Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

Mark Pilgrim announced a new Google Code project yesterday on the Google Code Blog:

Google has built its business here, on the open web, and we want to help you build here too. To that end, we are happy to announce the formation of an encyclopedia for web developers, by web developers: Google Doctype.

Full of wikified goodness and entirely downloadable by SVN checkout, Google Doctype stands to become a fantastic resource for Web developers, provided a solid core community embraces it. So head on over, check it out, and maybe even contribute something.

Your Replies

#1 On May 16th, 2008 1:37 pm Vectorpedia(Rick) replied:

Time will tell if Google’s Doctype reference library will succeed although I would prefer to see this on W3.org than on Google.com

#2 On May 16th, 2008 6:26 pm Emtu replied:

Good reference? – Perhaps… But it’s clearly incomplete at present.
If they claim it to be the HHG of the web, they should perhaps include at least *something* about XHTML as well don’t you think?

Political play biased towards the Google Chaired alternatives ? – definately seems that way :P

#3 On May 17th, 2008 11:28 am WaSP Member porter replied:

Perhaps you’re missing the explicitly stated point: This could become a great reference if people contribute to it. Also, if you’ve read the Hitchhiker’s Guide or even just watched the intro video that’s on the project’s home page you might understand why the analogy is actually a rather apt one.

The point is not that what is there on day one is amazing; it’s that it can be made better by the people who use it. If you think it’s missing something don’t just complain about it. Add it.

Of course, I don’t disagree with Rick that it would be nice if it were in a somewhat more “neutral” environment, but at least it’s out there.

#4 On May 18th, 2008 11:13 am Mike Furmaniak replied:

Google is absolute master of creating ugly things. Functional yes, elegant markup or CSS never. I don’t belive that any web artist would contribute and want to use that ugly thing. Yuck!.

That would be wourthwile seeing something like 5 years ago. Now the community has great documentation at magazines like “A list apart”, sites like this one, or blogs of the great individuals like Eric’s Mayer or SimpleBits homepage. Also many great books were published.

If you’ll ask me that move is strongly related to new Google hosting product (to provide people that will use it support in HTML, CSS and JS). In my opinion it will just break the web on smaller pieces instead of uniting it’s structure and way’s things get done by pointing wherever you can good sources of knowledge.

Google should start by making it’s own products valid and modern written, and then try to teach others how to do it. The present situation could be described only by sentence:

F student giving math lessons to others.

#5 On June 5th, 2008 9:40 pm Website Design Guy replied:

I completely agree with Mike. In its market-dominating position, and with its huge resources, Google ought to be setting an example. No-one want’s bells and whistles and whizz bang but neither do we want clunky and old-fashioned.

#6 On June 10th, 2008 9:07 am Butler replied:

I have to agree with Mike’s points on Google approach to the project. They have such a dominate position htat they can lead the way. Maybe they don’t have all the best developers but they have enough resources to launch things better.

#7 On June 11th, 2008 3:19 pm AlexeyGfi replied:

Google – great creator team of great things – I agree, but like for me, better way (if we talk about global-things) to join forces of gigants of databases and knowleges (like MSDN ;-) ).

#8 On June 12th, 2008 2:13 pm Linux-team replied:

By the way, Mark Pilgrim told about another team and future cooperation and Microsoft team status – very high and looks like base orientir for new doctype.

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