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

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.

It would be great if you could organize this, or even just work on list #2. Eric Krock <ekrock@netscape.com> 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 <pnunn@netscape.com> about imaging (png, jpg, etc). Added your links to library.html. Thanks!

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? :-)

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.

-> webmaster@mozilla.org component.

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?)

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

reassigning endico's bugs to default owner

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?)

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

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.

> 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.

> 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

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. :)

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.

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.