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Documenting the Web together

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Documenting the Web together

#141

Post by benaadams »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #103

Déjà vu. Previously ( checks email …almost exactly 5 years ago?! Christ, it was a long time ago), the web powers that be announced they were going to collaborate on a new web docs wiki.[0] I don't think it went anywhere because, well, MDN already existed. I'm glad they finally just surrendered to MDN, even if it was many years late. [0] https://www.w3.org/2012/10/webplatform.html.en

Was the WebPlatform project?

> The WebPlatform project, supported by various stewards between 2012 and 2015, has been discontinued. This site is now available on github

https://webplatform.github.io/docs/

Re: Documenting the Web together

#142

Post by madeofpalk »

edent wrote: post #77

We were speaking about this at the W3C's Advisory Board meeting in London earlier this week. It distresses me that the specs on w3.org are so hard to read for the average developer. It's great to see how MDN focuses on simplicity, readability, and usable examples.

As a "lowly CSS developer", I'm actually okay with this. w3.org specs are meant for browser developers, MDN docs (supposedly) are meant for web developers.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#143

Post by ghostly_s »

carussell wrote: post #123
bzbarsky wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a tradeoff between simplicity/readability and "define how to handle all the edge cases". Web specs recently have sacrificed the former to handle the latter, not least because past experience with web specs that sacrificed the latter to do the former was so horrible...

When this article first appeared, I wrote a long comment here (now deleted) about how the content Mozilla inherited from Netscape DevEdge originally straddled the split by fully embracing that there were two different mindsets the audience might be coming in with, and simply creating two different sets of docs. There were the JavaScript Guide and the JavaScript Reference, for example, and they were pretty thoroughly…

Python's official docs do a good job with this approach too, I think. The Python Language Reference is relatively easy to read for a lay-man when that's necessary, and includes the formal logic of the spec in little call-out boxes -- but it's also accompanied by the Python Tutorial, which manages to cover nearly everything while making no attempt to get into every edge-case and obscure method, keeping it focused and readable. It's a great learning tool to get up to near-proficiency, and then the Reference is there for all those little "but I wonder what happens when..." questions.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#144

Post by eradicatethots »

stareatgoats wrote: post #130

Totally OT, but "Today, we’re excited to " is as an opening statement, through its ubiquity and seeming robotic mindlessness, is starting to distract from the actual topics. Maybe just me. Still. Just sayin.

What else can you even write instead though

Re: Documenting the Web together

#145

Post by ktta »

shmerl wrote: post #76

> One of our guiding principles in developing Microsoft Edge is that end users should never have to worry about which sites work in which browsers. This philosophy—”the Web should just work for everyone“—led to our choice to target the “interoperable intersection” of web APIs in our browser engineering. That's a good move by MS. In this context it's great to see them supporting open codecs, and for istance OGG contai…

Also Edge is the only web browser where Netflix can be streamed at 1080p and 4K. OTOH Chrome and Firefox are only at 720p. Safari is at 1080p though. (Netflix's windows app is another route)

Edge also supports Apple's Live streaming tech so, again the only browser on Windows which can be used to watch Apple's Live events.

Too bad that Edge won't ever be on Linux.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#146

Post by pritambaral »

ktta wrote: post #145
shmerl wrote: post #76

> One of our guiding principles in developing Microsoft Edge is that end users should never have to worry about which sites work in which browsers. This philosophy—”the Web should just work for everyone“—led to our choice to target the “interoperable intersection” of web APIs in our browser engineering. That's a good move by MS. In this context it's great to see them supporting open codecs, and for istance OGG contai…

Also Edge is the only web browser where Netflix can be streamed at 1080p and 4K. OTOH Chrome and Firefox are only at 720p. Safari is at 1080p though. (Netflix's windows app is another route) Edge also supports Apple's Live streaming tech so, again the only browser on Windows which can be used to watch Apple's Live events. Too bad that Edge won't ever be on Linux.

> where Netflix can be streamed

Isn't that because of Netflix's choices, rather than technical reasons?

Re: Documenting the Web together

#147

Post by ChuckMcM »

Guess they are going to band together to dethrone W3Schools :-) (only half kidding, that web site has has some serious staying power.)

Related, when I was active in standards work (I learned just how badly that stuff was run) I discovered that new people in a standards group that was being formed would be lobbying to be the group Chairperson or Vice Chair. But the people who had been in standards bodies before were all vying to be the Editor. That was because the group could argue all they wanted but at the end of the day what was in the standard was what was in the document and only one person had absolute sway over that, the Editor.

So when I see all these leading lights, who just got through a rancorous debate about DRM with the standards body, endorse a new way to capture the "actual" standard, I see a seasoned standards wonk offering to do all the slavish work of editing the documents so that everyone else can focus on the hard work of coming up with the best possible standard.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#148

Post by 1k2ka »

CoryG89 wrote: post #136
fyrstenberg wrote: post #30

Don't forget you can use https://devdocs.io/ too which also searches MDN and store offline. The two are a great pair.

While we're on MDN related awesomeness, shameless plug: Back when I was in school, I made this Chrome extension which allows you to jump directly from the address bar to the MDN page you want: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mdnjump/mfjekjhknp...

If you use DuckDuckGo as your standard search engine you can also prepend "!mdn" to your search query to search MDN.

This also works with any website wich supports search I think. Other good ones include "!hoogle", "!hn", "!yt", "!g", and the list goes on.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#149

Post by wakamoleguy »

eradicatethots wrote: post #144
stareatgoats wrote: post #130

Totally OT, but "Today, we’re excited to " is as an opening statement, through its ubiquity and seeming robotic mindlessness, is starting to distract from the actual topics. Maybe just me. Still. Just sayin.

What else can you even write instead though

In this case, there could be literally nothing instead.

> (Today, we’re excited to share some big news for developers around the world wide web: )We’re committing our resources towards making MDN Web Docs the best place to go for web API reference.

Re: Documenting the Web together

#150

Post by ktta »

pritambaral wrote: post #146
ktta wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Edge is the only web browser where Netflix can be streamed at 1080p and 4K. OTOH Chrome and Firefox are only at 720p. Safari is at 1080p though. (Netflix's windows app is another route) Edge also supports Apple's Live streaming tech so, again the only browser on Windows which can be used to watch Apple's Live events. Too bad that Edge won't ever be on Linux.

> where Netflix can be streamed Isn't that because of Netflix's choices, rather than technical reasons?

I'm not entirely sure. I believe it has to do with the DRM implementation. While Widewine is the DRM in Chrome and Firefox, Edge uses something different[1].

I've seen people talk about Chrome being able to handle 1080p in ChromeOS. So there seems to be more than just Netflix's choice involved here. Although I bet Microsoft being proactive helped. Definitely unclear.

Also I don't see any reason why Netflix wouldn't want to support 1080p in all the major browsers. The only downside might be excess bandwidth, but with the Open Connect Appliance being a thing, I doubt it is a big factor.

[1]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/07/13/get-b...

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