(4) What is a standard?

• Originally: an object used as an example for measurement
• Abstractly: magnitude(s) of measurement, e.g. the metric system
• More generally: an example of correctness; an authoritative rule, principle, model, or way of doing something

(5) 2 kinds of standards

• Committee or de jure standards
  • Standards "by law" or agreement
• De facto standards
  • Standards "in fact" or reality

(6) De jure standards

• Established by consensus
• Approved by a recognized organization
• Provides rules, guidelines and characteristics
• Takes the form of a written document
• Intended for voluntary use (not a law or regulation)
• Goal is to minimize conflict, disorder, misunderstanding

(7) De facto standards

• Widely adopted practices or products
• Significant market share
• Copied, referred to, or depended upon by many other practices or products
• Sometimes de facto standards will be turned into de jure standards by a standards organization

(8) Standards Life Cycle

(9) How standards are used

• To regulate behavior, e.g. for ensuring health
• To ensure fairness, e.g. accessibility guidelines
• To aid consistency, e.g. Pantone color codes
• To guide communication, e.g. disease classifications
• To enable products made by different groups to work together

(10) Discussion

• What do you think are some standards (de facto or de jure) used on the Internet or the Web today?
• Break into groups of 4-5 and discuss.
• Nominate a spokesperson to share with the class your most important standard.

(12) RFCs

• 1969: The hundred or so computer scientists using the Internet needed a way to organize their ideas about how it should work
• Stephen Crocker, a grad student at UCLA, sent (by postal mail) a Request For Comments [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc0001.txt] out to the other research groups
• This became the formal process by which Internet standards were developed
• Anyone can write an RFC and they are freely available
• Today there are over 5000 RFCs by the IETF [http://www.ietf.org] standardizing everything from email to iCalendar to blog feeds
• Web standards build upon these RFCs and are generally blessed by the W3C [http://www.w3c.org]

(13) MUST / SHOULD / MAY

• Most Web standards use the MUST / SHOULD / MAY phrasing to set out their rules
• MUST means following a rule is absolutely required
• SHOULD means following a rule is recommended
• MAY means following a rule is optional
• This phrasing is itself a standard! (RFC 2119 [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt])

(14) The W3C

• Consortium of ~350 businesses, non-profits, universities, and gov't entities
• $1000 (for non-profit in a poor country) to $69,000 (for large company) yearly membership fees
• Headed by Tim Berners-Lee
• Administered by 3 "host organizations" in the U.S. (MIT), Europe, and Japan

(15) The W3C Standards Process

• Working Draft
  • An initial draft document with ideas about a new Web technology
• Candidate Recommendation
  • A document that has been widely reviewed and is ready to be implemented
• Proposed Recommendation
  • A document that various groups have successfully implemented and given their feedback on
• W3C Recommendation
  • A document that, after extensive consensus-building, has been endorsed by the W3C Members and Director (example: HTML 4.01 [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/])

(16) The WHATWG

• In 2004, engineers from Apple, Mozilla, and Opera decided they were tired with the slow-moving and unwieldy W3C consensus-building process
• They formed the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group [http://www.whatwg.org/] (WHATWG)
  • No membership fees
  • Everything is done on an open mailing list
  • Not a consensus-based process
  • People send feedback until they cannot convince the editor to make any more changes
  • An oversight committee can change the editor if he goes mad with power
• In 2009, the W3C decided to work with WHATWG on HTML5
• Their main focus is a new version of HTML (HTML5 [http://html5.org/])

(17) Standards are Serious Stuff

• Web standards can be messy and complex issues
• A lot of money and power rides on web standards
• Case in point: HTML5, the <video> tag, and YouTube [http://www.youtube.com/html5]

(19) Assignment #1

• Assignment 1 is available here [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mhPZcorADWlZSVuG6UqoG0Recx0uGxfTjWJRvDfNVyQ/edit?hl=en_US].
• Due Friday, July 15.
• Is a Google doc template - can make an electronic copy in Google docs, download as a PDF, or copy-paste to a new document.
• The readings from this week will be useful!
• Come to lab on Friday for more information and if you need help.

(20) Next week: HTML, CSS, Web Servers & Browsers

Next week we will begin looking at Web standards in detail, starting with HTML (the HyperText Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and the basics of Web servers and Web Browsers..