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Apple, Microsoft, Google, Others Join Hands To Form WebPlatform.org 138

Posted by samzenpus from the when-our-powers-combine dept.
hypnosec writes "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies. The companies have come together to provide developers with a single source of all the latest information about HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, SVG and other Web standards. The platform will also offer tips and best practices on web development as well as web technologies. 'We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform,' notes the WebPlatform site."
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Apple, Microsoft, Google, Others Join Hands To Form WebPlatform.org More

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Others Join Hands To Form WebPlatform.org

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  • huh (Score:1, Funny)

    by etash ( 1907284 )
    this site seems like the apple maps (in analogy) version of w3schools.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      w3schools is sort of terrible. I think you mean MDN.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by etash ( 1907284 )
        i was talking features, not design. this thing is missing stuff http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/tutorials/optimizing_css [webplatform.org] http://docs.webplatform.org/wiki/tutorials/css_transforms [webplatform.org]

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Desler ( 1608317 )

          Really? A brand new website is not as comprehensive as one that has been around for 13 years? Shocking!!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by etash ( 1907284 )
            what's _really_ shocking is that a brand new website which promises to be COMPLETE AND FULL REFERENCE of platform X, a website not done by AMATEURS but by the biggest companies around with hundreds of billion of dollars available in their pockets, goes live incomplete and unfinished.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Desler ( 1608317 )

              No, that's pretty unshocking. Documentation takes time to write. It'll get more comprehensive with time.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by etash ( 1907284 )
                I know, I know, it's not the first time that companies rush unfinished products to consumers.

            • what's _really_ shocking is that a brand new website [...] done [...] by the biggest companies around with hundreds of billion of dollars available in their pockets, goes live incomplete and unfinished.

              Not shocking. Google is part of this effort, and it's the poster child for taking a "beta" version live and tweaking it later.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              Companies have hundreds of billions of dollars because they keep it in their pockets, well, at least in offshore tax haven bank accounts. Spending it on stuff that doesn't make money in one form or another, is not in their playbook, forget charity washing and green washing, that's called PR. Some of the players will be there to obstruct for their advantage, to pre-patent and leverage standards in their favour and to break it if it proves disadvantageous. When normal everyday people release via creative com

        • I was talking features, not design. this thing is missing stuff

          I would think that the big box at the main Docs page explaining that the docs subsite was in alpha would have, you know, explained that.

    • Re:huh (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BZ ( 40346 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:16PM (#41590473)

      Except with any luck unlike w3schools it won't have incorrect information on it because people will be able to fix it like any other wiki.

      The big problem with w3schools is that there's all sorts of mistakes on there and they won't fix things if you point out the problems.

  • Uh huh... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by undeadbill ( 2490070 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @03:55PM (#41590261)

    I'll believe that when I see their products running under Free or Open BSD. Unless "any" is really a very narrow definition of specific Linux Distros, MS Windows, and OS X.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Desler ( 1608317 )

      Yes, they are referring to operating systems that are actually relevant to the average computer user. The operating systems vying for the last .01% of market share are hardly of note.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        BSD is real freedom, for users and developers. Take the code, do what you want.

    • I'll believe that when I see their products running under Free or Open BSD. Unless "any" is really a very narrow definition of Windows 8 and OS X.

      FTFY.

      Cue 'augmenting the standards' in 5... 4... 3...

    • actually, it's web 3.0 (Score:4, Funny)

      by poetmatt ( 793785 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:11PM (#41590419) Journal

      Actually, get ready! it's going to be web 3.0! That means it'll be incompatible with web 2.0.

    • So long as said products are open source, isn't the standing rule in the FOSS community "go port it yourself if you need it"?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • w3schools (Score:3)

    by vlm ( 69642 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @03:55PM (#41590263)

    So its basically an alpha reimplementation of w3schools?

    http://www.w3schools.com/ [w3schools.com]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      But W3Schools is painful. No, really, painful.
      Any time I google for anything, I avoid it like the plague now.
      I'd sooner read a damn blogspot post than it.

      And this isn't even getting in to the (inconsistent) website design itself. That is far worse.

      Yeah, it ain't the worst resource, but polished turd etc.
      A turd might be filled with information on the species that crapped it out, but it is still a turd.

    • Re:w3schools (Score:5, Informative)

      by man_of_mr_e ( 217855 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:34PM (#41590637)

      You mean this?

      http://w3fools.com/ [w3fools.com]

      • www.w3schools.com/js/js_popup.asp. alert() and confirm() dialogs with no explanation that they should generally be avoided. Also no discussion of console.log() for debugging purposes.

