How you can improve the web platform

Simon Pieters

WebCore meetup 2020-05-26

Interoperability

/ˌɪntərˌɒp(ə)rəˈbɪlɪti/
noun

  • Browsers doing the same thing for the same piece of code

 

2019 MDN Developer Needs Assessment Report:
interoperability is among the top pain points for web developers.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

  • Investigate a browser bug
  • Research with HTTP Archive
  • Find the right people in browser engine projects
  • Write web-platform-tests tests
  • Change a spec at W3C, WHATWG

WHO IS @ZCORPAN

  • Proposed <!DOCTYPE HTML> in 2005
  • Opera Software 2007-2017
  • <video>, Web Workers, WebSocket,<picture>
  • WHATWG HTML standard
  • Bocoup: a11y, InfoSec, rendering interop
  • Author of Idiosyncrasies of the HTML parser

Investigate a bug

  • A page that behaves differently in two browsers
  • Use normal debugging procedure
  • Or systematically remove code
  • End up with a minimized demo
  • See Reducing testcases in MDN

bit.ly/select-demo

<!DOCTYPE html>
<style>
#s1 { /* no style */ }
#s2 { border: 1px solid }
#s3 { border: 2px solid }
#s4 { -webkit-appearance: none }
</style>
<select id=s1><option>no style</select>
<select id=s2><option>border: 1px solid</select>
<select id=s3><option>border: 2px solid</select>
<select id=s4><option>-webkit-appearance: none</select>

Safari 13.0.2 & TP 106

Firefox Stable 75 & Nightly 78

Chrome Stable 81

Chrome Stable 83 & Canary 85

Edge Canary 85

Don't break the web

❝ There are around 771 billion web pages viewed in Chrome every month (not counting other Chromium-based browsers).  So seriously breaking even 0.0001% still results in someone being frustrated every 3 seconds, and so not to be taken lightly! ❞

 

HTTP Archive

BigQuery

num match
4506033
2396360 none
2378882 button
143308 textfield
62803 checkbox
42137 menulist-button
29501 radio
27842 menulist
14764 push-button
9319 initial
3887 listbox
3729 inherit
3222 caret
2649 textarea
2350 normal
1659 unset
1521 -apple-pay-button

Result

(See full results)

CSS appearance spec

Find the right people

Firefox: Gecko

Safari: WebKit

Chrome, Edge, Samsung Internet, Opera: Chromium

Source code

Get the code

Find the implementation

Run git blame or git log

Shows who last touched the code

Beware of unrelated changes

Fixed bugs

Search for fixed bugs for your feature

See who was assignee, reviewer

API OWNERS

Mozilla: wiki.mozilla.org/Modules/Core

WebKit Reviewers: webkit.org/team/

Chromium: OWNERS files

Etiquette

Keep it short

Link to public issue

Say why you are contacting them in particular

Contact at most 1 person from each project

You might not get any response

Allow ~1 week to pass

Wider audience

File a new issue

discussion group / mailing list

Slack / IRC

web-platform-tests

web-platform-tests (WPT) is a shared testsuite for browser engines and other projects implementing the web platform (jsdom, Node.js, Deno)

wpt docs

web-platform-tests.org

testharness.js

test(function() {
  var input = document.createElement('input');
  input.setAttribute('style', 'appearance: none;');

  assert_equals(input.style.getPropertyValue('appearance'), 'none');
}, 'parsing via attribute change steps of CSS declaration block\'s owner node');

https://wpt.live/css/css-ui/appearance-parsing.html

wpt.fyi

Testing plan

Making a Testing Plan in WPT docs

Enumerate things to test

What not to test

Find existing tests

Change the spec

  • Intellectual Property Rights Management
  • W3C and WHATWG specs are open source
  • Build the spec locally (bikeshed, ReSpec, html-build)
  • Follow the spec's formatting conventions
  • Submit a PR
  • Link to tests
  • Ask implementers and spec editors for review
  • Address review comments

Announcing wpc.guide

What this talk covers and more, as an online book

Web Platform Contribution Guide

Be the first to read it: wpc.guide

Q&A

Thank you!

 

Twitter: @zcorpan

How you can improve the web platform

By Simon Pieters

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How you can improve the web platform

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