Technical Architecture Group

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Technical Architecture Group
AbbreviationTAG
Formation2001
Founder World Wide Web Consortium
Type Nonprofit working group
Owner World Wide Web Consortium
Website tag.w3.org

The W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) is a special working group within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) created in 2001 [1] to: [2] [3] [4]

Contents

The TAG consists of inventor of the Web and W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee, engineers elected by W3C member organizations, as well as participants directly appointed by Tim Berners-Lee.

Role and deliverables

Today, the TAG's primary responsibilities are two-fold:

  1. to conduct specification reviews ("design reviews") of new Web platform features, [5] to ensure API design consistency, and respect for web users' security and privacy
  2. to document the design principles of the Web platform, which is done in the Web Platform Design Principles document, [6] the Ethical Web Principles document [7] as well as various separate "Findings" documents. [8] Notable past publications include Architecture of the World Wide Web, volume one (2004) [9] [10]

Google requires an approving TAG review for a Web platform feature to ship in Blink, Google Chrome's rendering engine. [11] [12] An approving review is also required for a W3C draft specification to be able to become a Recommendation. [13]

While the TAG is a W3C working group, design reviews are not limited to W3C specifications. The TAG is often asked to review TC39, [14] WHATWG, [15] or IETF [16] specifications as well.

Participants

The current participants (as of December 2021) are: [2]

  1. Daniel Appelquist (Samsung Electronics) (Chair)
  2. Rossen Atanassov (Microsoft Corporation)
  3. Hadley Beeman (W3C Invited Expert)
  4. Tim Berners-Lee (W3C) (Chair)
  5. Kenneth Rohde Christiansen (Intel Corporation)
  6. Amy Guy (Digital Bazaar)
  7. Yves Lafon (W3C) (staff contact)
  8. Peter Linss (W3C Invited Expert) (Chair)
  9. Sangwhan Moon (Google)
  10. Theresa O'Connor (Apple, Inc.)
  11. Lea Verou (W3C Invited Expert)

Despite some participants having a corporate affiliation, when participating in TAG meetings they are expected to act in their personal capacity to find the best solutions for the Web, not just for any particular network, technology, vendor, or user. [4]

Notable past participants include: [17]

History

2012 Reform

During its first decade, the TAG had a very different role and responsibilities than what it does today.

The primary focus of the first three years of the TAG was on documenting in a clear and easily understood manner the architectural foundations of the Web. The result was published at the end of 2004 as Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One. [10] It is written in a relatively informal style, with illustrations, and many of its conclusions are expressed in succinct 'principles', 'constraints' and 'good practice notes', such as:

After this publication and until 2012, the work of the TAG primarily resulted in publishing Findings documents, centered around XML, RDF, and URIs. [26]

In 2012, four prominent web developers felt that the TAG had become disconnected from the realities and pain points of web developers. [27] Led by Alex Russell, they dubbed themselves "the reformers" and participated in the 2012 TAG election for four vacant seats. [28] [29] [30] [31] All of them got elected. [32] It was only after this reform that design reviews of new specifications became a significant part of the TAG's work and the process for requesting a design review moved to GitHub and became streamlined. [5]

First Party Sets Controversy

In February 2019, Google requested a TAG design review of their First Party Sets proposal [33] as required per their shipping policy. [11] The proposal was rejected by the TAG in 2021. [34] The group's review concluded that "the First Party Sets proposal harmful to the web in its current form". [35] [36] This resulted in Google updating its timeline for removing third-party cookies and postponing it to 2023. [37]

This follows earlier public statements by the TAG about prioritizing user security and privacy when conducting design reviews. [38]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Semantic Web</span> Extension of the Web to facilitate data exchange

The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.

A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), formerly Universal Resource Identifier, is a unique sequence of characters that identifies an abstract or physical resource, such as resources on a webpage, mail address, phone number, books, real-world objects such as people and places, concepts. URIs are used to identify anything described using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), for example, concepts that are part of an ontology defined using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and people who are described using the Friend of a Friend vocabulary would each have an individual URI.

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a method to describe and exchange graph data. It was originally designed as a data model for metadata by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It provides a variety of syntax notations and data serialization formats, of which the most widely used is Turtle.

