14339 - link to relevant standards documentation

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(www.mozilla.org :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Dawn Endico]

Compile a list of standards supported by mozilla and link to related documents.
(e.g. RFC's, Drafts, and FAQs)

Comment 1

[Sean Richardson]

I'd advocate treating this as a very serious work product to be in a decent
draft state by the beginning of the public beta period. The reason? By being
very methodical and making sure the lists are complete, this documentation
would be valuable support for reviewing the standards support of the betas,
leaving the developers at least some time to get to any missing bits of
support prior to shipping.

Done to the maximum, this is really at least twelve distinct tasks, although in
practice they would not be done in as strict as order:
0.  List the categories to be used to organize the rest of the work
    (HTML, CSS, RDF, DOM, TCP/IP, DNS, Proxies, plus what else?).
1.  Enumerate the web and internet standards already claimed as supported by
    Mozilla.
2.  Enumerate the full list web and internet standards that should be supported
    by Mozilla, based on standatds dependencies (for example, HTML 4 references
    an official IANA list of MIME-types that a web UA must grok to actually
    fully support HTML 4).
3.  Enumerate the web and internet standards actually supported by Mozilla code
    at beta-stage, and any areas of incomplete support for those standards.
4.  Compare List 3 to List 2 very carefully.
5.  Add anything on List 3 not already on List 2 to List 2.
6.  Select from expanded List 2 any additional items that belong on List 1.
7.  Carefully list areas of missing support for portions of items on List 3.
8.  (non-documentation) Submit the list of items on List 2 that are not on
    List 3, plus list 7, to QA for action determination.
9.  (non-documentation) Develop code to finish providing support for everything
    important on Lists 7 & 8.
10. Iterate Steps 4, 5, & 6, and if necessary 7, 8 & 9, and if really
    necessary, 10.

Lists 0 and 1 are probably best done by QA.
List 1 would be an obvious candidate for a table of contents for
http://www.mozilla.org/library.html

List 2 can be done by any number of people, and needs to be done by multiple
people to get it done right.
The sections of List 2 would be obvious candidates for detailed tables of
contents for http://www.mozilla.org/library.html

List 3 needs to be done by those who actually know.

No point talking more about the rest of the tasks unless there is a real
commitment to do Lists 2 & 3 right.

On the other hand, I think Lists 1 & 2 are worth the effort to do right
regardless.

I know I've seen a candidate for an initial List 1, but where?

I volunteer to begin working on List 2. Here's the very beginning of the
beginning:

---
The place to start for links to the web standards is:
http://www.w3.org/TR/#Recommendations

Mozilla also supports some proposed standards, listed on the same page
as Proposed Recommendations and as Working Drafts.

---
A happy hunting ground for networking standards and related documentation is at:
http://www.isi.edu/publications.html

List of Mime-types:
ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/media-types

---
Links to related documents can be harvested from the following:

HTML 4.0 References (related standards and informational):
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/references.html#h-1.1

CSS1 references:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1-961217#references

Web Standards Project Resources:
http://www.Webstandards.org/general.html

---
If anyone is wondering why I might think that I have the skills and
inclination to really work at this, I have written from scratch a
detailed 36-page Setup Guide for a small ISP giving concise, correct
and battle-tested step by step instructions for setting up access and
application software for Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinNT, Win3.1, Mac, iMac,
and Linux, plus troubleshooting info. Most people using it set up their
software get online the first night with no phone calls to support, and the
ISP needs to pay far less than the average in tech support wages for an ISP
of comparable size.

Comment 2

[Dawn Endico]

It would be great if you could organize this, or even just work on
list #2. Eric Krock <[e-mail]> probably has a list of
standards supported by Mozilla, although his list may only include
web standards. It may be posted somewhere under
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/

Eric's list may only contain web standards, for others, try posting to
various newsgroups to ask lists of standards they support. I would start
with javascript, mailnews, netlib, rt-messaging and mathml. Ask Pam Nunn
<[e-mail]> about imaging (png, jpg, etc).


Added your links to library.html. Thanks!

Comment 3

[Sean Richardson]

The "Netscape Standards Challenge" page at
<URL:http://home.netscape.com/browsers/future/standards.html>
could be adapted to become a Mozilla.org page, or it could be linked
from somewhere under <URL:http://www.mozilla.org>. Since it isn't always
obvious on that page which subsection of the relevant standards doc defines
each feature, it's probably worth doing the former.

Note: there is one "Not Yet" for Gecko on the page, which was prepared
using the March 2 build vs. IE5 final. Time to retest? :-)

Comment 4

[Sean Richardson]

Clicked on [Commit] too soon! Erik Krock's "before you e-mail me..." page at
<URL:http://sites.netscape.net/ekrock/answers.html> is a wonderful resource
for organizing Mozilla standards support info, in its entirety.

Comment 5

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

-> [e-mail] component.

Comment 6

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

There seems to be an emphasis only on web standards here.  (Can't imagine
why. :-)

I hope nobody forgot that Mozilla does SMTP, POP, IMAP, and NNTP also!