        Hmmm, lets see...
        1. Snub w3schools for not diving into advanced topics as to not overwhelm newcomers.
        2. Not acknowledge the cases where alert and confirm dialogs are sufficient solutions.
        3. Criticize w3schools.com for lack of giving explanation while you yourself don't give an explanation.
        4. Advocating the use of console.log while knowing that console object isn't supported by all browsers.

        • 1. Snub w3schools for posing as a developer resource while targeting newbies.
          2. Point out that in general the alert and confirm dialogs have better alternatives.
          3. Criticize w3schools.com for lack of giving explanation while pointing at resources that do [w3fools.com].
          4. Advocating the use of console.log while knowing that the console object isn't supported by IE, which should be avoided as a debugging tool anyway.

          FTFY

          • FWIW, console.log absolutely is supported by IE9. I don't know what browsers it's not supported by - probably some 5+ year old ones - but the modern IE dev/debug/profiling tools are actually reasonable to work with. They're no Firebug, but they beat the shit that actually ships with Firefox.

            • Yeah, I meant to say lt IE 9
              The major advantage of FF's new built-in dev tools is performance. Because of the existence and prevalence of Firebug, there isn't so much of a need for native dev tools with a good UI. Can't say the same for IE...

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I really don't get the anti-w3schools.com snobs (Score:4, Informative)

      by elloGov ( 1217998 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @06:35PM (#41591639)
      I seriously question the web expertise of anyone who snubs w3schools as a "terrible", "painful" resource for web development. If you are looking for a copy-paste reference of best practices, w3schools isn't it. Nor is w3schools.com a definitive guide. However, there isn't a resource that is more user-friendly than w3schools on many of the web topics.
      http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/obj_location.asp [w3schools.com] V https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/window.location [mozilla.org]

      Moreover, w3schools.com does a fantastic job in maintaining the big picture of web development by separating its components in its reference pages; DOM, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc..
      Anyone stating otherwise is full of it. The tutorials, layout, and "Try it Out' execution environment are quick and fantastic for those not interested in reading a blog. 95% of the reference needed w3schools.com has. The other 5%, as a seasoned web developer you should see blog entries, quirksmode, msdn, mdn, etc. and/or investigate in an execution environment such as firebug.
      The subtle nuances, nit-picky details, over-simplification, or the lack of mention of say "getBoundingClientRect" doesn't invalidate the awesomeness of w3schools, and it certainly doesn't make it suck. Mastering a topic shouldn't turn you into a snob.
      I strongly recommend w3schools.com to anyone who wants to get a good grasp of web development without diving into the advanced topics or anyone who wants a quick reference look up.

      Just my two cents!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Bogtha ( 906264 )

        I don't see how a tutorial site can be considered user-friendly if it teaches incorrect things and bad practices. That's pretty damn hostile to beginners, even if it's sugar-coated enough to make it not immediately apparent. I and many others complained loudly and tried many times over the course of years to correct their glaring mistakes and things like code that would only work in Internet Explorer and it all fell on deaf ears. They aren't making a good faith effort in teaching people, the tutorials a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tchaik ( 21417 )

        I seriously question the web expertise of anyone who snubs w3schools as a "terrible", "painful" resource for web development. However, there isn't a resource that is more user-friendly than w3schools on many of the web topics.

        I seriously question the web expertise of anyone who snubs w3schools snobs. I'll note that experts don't need user-friendly, they need accuracy, both as a reference level and as a guide for best practices. Check http://w3fools.com/ [w3fools.com] again...

  • It's a trap, right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyjj ( 2598719 ) * on Monday October 08, 2012 @03:56PM (#41590271)

    Surely to get those companies together, there must be some nefarious agenda afoot.

    • I can't tell whether it's malice or incompetence. Is it likely that the developers of web browsers bundled with operating systems are leaving certain APIs unimplemented on purpose to encourage the development of OS-specific native apps? I'm talking about SNI, HTML5 offline manifests (with a quota suitable for video), HTML5 local storage (also with a quota suitable for video), WebGL, the video element with the WebM codec, the file API, and getUserMedia. Web apps won't replace native apps until web developers can rely on most of these.

      • Mod parent up!

        No one sees the danger to this. PCMag does see an anology to webkit and IE 6 [pcmag.com]. W3C is coming out with an HTML 5 spec that is not the same as WHatG. I agree with the W3C approach of splitting up HTML 5 into 5 and 5.1 and same with CSS 3 and 3.1 but still it is a problem. WIth pressure from sites like www.html5test.com that test cutting edge features you have browsers using proprietary implementations and then bashing the others for being behind the times even though half that shit is not even in

        • .. because it is developed by multiple vendors, and combined they represent the majority of web users. Furthermore, most of the standards are also supported by Mozilla and Gecko, and also Opera.