Web annotation can refer to online annotations of web resources such as web pages or parts of them, or a set of W3C standards developed for this purpose. The term can also refer to the creations of annotations on the World Wide Web and it has been used in this sense for the annotation tool INCEpTION, formerly WebAnno. This is a general feature of several tools for annotation in natural language processing or in the philologies.

In computer hypertext, a URI fragment is a string of characters that refers to a resource that is subordinate to another, primary resource. The primary resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), and the fragment identifier points to the subordinate resource.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Lilley (computer scientist)</span> British computer scientist

Chris Lilley is a British computer scientist known for co-authoring the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format, starting the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, and his work on HTML2, CSS2, and Web fonts.

HTML Tidy is a console application for correcting invalid HyperText Markup Language (HTML), detecting potential web accessibility errors, and for improving the layout and indent style of the resulting markup. It is also a cross-platform library for computer applications that provides HTML Tidy's features.

Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C recommendation designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is part of the Semantic Web family of standards built upon RDF and RDFS, and its main objective is to enable easy publication and use of such vocabularies as linked data.

Life Science Identifiers are a way to name and locate pieces of information on the web. Essentially, an LSID is a unique identifier for some data, and the LSID protocol specifies a standard way to locate the data. They are a little like DOIs used by many publishers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML5</span> Fifth and previous version of HyperText Markup Language

HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML Living Standard. It is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), a consortium of the major browser vendors.

Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.

Web of Things (WoT) describes a set of standards by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the interoperability of different Internet of things (IoT) platforms and application domains.

Content Security Policy (CSP) is a computer security standard introduced to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking and other code injection attacks resulting from execution of malicious content in the trusted web page context. It is a Candidate Recommendation of the W3C working group on Web Application Security, widely supported by modern web browsers. CSP provides a standard method for website owners to declare approved origins of content that browsers should be allowed to load on that website—covered types are JavaScript, CSS, HTML frames, web workers, fonts, images, embeddable objects such as Java applets, ActiveX, audio and video files, and other HTML5 features.

httpRange-14 is a long-running logical conundrum or design problem in the semantic web. The problem arises because when HTTP is extended from referring only to documents to talking about real-world things the domain of HTTP GET becomes undefined.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lea Verou</span> Greek web developer

Lea Verou is a Greek-American computer scientist, front end web developer, speaker and author, originally from Lesbos, Greece. Verou is currently a research assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), an elected participant in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Technical Architecture Group (TAG), and an invited expert in the W3C CSS Working Group. She is the author of the book CSS Secrets: Better Solutions to Everyday Web Design Problems (ISBN 978-1-449-37263-7).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebAssembly</span> Cross-platform assembly language and bytecode designed for execution in web browsers

WebAssembly (Wasm) defines a portable binary-code format and a corresponding text format for executable programs as well as software interfaces for facilitating communication between such programs and their host environment.

WebXR Device API is a Web application programming interface (API) that describes support for accessing augmented reality and virtual reality devices, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, Google Cardboard, HoloLens, Apple Vision Pro, Magic Leap or Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR), in a web browser. The WebXR Device API and related APIs are standards defined by W3C groups, the Immersive Web Community Group and Immersive Web Working Group. While the Community Group works on the proposals in the incubation period, the Working Group defines the final web specifications to be implemented by the browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne van Kesteren</span> Dutch open source contributor

Anne van Kesteren is an open web standards author and open source contributor. He has written and edits several web standards specifications including Fullscreen API, XMLHttpRequest, and URL. Formerly worked on standards issues as a software engineer at Opera Software, he started working at Mozilla on 2013-02-04. He was Mozilla’s representative on the WHATWG Steering Group. He was an elected participant in the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) from 2013 to 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ActivityPub</span> Decentralized social networking protocol

ActivityPub is a protocol and open standard for decentralized social networking. It provides a client-to-server API for creating and modifying content, as well as a federated server-to-server (S2S) protocol for delivering notifications and content to other servers. ActivityPub has become the main standard used in the fediverse, a popular network used for social networking that consists of software such as Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Baron (computer scientist)</span> American computer scientist

David Baron is an American computer scientist, web browser engineer, open web standards author, technology speaker, and open source contributor. He has written and edits several CSS web standards specifications including CSS Color Module Level 3, CSS Conditional Rules, and several working drafts. He started working on Mozilla in 1998, and was employed by Mozilla in 2003 to help develop and evolve the Gecko rendering engine, eventually as a Distinguished Engineer in 2013. He was Mozilla’s representative on the WHATWG Steering Group from 2017-2020. He has served on the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) continuously since being elected in 2015 and re-elected subsequently, most recently in 2020. In 2021 he joined Google to work on Google Chrome.

