Apple, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and others announced the alpha release of WebPlatform.org, a community-driven site that aims to become a comprehensive and authoritative source for Web developer documentation.
The free wiki-style site lets developers find best practices for proper cross-browsers and cross-device coding as well as contribute and edit the document. The site was populated with information from Microsoft, Opera, Google, Facebook, Mozilla, Nokia, Adobe, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), but there are plenty of areas that still need editing.
W3C mentioned that users would be able to save time and resources by reaching out to this collection of authoritive guidelines including:
- How to use each feature of the Open Web Platform, with syntax and examples.
- The interoperability of various technologies across platforms and devices.
- The standardization status of each technology specification.
- The stability and implementation status of features.
Last year, the leading search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex announced collaboration similar to WebPlatform.org. The Schema.org site provides guidelines for Webmasters to properly markup their pages in order to improve search results.
A recent survey of news use on mobile devices by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 50 percent of all U.S. adults have a mobile connection through either a smartphone or tablet. This cornucopia of screen sizes, and browsers is forcing developers to optimize for one audience while proving less than optimal experiences to others. The collaboration of the leading players via Schema.org and WebPlatform.org should help consumers in the long run.
Now if there was a way to get makers of phones, tablets and cameras to use microUSB for charging and transfer, we would really get closer to standards! By the way Apple, selling adapters to make your iPhone 5 Lightning dock connectors into microUSB to comforts to Europe's charging connector standard is not the solution... they should be free, but I'm digressing.
I would love to hear from you! Feel free to share examples and ask questions via the comments below or reach out via @SocialJulio if our SocialShelfspace.com agency can help you dominate your social shelf space.