          When all of Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft agree on a web standard, and the W3C keeps dragging its heels, then they have no one to blame but themselves. Web developers *AND* users demand rapid progress on web standards, the web is not something that can sit in a standards committee for 6 months while people de

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Oh, come on. HTML5 offline manifests and local storage work positively flawlessly compared to contentEditable support, undo management, copy-and-paste handling, DOM Ranges....

        These days, a good day of web app development is one in which I discover fewer than one critical browser bug every two or three hours of coding. I won't tell you what a bad day looks like because I don't want to crush anyone's soul....

    • Surely to get those companies together, there must be some nefarious agenda afoot.

      The footer logos, the testimonials section, etc. all lack Apple. But then they're on the list.

      I'd guess they joined at the last minute. Maybe they were a target at one point? Which would be ironic as the pre iOS-SDK days were all about "no native apps".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skegg ( 666571 )

      Well, some of these companies were recently accused of collaborating [zdnet.com] in other areas as well.

  • This is needed because ... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies"

    That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion, we'd never have ... a ... what? a search engine for referencing 'open' technologies?

    Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) open source, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resour

    • Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) open source, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies?

      Funny that you dropped the "web" out of open web technologies. The reason they are important is because they are the main implementors of the open web technologies at issue.

      What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now?

      The intent is to provide quality documentation, not implement

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      Despite what todays XKCD [xkcd.com] , we were really in place where a lack of corporate cohesion was about to lead us to a web that only worked with IE. Todays web has lead to a world where an always on connection means that one does not need MS Office, Bing is a reasonable alternative to Google, and Apple will either the get maps right or bring enough traffic to other map agents that they will.

      Due to litigation and competition, we have an much more open web. We have many more options for cheap offline storage. U

  • Strange (Score:5, Interesting)

    by De Lemming ( 227104 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:22PM (#41590531) Homepage

    On the bottom of the front page are 9 logos, Apple is not one of them. On the Stewards page [webplatform.org] are 10 organisations/companies, including Apple. But Apple is the only one without a link to a description/statement of the company. They seem to be the neglected stepchild here?

    And Slasdot puts them first in the title, and categorizes the article in the Apple section :-)

    • Re:Strange (Score:4, Funny)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @05:56PM (#41591359)

      Apple and Google are currently suing each other over whose logo will be placed higher than the other.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      After asking in the IRC chat, Doug Schepers (shepazu) responded by saying that Apple was contributing but had requested that their logo not appear on the front page.

  • This is needed because ... (Score:3)

    by quietwalker ( 969769 ) <pdughi@gmail.com> on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:32PM (#41590609)

    (this time not posted as AC, so it shows up ... )

    "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a 'definitive resource' for all open Web technologies"

    That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion, we'd never have ... a ... what? a search engine for referencing 'open' technologies?

    Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) to open source projects, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies? What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now? ... or is this one of those redefinitions of 'open' that hasn't got anything to do with open source?

    • Re:This is needed because ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ninetyninebottles ( 2174630 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:58PM (#41590857)

      Not that they haven't contributed (some more than others) to open source projects, but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies?

      Because together those companies create much of the software and hardware that is interpreting open web protocols and formats. This is hopefully a step towards recognizing that proprietary technologies that only work on one vendor's platform are detrimental rather than beneficial for lock in. Maybe the next time you notice browser C is interpreting that HTML tag differently than everyone else there will be a place to point to that the maker of browser C has their name up as a collaborator.

      • The notorious abcense of Mozilla from this "platform" is enough to suspect colusion. Each one of these companies controls their own OS. Mozilla is THE vendor.agnostic, crossplatform browser of choice, and the main diver of standarization in the web. Why in the world aren't they part of this?

    • That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion

      How is this 'collusion'? What are you implying they are actually doing?

      but ... why exactly do we need the corporate technical powerhouses to create a definitive resource on open technologies?

      Because by and large they are the biggest implementors of those technologies, it makes sense that they do it over groups who's products most people probably never use.

      What will they provide by corporate committee that open source isn't providing now?

      I guess we'll just have to wait and see, of course nobody is forcing you to use it, if you don't see any reason to use it then don't.

      or is this one of those redefinitions of 'open' that hasn't got anything to do with open source?

      No, the word 'open' is not tied to 'open source', you don't have to redefine it to use it in a context that doesn't pertain to open source.

      • That's awesome, because without explicit corporate collusion

        How is this 'collusion'? What are you implying they are actually doing?