References

  1. ↑ "News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Forms Technical Architecture Group from Janet Daly on 2001-12-11 (www-tag@w3.org from December 2001)". lists.w3.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  2. 1 2 "W3C Technical Architecture Group". www.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  3. ↑ "W3C Technical Architecture Group". tag.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  4. 1 2 "W3C Process Document". www.w3.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  5. 1 2 W3C TAG Specification Reviews, W3C Technical Architecture Group, 26 December 2021, retrieved 11 January 2022
  6. ↑ "Web Platform Design Principles". www.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  7. ↑ "W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles". www.w3.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  8. ↑ "Findings of the W3C Technical Architecture Group". www.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  9. ↑ "W3C Documents the Architecture of the Web - SitePoint". www.sitepoint.com. 12 November 2004. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  10. 1 2 "Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One". www.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  11. 1 2 "Launching Features - The Chromium Projects". www.chromium.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  12. ↑ "Intent to Explain: Demystifying the Blink Shipping Process". Chromium Blog. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  13. ↑ "Document Review". www.w3.org. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  14. ↑ "TAG Design reviews for TC39 specifications - GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  15. ↑ "TAG reviews for WHATWG specifications - GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  16. ↑ "TAG design reviews for IETF specifications - GitHub". GitHub. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  17. ↑ "TAG members over time". tag.w3.org. Retrieved 21 January 2022.
  18. 1 2 3 4 "W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)". 2 August 2002. Archived from the original on 2 August 2002. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  19. ↑ "W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)". 30 June 2004. Archived from the original on 30 June 2004. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  20. ↑ "W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG)". 3 July 2006. Archived from the original on 3 July 2006. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  21. ↑ "TAG participants as of 2009 - Wayback Machine". 28 June 2009. Archived from the original on 28 June 2009. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  22. ↑ "TAG participants as of 2011 - Wayback Machine". 28 August 2011. Archived from the original on 28 August 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  23. ↑ "TAG members as of 2012 - Wayback Machine". 20 May 2012. Archived from the original on 20 May 2012. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  24. ↑ "TAG Members as of 2013 - Wayback Machine". 3 July 2013. Archived from the original on 3 July 2013. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  25. 1 2 "W3C Technical Architecture Group as of 2015". 4 July 2015. Archived from the original on 4 July 2015. Retrieved 11 January 2022.
  26. ↑ "Main Articles: 'The W3C Technical Architecture Group', Ariadne Issue 51". www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  27. ↑ "Election Season". Infrequently Noted. 6 November 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  28. ↑ "Reforming the W3C TAG". Infrequently Noted. 7 December 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  29. ↑ Cáceres, Marcos (6 December 2012). "W3C TAG elections". Marcos Cáceres' blog. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  30. ↑ "I'm Running to Reform the W3C's TAG". Katz Got Your Tongue. 7 December 2012. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  31. ↑ "Statements about W3C TAG nominees for 2012 Election". www.w3.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  32. ↑ "W3C News Archive: 2013 W3C". www.w3.org. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  33. ↑ "First-Party Sets · Issue #342 · w3ctag/design-reviews". GitHub. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  34. ↑ W3C TAG Specification Reviews, W3C Technical Architecture Group, 26 December 2021, retrieved 12 January 2022
  35. ↑ Schiff, Allison (14 April 2021). "Influential W3C Working Group Calls Privacy Sandbox Proposal 'Harmful'". AdExchanger. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  36. ↑ Tim Anderson. "W3C Technical Architecture Group slaps down Google's proposal to treat multiple domains as same origin". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  37. ↑ Tim Anderson. "Google updates timeline for unpopular Privacy Sandbox, which will kill third-party cookies in Chrome by 2023". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  38. ↑ "Web feature developers told to dial up attention on privacy and security". TechCrunch. 11 September 2019. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
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