Introducing Google Doctype
By Mark
Pilgrim, Google Code TeamThe open web is the web built on
open standards: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and more. The open web is a beautiful soup of barely
compatible clients and servers. It comprises billions of pages, millions of users, and
thousands of browser-based applications. You can access the open web with open source and
proprietary browsers, on open source and proprietary operating systems, on open source and
proprietary hardware.
Google has built its business here, on the open
web, and we want to help you build here too. To that end, we are happy to announce the
formation of an encyclopedia for web developers, by web developers:
Google Doctype.
In
its current (beta) form, Google Doctype contains dozens of articles written by top Googlers on
topics important to all web developers: security, performance, caching, DOM manipulation, CSS
styling, and more. It contains over 8,000 lines of JavaScript code: Google's own battle-tested
JavaScript library, released today under a liberal open source license. And it contains the
beginnings of a test-driven reference of the open web: a reference of every element, every
attribute, every DOM method, every CSS property, all backed up by test cases.
Well, not quite
every property; at least, not yet. We're
still working on filling in a few of the details about the world's largest development
platform ever, and we need your help. And so we humbly offer this fledgling encyclopedia under
a Creative Commons Attribution license, and we invite the web developers of the world to
contribute to it. Sign in with your Google account and
edit any page, any article,
anywhere. Create new ones, update old ones, and help expand the world's
understanding of the open web.