        They are colluding to provide comprehensive information on web technologies in order to make it easier to develop web sites and applications, thus allowing them to indirectly make more money. Those fiends.

    • Producing and documenting open technical and process standards is one exception where corporate collusion is not only acceptable, it is often encouraged.

  • Here's a free best practice for them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jb_nizet ( 98713 ) on Monday October 08, 2012 @04:34PM (#41590639)

    Underline the damn links (which are one of the main reasons why the web was invented). Undecorated links, using a color which is very close to the normal text color, makes them indistinguishible from normal text for even lightly color-blind people like me, and like 10% of the male population.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Hentes ( 2461350 )

      In Opera you can use a custom css file with !important declarations to modify the appearance of certain elements (like links) on every page.

      • From the sounds of it, that should work with any other custom style sheets thing, like Stylish, right? That actually sounds rather helpful from an accessibility standpoint (if a little bit annoying to set up). Still, it shouldn't be hard to make good-looking links on a webpage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by epp_b ( 944299 )
      Although I quite agree with you, they don't necessarily need to be underlined, just significantly differentiated from norrmal text.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rs79 ( 71822 )

        Disagree. Links are underlined and a different color (to differentiate from plain underline)

        Un-underlined links don't look like links and I'd guess at best 0.0004% of the world does that.

        • Removing link underlining was something a lot of Web designers couldn't wait for, and every one I know (designers and programmers) was thrilled when it was finally implemented. Turning off underlining is one of the first things I did with any Web browser the first time I ran it. (I'm not sure if I've had to do it recently.) It's one of the first things I do when designing any site and I check it in IE and see IE still underlines links by default. (Also removing the blue border from around linked images.
    • you mean like /. does in the comment header ;)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
      CSS was designed to let you specify a user stylesheet with 'important' properties which override the site. So you could force links to always be underlined if you want. It's a pity that mainstream browsers do not provide a simple way to configure this.

  • So, four major players in the tech market, at least three of whom have quite clearly demonstrated a very vested interest in closedness, are "joining forces for openness"?

    OK, what's the hidden agenda?

    • By providing decent documentation in an easy-to-find place they are making it easier to develop web sites and web apps. More web sites mean more developers, more search revenue etc. I'd say that they are trying to get bigger slices by growing the pie.
  • "Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces" -- I must have woken up in a alternate planet! This is beautiful man! I think I feel a little tear coming.... ;-)

  • This is either:

    1. A PR stunt to appeal to those who don't know much about open source things in general. Now the big tech companies look like they're doing something benevolent and giving to society.

    or

    2. A place for unsuspecting people to post code or ideas and have them freely adopted by the big tech companies, who will in turn charge you for THEIR enhancements and innovations.

  • This site is all about uber-modern web standards and their chat protocol of choice? IRC. Awesome.

  • The headline got my hopes up for a second. I thought for a moment that the companies had gotten together to build a new Web standard. Instead they're just re-documenting the old, broken standards, and presumably all the half-assed implementations every Web developer is forced to wrangle with just to get "Hello, world" up and running. "Looks fine in Firefox but IE6 displays ', ', IE7 indents it halfway across the page, and Chrome is showing '72 101 108 108 111 44 32 119 111 114 108 100'." "Have you tried
    • And, amusingly, /. won't display the Cyrillic characters I put in for IE6 for humor purposes.

    • So we would have 3 incompatible standards. W3C, WhatG, and now this?

      Chrome is making the same mistakes as IE 6. If WhatG standardizes in HTML 5 the web-kit way, and W3C announces HTML 5 and HTML 5.1 which have different arguments for the CSS then what? ... of course being slashdot they will blame IE for being incompatible and same with Firefox.

      • I would hope -- xkcd cartoons aside -- that a truly good rebuilding of the Web from the ground up -- what CSS should have been, had it been done right -- would be attractive enough to enough people that it would eventually take over. I mean, that's why the Web took off in the first place. I realize this is unlikely.
  • "Facebook - A community-driven documentation center [...]"
    (as seen on the Stewards [webplatform.org] page)
  • ...on a site about web development Truly this is a parody of a documentation website, if anything
  • Funny how the logo is more an upside down 'M' than a 'W'.

  • Who the hell cares about web standards, seriously? Since the WWW was invented there have been competing browsers and platforms and any decent web developer worth their salt simply accept the fact that they have to do a little more work to support different platforms.

    Not a year goes by without some statement about the need for cross platform standardization of the web, yet for 20 years nothing has changed or achieved that standard.

    But in the meantime these VERY SAME companies are all trying to create walled

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