly. Everyone says: oh no, you can't do that, you need to change everything! And then everything shakes up and changes. When the working group decides that everything is ready, it shows the results to everyone. Most of the work of the consortium is already public. But in the W3C, in the process of working on the specification, there is a stage in which they clearly say: this is the last moment when we accept comments from the public. And the answers will be given to each question. This is a pretty big job. And a big responsibility.
Is it a long process? It's not always the same. If the job of preparing the specification was done well, everything will go very quickly. In such cases, there are no comments and objections. If the specification is very controversial or very significant, for example, as HTML5, it may take several years. After that, you must prove that you can make a working implementation of your specification. Ideally, someone had to implement it even at the moment when it was written. In fact, at this stage, some specifications are already practically implemented in five different browsers. Even before they try and test them themselves. It happens that the appropriate implementations are not ready for the specifications, and in this case you need to really prove that they work. After that, everything ends. You can declare yourself a winner and arrange a holiday. And after starting work on version X.1 or X + 1.
Who decides at which point to stop accepting comments on the specification?
In principle, the working group. She makes decisions about the specification. And her responsibility is to ensure that she took over. The decisions themselves are made differently. Sometimes it is very necessary for someone to have the specification come out quickly. And the working group says: listen, now we are going to make a very simple first version, and then we will do the second one. And sometimes they say: we are going to do only one version, which will not change, so we will grind the specification until it becomes perfect. It never works, but people keep trying. The fact that everything is ready to go to the final stage is decided by the working group.
In theory, the structure of the W3C is very, very democratic. In fact, she is and in practice. In theory, all decisions are made by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee . Everything must convince him. I'll tell you how to practice. The working group is meeting with its chairman and everyone else. They get all their documents, bring letters from the mailing list. And they say: here are all the comments that we received. We answered all. Normally, W3C works until a consensus is reached - everyone should be happy. If someone objects - even one person - and insists on his own, this is enough for Tim to study this objection and say: “This dude speaks nonsense and everyone in the working group - 17 development companies, 22 content producers and three more people - consider it has already implemented it all differently. ” Or he will say: “You know, and he says meaningful things, and we can really do it the way he suggests.” As an example, objections to accessibility for people with disabilities. Suppose you need to choose between solutions A and B, and one of them will complicate the creation of versions for this category of people. In this case, Tim can say: "Technically, you can do both ways, but doing something on the Web in such a way that a large part of people will not use it because of limited capabilities or because of insufficient universality will be stupid." He considers such objections to be serious and in such cases he tells the working group to fix the problem.
And how often does Tim actually do this?
Very rarely, objections that have arisen at the beginning of the work remain until its end. Usually this only happens with very large things like HTML. The most basic and fundamental. In most cases, the participants say in advance that they will object. And if the working group considers the comments reasonable and significant, then usually it tries to take them into account before they reach Tim.
And who is the W3C?
There are three types of participants. Participants startups - there are no such people from Russia at all. This is a new type, so startups from all over the world are few. There are associated members. Usually they become small companies, research and non-profit organizations, universities. And full participants, including large companies like Yandex. In fact, the only difference is how much you pay for membership. The bigger the company, the more it needs to pay. We are the only full-fledged participant from Russia. And that became them recently. In total, the W3C has over 400 participants from around the world. Most of them are probably technology companies. Although there are a significant number of universities and research groups. There are also many small companies.
And why do they join the W3C?
W3C participants are those who are important technology. They matter to them. If something breaks, they will have problems. Therefore, they join W3C - to be able to influence the process. And in order to understand what is happening, what the other guys are doing. All the biggest technology companies are W3C members. Although there are oddities. Opera is one of the smallest companies among those that make their browser. In fact, it earns even less money than the Mozilla Foundation . And at the same time Opera is one of the biggest and most important W3C participants. She participates in his work at the same level as Microsoft or IBM - as the biggest players.
But in the W3C there are, for example, organizations of the blind: Fundación ONCE from Spain or the Royal Naional Institute of the Blind from the UK. They are in the W3C because they want the Web to be accessible to blind people. Because these are the very people whose interests they are protecting. There are also companies like Boeing. Yes, they produce airplanes, but there are 250,000 employees there. And they all use the Web and technology from there. So it is important for them that some things continue to work correctly. For example, they are big fans of SVG. And they are just big enough on their own for the technology to be important to them.
Charles McKathieNeville became our W3C representative , and I took advantage of his visit to YaC 2012 to ask some of these questions live.
Charles has been involved with the Web standards at the W3C for almost 14 years. Previously, he was director of web standards at Opera Software, and since July 2012 he has been working at Yandex, learning Russian, and even leading his Russian-speaking twitter in Russian .
')
By the way - if you have questions to Charles that we have not asked yet, feel free to ask them in the comments. I promise to get his answers to those who stand and add them to the interview and / or answer in the comments.
Hi, Charles. Tell me first, what is W3C? Why did we join the consortium, and why does Yandex matter?
W3C is an organization that develops the basic standards of the Web. For example, HTML, CSS, SVG, many kinds of APIs. Most of what works in browsers or on sites is determined by a consortium. Individuals and organizations can join it. Basically, the participants and determine the work of the W3C. Yandex is the leader in Russia. But he is already globally a significant player on the Internet, so he should - and will - influence how the standards of the Web are developed. Indeed, in the process of creating new services we find new ways of how to do them. Something from this is new only within the framework of Yandex, but there are things that should determine what the Web will be like. It is important for us to show them to others, it is important that they become the standard on the Internet. This is what other companies have been doing for a long time. And they can come and offer their development that we have to use. Therefore, we want to create the technologies that we need and are important.
