The Web is Open. Let's Keep It That Way

Doing code-heavy talks the whole 2011.

Sometimes it's good to look at the bigger picture.

What is the Open Web"?

Tantek Çelik's definition:

The ability to openly do 3 kinds of things:

publish in open standards
code and implement the standards
access and use content/code/web-apps/implementations

Open. Since 1991.

Tim Berners-Lee designed the web in which "principles of universality of access [...] are core values". (Web Architecture from 50,000 feet)

NSCP vs. MSFT: Browser Wars

Fought over which of the two companies would own the web. Neither NSCP nor MSFT cared for the Open Web.

MSFT won (or at least it looked so).

NSCP died, but at their last moment did something revolutionary: spawned Mozilla.org.

The Web today

Thanks to Mozilla, WebKit & Opera, the web kept evolving. And IE had to catch up.

HTML+CSS+JS is everywhere now.

"#browserlove not browser wars"

But the future has its challenges.

Challenges ahead

closed non-web app platforms
single-engine websites
proprietary media formats (h.264, MP3)
identity issues / walled gardens
software patents

Solutions appearing

offline HTML5; open web stores (Mozilla is building one)
RWD + PE + web standards
WebM, Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis
OpenID? Mozilla's BrowserID?
Patents need to be dealt with on a political level. Vote smart!

Write good code

write future-compatible code
use PE & RWD
code to the standard
be careful with vendor prefixes
DON'T limit your audience to one vendor
DON'T do browser sniffing instead of feature detection
DON'T assume feature X implies feature Y

Ever seen this happen to a Wiki in Fx9?

var is_khtml = (navigator.vendor == 'KDE' || (document.childNodes && !document.all && !navigator.taintEnabled));

DON'T ever do crazy shit like this!

Make standards the way your company works

mobile site more important than app (know when HTML5 >= native apps)
switch to HTML5 Audio & Video
code reuse between HTML5 websites and hybrid native/HTML5 apps (PhoneGap helps)

Speak your employer's language:

standards are good for the company
do we want to be dependant on another company?
does limiting our reach to just 2 platforms makes sense?
website that works everywhere might be costly, but is making N apps doing the same thing cheaper?

Help Others

But that bug is already filed!

does it have a minimized testcase? can you make one?
can you find the regression range?
C++ wizard? feel like fixing it on your own? (Gecko/Webkit/KHTML)

Other ways you can give back

experiment and share your findings (dabblet, jsfiddle, github)
talk about the Open Web at events (meet.js $YOUR_CITY?)
contribute to the standards process
the good people at movethewebforward.org have more ideas :)

Let's keep the web open!

For follow-ups: marcoos@marcoos.com, @marcoos, marcoos on irc.mozilla.org (evenings), or meet me at the party tonight!

Slides URL will be posted soon on Twitter.

An Open Web (e-book by FLOSS Manuals)
movethewebforward.org
Bruce Lawson: "Vendor prefixes, mobile monoculture
Mozilla Manifesto
Mozilla Apps
BrowserID

Image credits: "Mozilla stomps IE" - home.snafu.de/tilman, WorldWideWeb screenshot - Wikimedia Commons, memes - from memegenerator.net. "I Want You" - public domain. Other pics by me.

The Web is Open

Let's Keep It That Way

I ♥ the Web

Reasons why I ♥ the Web

the open web