🔖TAG Update
AC - May 2023
Daniel Appelquist @torgo@mastodon.social
https://w3.org/tag/ | https://tag.w3.org/ (Current Work)
What is the TAG?
Special group in W3C chartered to:
- document and build consensus around principles of Web architecture and to interpret and clarify these principles when necessary;
- resolve issues involving general Web architecture brought to the TAG;
- help coordinate cross-technology architecture developments inside and outside W3C.
6 elected, 3 appointed,
1 permanent chair (Tim),
1 staff contact
Daniel Appelquist (Invited Expert) co-Chair
Rossen Atanassov (Microsoft)
Hadley Beeman (Invited Expert)
Tim Berners-Lee (W3C) Chair, on Sabbatical
Amy Guy (Digital Bazaar)
Yves Lafon (W3C) staff contact
Peter Linss (Invited Expert) co-Chair
Dapeng (Max) Liu (Alibaba Group)
Sangwhan Moon (Google)
Tess O'Connor (Apple)
Lea Verou (Invited Expert)
Current work of the TAG
- Reviewing others' work: primarily design reviews
- including security & privacy questionnaire, a11y questionnaire
- 22 design reviews completed so far in 2023
- Writing down the high level principles of the web: ethical web principles, findings, design principles, etc...
- Convene task forces when necessary
- Technical governance and oversight
- Play a role in cross-organization liaisons
- Review charters
- Help to resolve formal objections via Council
- Inform technical strategy
How does the TAG work?
The TAG holds 3 video calls per week
(two "breakouts" and one "plenary") + async work.
Hybrid: We have recently held a 3-day F2F in Tokyo. In December, we held a "virtual F2F" with a 4-day schedule comprised of 18 breakout sessions across 3 time zone groups.
We use GitHub for discussions, WebRTC-based services for all our video calls, open source CryptPad for minutes and Slack.
All minutes are posted to: https://github.com/w3ctag/meetings/
Design Reviews
The TAG's “Heartbeat” 💓
Requesting a TAG Review
Open an issue with us on GitHub:
Early design review, Specification Review or
Dispute Resolutiuon
Please request reviews at the design phase.
Read our Design Principles.
Write an Explainer.
Make sure you have an explainer
Make sure you articulate the user need.
Whats an Explainer?
- A living document that describes the current state of your proposed web platform feature, or collection of features.
- Help facilitate multi-stakeholder discussion and consensus-building
- Starts with the user-facing problem that this specification addresses
- Intended audience: other web technologists who may not be familiar with the problem space you're addressing (i.e. not just the TAG)
Where can you find the current work of the TAG?
Visit our page at https://tag.w3.org
Visit our meetings repo:
https://github.com/w3ctag/meetings
(all minutes linked from agendas)
Accessibility Questionnaire
A quick checklist to determine if you need a more thorough accessibility review.
Web Platform Design Principles
What Differentiates the Web from other Platforms and Systems?
How can we best design new technologies for
the Web?
Topic Areas
- Principles behind design of Web APIs
- API Design Across Languages
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- JavaScript Language
- JavaScript API Surface Concerns
- Event Design
- Types and Units
- OS and Device Wrapper APIs
- Other API Design Considerations
- Writing good specifications
- Naming principles
Put user needs first
https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#priority-of-constituencies
It should be safe to visit a web page https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#safe-to-browse
Classes should have constructors
https://www.w3.org/TR/design-principles/#constructors
Ethical Web Principles
High-level principles that guide the architecture, Design Principles, our Reviews & other docs...
e.g. "There is one web," "The web should not cause harm to society," etc...
On "W3C Statement" track and has been an input into the "vision" work.
BF Cache
Guide
A set of guidelines on supporting Back-Forward Cached docs
Cached documents mean a faster web user experience! These guidelines help web sites build more pages that get cached by the browser.
https://w3ctag.github.io/bfcache-guide/
(TR space URL to come)
Finding: Improving the Web Without Third Party Cookies
🍪
Finding: Sustainability of Bundling and Caching
https://w3ctag.github.io/caching-bundling-sustainability/
(TAG space URL to come)
Privacy
Principles
Framework, Definitions, Principles
Coming soon to the design review process.
Transparency, User Control,
Data Minimization
The Privacy Principles Task Force
- Daniel Appelquist (Invited Expert, TAG)
- Robin Berjon (Invited Expert, formerly The New York Times, TAG alum)
- Nick Doty (Center for Democracy & Technology, PING)
- Amy Guy (Digital Bazaar, TAG)
- Don Marti (CafeMedia, PING)
- Jonathan Kingston (DuckDuckGo)
- Theresa O'Connor (Apple, TAG, PrivacyCG)
- Christine Runnegar (W3C Invited Expert, PING)
- Wendy Seltzer (Invited Expert)
- Pete Snyder (Brave, PING)
- Sam Weiler (W3C)
- Jeffrey Yasskin (Google, PING)
Some highlights
-
Transparency: The web should provide clear and easily accessible information to users about the collection, use, and sharing of their personal information.
-
Purpose Specification: Personal information collected via the web should be for specific, legitimate purposes, and not be used or disclosed for other purposes without the user's consent.
-
Data Minimization: The web should collect and retain only the personal information that is necessary for the intended purpose.
We're on github: https://github.com/w3ctag
Follow @tag@w3c.social in the #Fediverse