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Web standards wiki

Monday January 31, 2005

I’m not very good at keeping secrets and reading the latest entry over at molly.com has reminded me, I was going to blog about this a little while ago.

Anyway, a few weeks back I asked if anyone wanted to help out with a little project, and I had a great response and so work has begun on a web standards wiki.

There are details to iron out and there is nothing to show as yet but if you have any ideas of what you might like to see on this sort of site, let us know.

Update

Those who mailed me saying they would like to help out i.e. WSW Observers, I will be in touch about this shortly! :-)

  1. Schultzy

    1867 days ago

    Definataly the the best thing is to cover one area in great detail rather than be wide and be spread thin.

    Make the site interesting fun to use and inviting to new people joining webstandards.

    Also if there are any places left I would love to help.

  2. Martin W

    1867 days ago

    Hey I actually own a copy of the Joe Burns HTML Goodies book Molly.com kinda mentions – signs of a misspent youth.

    Cool idea by the way – life would be so much easier if the stuff out there was easily ranked beginner, intermediary and advanced. How many people are put off because they plunge straight in at the way too deep end and start drowning from the word go.

    Thanks for the link by the way..what do you mean you don’t know what I do :O)

  3. Schultzy

    1867 days ago

    I dont think there should be strict levels it should be wrote in a way that people can learn where they need to and get of the merry-go-round when they have learnt enough.

    Thats the thing see people that want to do beginners stuff might want to do the odd middle stuff and thats where you should make the line blurred somehow and make it so they can access the info they need.

  4. Schultzy

    1867 days ago

    Also (sorry Il stop)
    I think that joe burns has got it right people on his site can click what they want to learn.

    eg:
    “I want to learn about links”

    “ooh go there”
    Primer #4: Linking Pages

    But that is where you should come in and make the content 100 times better

  5. Matthew Pennell

    1867 days ago

    I have long thought that any site that aspires to be a “definitive guide” to all things web-standards would need a forum, although it is interesting to note how slow the Stylegala Forum has been to get off the ground.

    Perhaps it just goes to show how small the standards ‘blogosphere’ really is.

    Aside from that, it would be extremely useful to be able to browse by web standards topic in a tree/directory structure, like browsing Yahoo or Google Directory. Top level would be (X)HTML, CSS and DOM, then within CSS you would have Layout, Fonts, Colours, etc. and so on until you reach a collection of FAQs, articles, links, on best practice.

    I don’t know how closely a wiki’s structure is to this, but IMHO it is the difficulty in locating information that is a big problem, and being able to ‘drill down’ to a very granular level would be very useful.

  6. Rob Mientjes

    1867 days ago

    Might I add that CSSCreator.com, to name one, is already pretty big. If we can do that trick but then on everything standards, well, then I think it would be the place.

  7. Ray

    1867 days ago

    Are you thinking of rewriting everything that has been written before, or just linking people to exact articles? The one example that comes to mind is the CSS box model. It was something that I didn’t know about when I first started learning CSS. I think it’s Ryan Brill that has a nice article explaining the CSS box model. I wouldn’t want to try and write it better than him; I’d opt instead to link to his article.

    If you used links, all that would need to be done would be (finding) and going through articles to determine where in the wiki they need to go, possibly adding your own commentary on what you feel was left out or could have been written better. And if the idea of sorting by difficulty is implemented, then the articles could be sorted that way as well.

  8. John Oxton

    1867 days ago

    Ray, my original idea was very much a links resource as much as anything but perhaps with a quick explination of our own – followed by a further reading bit.

    Most importantly for me is a resource that never goes out of date becuase it is constantly updated, tweaked etc.

  9. Ray

    1867 days ago

    You know why I like this idea of linking? Because some people get visitors to their site because of CSS tricks and hacks that they’ve figured out, or some new technique they’ve discovered, etc. It’s almost as if it’s the currency of the web. You know what I’m talking about?

    If articles were written only at the wiki, it just might deter people from participating in it, because they don’t want to give up something that brings people to THEIR site. With links, articles can be written at their own sites and only linked to by the wiki. It seems to me that using links would keep the wiki more participated in than the forum at Stylegala.

  10. John Oxton

    1867 days ago

    I agree with that Ray, in fact it does solve the problems of copyright we have been discussing. It would also make it easier for anyone to participate regardless of skill level.

  11. Martin W

    1866 days ago

    It’s a “some of the people some of the time” conundrum – you’re never going to satisfy everyone, but I guess if you trust your instincts you’re not going to go far wrong…

  12. Kev

    1866 days ago

    A wiki is a great idea but a forum is a tricky thing. Speaking as someone who helped design, build and administrate a large (nearly 1000 members) forum that revolves around IT/internet I can tell you that it is a lot of work – and I was part of a team of 5 – to first get people to adopt it as ‘their’ community, then to start spreading the word, write enough content to keep it relevant and administer it to keep on top of all the idiots a forum usually attracts.

    I’m not saying don’t do it but I wouldn’t want anyone to get into such a venture without realising how much hard slog it is.

  13. John Oxton

    1866 days ago

    Kevin, you are absolutley right, there will be no forum, I think we will have our work cut out looking after the wiki. A blog isn’t out of the question though, if people want to know what is going on, what we have planned.

  14. headsfromspace

    1866 days ago

    An interesting idea—I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

  15. Jolo

    1866 days ago

    John, there will be a good interaction with this project both with the standard and non-standardized pips. The context with regards to "linking", is one essential part of the web standards mass.:)

  16. Andy Budd

    1866 days ago

    Sorry to sound like a party pooper, but why not just contribute the CSS-Discuss wiki? I find it an invaluable resource, especially when Google or my blogmarks/bookmarks fail me.

  17. John Oxton

    1866 days ago

    It’s a valuable point and we won’t be trying to step on the toes of CSS-Discuss any of the other wikis but the idea is to have a broader range than just discussion about CSS.

  18. Andrew Phillipo

    1866 days ago

    Great idea – I’m sure you guys will come out with a stylish layout for the new wiki. As an aside would this wiki cover unobtrusive, cross-browser javascript; given this is the ‘year of DHTML’ this might not be a bad idea!

    I will try to contribute something of value to the wiki as soon as it goes live. Would it be an idea to simplify some of the concepts such as single image rollovers and things like sliding doors – linking back to the original articles?

    It might be nice to see under say ‘floats’ a list of techniques which use floats rather than just abstract ideas of what a float is.

    Also each tutorial/article should include a section on accessibility issues.

    Just my thoughts,

    Andy

  19. John Oxton

    1865 days ago

    Yes, Dom has got to be there for sure, not that I know a damn thing about it… anyone?

  20. sosa

    1865 days ago

    hi John

    I find so valuable this iniciative you’re doing. I’d like (if you don’t mind) to suggest a port of the wiki in spanish, we are a little backwards from you and there are not too many good resources for css and webstandards in our language. I also could help on it.

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