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What is WHATWG ?

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WHATWG is a Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. It is a community of computer experts and general users with an interest in improving HTML through various standards and tests. The WHATWG was founded in 2004 by individuals from the Mozilla base Foundation, Opera Software and Apple inc, and various leading Web browser vendors. This decision was made to existence by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to abandon HTML in favor of XML (Extensible Markup Language). W3C is the main international standards body for the World Wide Web. Since WHATWG was established its primary aim was to advancement of HTML, therefore, it included various new features to it for eg:- Web Storage, Web Sockets, APIs, etc. The WHATWG standards/requirements are regularly changed as per the feedbacks from Web site designers, programmers, and users. New features that are added helps us in real-world implementations. 

Standards: Also called Living Standards. Sometimes WHATWG and W3C didn’t always agree on a standard so to solve this problem W3C passed the HTML and DOM standards over to WHATWG, however in a collaborative process. W3C will still have their input. These standards are very important because without them These standards bring a type of order to the lives of users and developers alike, because without them websites would look different on different, or would not even work at all. Every piece of Web technology that has been created or is in the process follows these standards. Just imagine Without these standards, web developers would have to make a choice. Create a site individually for each browser. Many companies cannot afford the time or money to create all of these different sites for different browsers. 

How To Get Involved Directly: You can also browse list of good first issues on GitHub, if you’re interested in helping the community by editing the standards directly. For participation visit https://participate.whatwg.org/.

How to add a new feature: After considering input from all contributing people, the editor of Living Standard judges as to whether a feature has enough support behind it to include. Input from contributors is segmented by editors and coordinated by the Steering Group. 

Translating WHATWG standards: You can interpret a WHATWG Standards, by contacting the maintainers of the standard through GitHub and letting them know about your work. If the translation has quality problems, community members are encouraged to provide feedback to the maintainers of the standard, so that links of the translation can be removed.

Proposing new features to WHATWG standards: Get more people involved. Open a new issue in Github that describes the use cases and their requirements. Once you have a group of people on board, ask the editor to put that solution in the standard, or create a pull request on GitHub yourself. 

Advantages:

  • It helps in fast development of Web-Standards.
  • WHATWG publishes a number of standards that are applicable for all web-browsers.
  • Everything gets continuously updated.
  • Any outsider can contribute into it as participation is free.
  • Participation can be done from home (Internet) and without binding decisions in the meeting of contributors.

For reference, you can also visit the https://whatwg.org/ site.


Last Updated : 14 Sep, 2021
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