And what is the most important thing we should do in this case?
What is most important? All the most important. I am the head of the Web Applications team that develops many API standards. For example, XMLHTTPRequest . He himself has existed for several years, but there was no standard for him. As well as a good specification that everyone would understand and implement in the same way. We almost wrote this. Simple pieces: ElementTraversal and QuerySelector . These are examples of small specifications that make web development easier. Next are other types of similar things and an API. This is what is important to us. Html HTML5. HTML 5.1 - this is what the next version will be called - an important task for the W3C right now. And it matters to us what gets into it and what doesn't. Of course, we can either participate in any specific discussions or not. But in any case, we have the opportunity to look at what people are working on and say, "Cool, go ahead." No problems. But for something else, we can say: “No, no!” It so happens that it is important that something be done in one way, but not in any other way. This may also apply to the development of CSS or SVG.
How does the W3C work? How is everything going there?
A W3C member says: we want to do something. A specific example is geolocation. Someone said: we would like geolocation to work on the web. In this, for example, a couple of browsers and a couple of telecommunication companies were interested. There were people who already dealt with this issue, so that specific ideas already existed. They created a working group - actually a mailing list. Identified the head of the group that will coordinate its work. After these procedures, W3C members who are interested in technology begin to argue about how it should be arranged. They write the specification, I post it publicly. Everyone says: oh no, you can't do that, you need to change everything! And then everything shakes up and changes. When the working group decides that everything is ready, it shows the results to everyone. Most of the work of the consortium is already public. But in the W3C, in the process of working on the specification, there is a stage in which they clearly say: this is the last moment when we accept comments from the public. And the answers will be given to each question. This is a pretty big job. And a big responsibility.
Is it a long process? It's not always the same. If the job of preparing the specification was done well, everything will go very quickly. In such cases, there are no comments and objections. If the specification is very controversial or very significant, for example, as HTML5, it may take several years. After that, you must prove that you can make a working implementation of your specification. Ideally, someone had to implement it even at the moment when it was written. In fact, at this stage, some specifications are already practically implemented in five different browsers. Even before they try and test them themselves. It happens that the appropriate implementations are not ready for the specifications, and in this case you need to really prove that they work. After that, everything ends. You can declare yourself a winner and arrange a holiday. And after starting work on version X.1 or X + 1.
Who decides at which point to stop accepting comments on the specification?
In principle, the working group. She makes decisions about the specification. And her responsibility is to ensure that she took over. The decisions themselves are made differently. Sometimes it is very necessary for someone to have the specification come out quickly. And the working group says: listen, now we are going to make a very simple first version, and then we will do the second one. And sometimes they say: we are going to do only one version, which will not change, so we will grind the specification until it becomes perfect. It never works, but people keep trying. The fact that everything is ready to go to the final stage is decided by the working group.
In theory, the structure of the W3C is very, very democratic. In fact, she is and in practice. In theory, all decisions are made by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee . Everything must convince him. I'll tell you how to practice. The working group is meeting with its chairman and everyone else. They get all their documents, bring letters from the mailing list. And they say: here are all the comments that we received. We answered all. Normally, W3C works until a consensus is reached - everyone should be happy. If someone objects - even one person - and insists on his own, this is enough for Tim to study this objection and say: “This dude speaks nonsense and everyone in the working group - 17 development companies, 22 content producers and three more people - consider it has already implemented it all differently. ” Or he will say: “You know, and he says meaningful things, and we can really do it the way he suggests.” As an example, objections to accessibility for people with disabilities. Suppose you need to choose between solutions A and B, and one of them will complicate the creation of versions for this category of people. In this case, Tim can say: "Technically, you can do both ways, but doing something on the Web in such a way that a large part of people will not use it because of limited capabilities or because of insufficient universality will be stupid." He considers such objections to be serious and in such cases he tells the working group to fix the problem.
And how often does Tim actually do this?
Very rarely, objections that have arisen at the beginning of the work remain until its end. Usually this only happens with very large things like HTML. The most basic and fundamental. In most cases, the participants say in advance that they will object. And if the working group considers the comments reasonable and significant, then usually it tries to take them into account before they reach Tim.
And who is the W3C?
There are three types of participants. Participants startups - there are no such people from Russia at all. This is a new type, so startups from all over the world are few. There are associated members. Usually they become small companies, research and non-profit organizations, universities. And full participants, including large companies like Yandex. In fact, the only difference is how much you pay for membership. The bigger the company, the more it needs to pay. We are the only full-fledged participant from Russia. And that became them recently. In total, the W3C has over 400 participants from around the world. Most of them are probably technology companies. Although there are a significant number of universities and research groups. There are also many small companies.
And why do they join the W3C?
W3C participants are those who are important technology. They matter to them. If something breaks, they will have problems. Therefore, they join W3C - to be able to influence the process. And in order to understand what is happening, what the other guys are doing. All the biggest technology companies are W3C members. Although there are oddities. Opera is one of the smallest companies among those that make their browser. In fact, it earns even less money than the Mozilla Foundation . And at the same time Opera is one of the biggest and most important W3C participants. She participates in his work at the same level as Microsoft or IBM - as the biggest players.
But in the W3C there are, for example, organizations of the blind: Fundación ONCE from Spain or the Royal Naional Institute of the Blind from the UK. They are in the W3C because they want the Web to be accessible to blind people. Because these are the very people whose interests they are protecting. There are also companies like Boeing. Yes, they produce airplanes, but there are 250,000 employees there. And they all use the Web and technology from there. So it is important for them that some things continue to work correctly. For example, they are big fans of SVG. And they are just big enough on their own for the technology to be important to them.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/156389/
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