Without wanting to blow our own trumpet too hard, the SitePoint network provides thousands of pages of web development resources. But the web moves forward too rapidly to document everything. It’s frustrating to type the name of some new HTML5 API into Google only to be faced with a six year-old W3Schools article (no offense W3Schools, but your SEO success often surpasses the subject matter!)
Vendors such as Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple offer some great information, it’s usually biased toward their own browser’s features. The W3C specifications are impartial, but more aimed at browser builders than web developers. So you normally end up using snippets from half a dozen places because there’s no single documentation repository.
Until now.
In an amazing show of solidarity, Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera and the W3C have joined forces to create WebPlatform.org; a definitive, community-driven library of web developer resources.
Tim Berners-Lee:
People in the web community —- including browser makers, authoring tool makers, and leading edge developers and designers —- have tremendous experience and practical knowledge about the web.
Web Platform Docs is an ambitious project where all of us who are passionate about the web can share knowledge and help one another.
The wiki-based site is an early alpha release which is only available in English, but you’ll find information about HTML5, CSS3, animation, media queries, audio, video, canvas, SVG and more.
As well as the documentation, there are tutorials, a blog and Q&A section where you can ask and respond to questions from other members.
It’s early days for WebPlatform.org. The content is not as complete as other resources and the system is a little buggy but, assuming the stewards pull their weight, it could become a great guide for web developers.
Have you signed-up to WebPlatform.org? Can the contributing vendors disregard their own interests for the good of the web?
Craig BucklerCraig is a freelance UK web consultant who built his first page for IE2.0 in 1995. Since that time he's been advocating standards, accessibility, and best-practice HTML5 techniques. He's created enterprise specifications, websites and online applications for companies and organisations including the UK Parliament, the European Parliament, the Department of Energy & Climate Change, Microsoft, and more. He's written more than 1,000 articles for SitePoint and you can find him @craigbuckler.