At this specific moment in time, I _really_ wish I knew if Mozilla had any
support for RFC 2476 (mail submission) and/or RFC 2554 (SMTP authentication).

Is there a simple summary data sheet for Mozilla somewhere?  If not, somebody
should definitely write one.  It should just list important facts, like what
this product does, and what standards it is believed to conform to.

(Is it just me, or is there still basically -zero- end-user documentation for
this monster?)

Comment 7

[James Cox]

-> taking QA contact so I don't need to watch Dawn anymore. ;)

Comment 8

[Daniel Wang]

Attachment: sample template

Comment 9

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

reassigning endico's bugs to default owner

Comment 10

[Anne (:annevk)]

I suggest WONFTIFX. Such things can't be maintained and become outdated before
you know you it.

(Isn't there a similar bug out there?)

Comment 11

[fantasai]

I would like to keep this open. It would be a useful reference for developers.

Comment 12

[Gérard Talbot]

First of all, I think this bug summary is wrongly worded. This bug is about documenting web standards support of Mozilla browsers.

Second, if I understood this bug accordingly/correctly, then it should be resolved as a duplicate of bug 279561

I wish to say that this bug (and/or bug 279561) is fix-able. One important issue which has still not been mentioned in this bug is how much specific, detailed the info of the [level of] support should be in such documentation for Mozilla-based browsers.

"CSS1 yes"
and, say,
"CSS1 94%"
are 2 different indications of level of support. 

And having testcases for each modules or properties is even furthermore detailed, specific. 

And having a list of links to CSS1 bugs in bugzilla 
e.g.: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/bugspecs/REC-CSS1.html (old, outdated bug I have an updated one :) )
is even more complete.

Level of support and flawless, impeccable, non-buggy implementation are also 2 distinct issues - admittedly inter-connected, inter-dependent - but nevertheless still distinct, separate.

--

Some links to bookmark if this bug (or bug 279561) is going to be fixed:

Complete cross-browser support tables for HTML, XHTML, CSS, DOM, ECMA, etc.
http://www.webdevout.net/
Amazingly, these support tables are updated thanks to its open-contribution format. I personally believe webstandards.org should be the organization to keep and maintain such tables (and I said so many months ago).

CSS 3 cross-browser support tables along with testcases (outdated IMO: IE 6, Firefox 0.8, Mozilla 1.7 RC 1, Safari 1.2, Opera 7.50 are not recent browser versions):
http://www.geocities.com/seanmhall2003/css3/compat.html

CSS 2.1 cross-browser support with E. Meyer testcases:
http://www.designdetector.com/articles/results.html
(Also outdated since Internet Explorer 6, Mozilla 1.5, Opera 7.21 are not the most recent browsers: Firefox 1.5.x is not even listed)

HTML 4.0 conformance support table from R. Lionheart:
http://www.robinlionheart.com/stds/html4/results


Having such tables for Firefox (and/or cross-browser support comparison) would certainly show examplarly how good, conformant Firefox is.

Finally, the "Netscape Standards Challenge" page at
<URL:http://home.netscape.com/browsers/future/standards.html>
is now at
<URL:http://wp.netscape.com/browsers/future/standards.html>
but none of the demo-testcase "See for Yourself" URL are on. Such document - innocently saying "Why support web standards?" - is still an examplary demonstration of inconsequent, incoherent and complacent ignorance of web standards:
No DOCTYPE found, 103 markup validation errors when using HTML 4.01 transitional and 2043 markup validation errors in HTML 4.01 strict.

Comment 13

[fantasai]

> This bug is about documenting web standards support of Mozilla browsers.

Not really. This bug is about referencing all the standards that Mozilla tries to support: specs like CSS2.1, HTML4.01, networking RFCs, etc. It's not about documenting support. It's meant less as an aid to web developers and more as an aid to QA and developers working on Mozilla.

Comment 14

[Gérard Talbot]

> Not really. This bug is about referencing all the standards that Mozilla tries
> to support: specs like CSS2.1, HTML4.01, networking RFCs, etc. (...) as an
> aid to QA and developers working on Mozilla.

Strange. A developer would then be better to get

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tech-evangelism/site/standards-redirector.html

I'm trying to update that document via bug 225895 comment #22

Comment 15

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

fantasai, do you agree that this bug is basically fixed by the nature of devmo existing and linking to the various technologies we support? I'm not sure library.html is a) used or b) linked to anywhere of significance. Personally, I'd like to just remove it (and any links to it, of course), but let's start with closing this bug out. :)

Comment 16

[fantasai]

I think DevMo fixes this bug. It doesn't do a good job replacing library.html, though--that was targetted mainly at Mozilla developers, not developers using Mozilla.

Comment 17

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

Fixed by devmo.

Filed follow up bug 432574 for updating/replacing library.html. That'll likely be somewhere on devmo, but I filed it in www.mozilla.org for now.