Birthday-party-slash-Doc-Sprint, Amsterdam, October 12, 2013

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. - Margaret Mead

Also, never doubt that a small group can get a lot done at a doc sprint, and the group at the Amsterdam doc sprint, however small, accomplished a lot of work on Web Platform Docs, moved the web forward, and changed the world. A small group, however, does have trouble polishing off a huge, chocolatey birthday cake, and we really could have done with more attendance on that front.

Indeed, the cake was not only not a lie), it was delicious. Careful with the knife, Doug.

The cake, the catering, and the venue, The Hub co-working space, were all orchestrated by our host, Paul Verbeek. Paul also coordinated with the Fronteers organization, which helped publicize the doc sprint, as it followed the Fronteers 2013 developer conference. Everything came off with great panache! Thanks, Paul!

The big story coming out this doc sprint is that we finished some 53 CSS properties, to bring the total number of CSS properties completed to within twenty of our goal for the project. Some of the work on those 53 properties was already done, in other doc sprints and by other contributors, so we mostly reviewed and put the finishing touches on these properties, and we were able to move very quickly through the list.

There are opportunities for us to add value to the web, apart from great documentation. In documenting the new auto value of the outline-style property we discovered that the specification did not describe exactly how the auto value should work as a standard, the spec leaves it up to the user agent, and when we tested it in several browsers on several systems, we were unable to discern a common pattern. This struck us as falling short, so we dispatched a missive to the CSS working group, recommending that the behavior of the auto value be more clearly defined. We're waiting to hear back from them. But the point is, we took the opportunity to not only document the auto value, but to help shape its specification and participate directly in building the web.

Some prefer to sprint in their socks.

Many of the participants here in Amsterdam have also attended one or both of the other European doc sprints. Rodney Rehm, Vivienne van Velzen, and Francesco Iovine, veterans of the Berlin and Zurich doc sprints, made a mountain of edits to the CSS properties and HTML attributes documentation.

Is it time for cake yet?

We also signed up several new members, one of whom, Tom Schuller won the raffle prize, a Chromebook provided by Google.

Show up at a doc sprint, win free stuff!

The local luminaries also graced us with not only an appearance, they chipped in on the CSS properties and worked on developing automated compatibility information for WPD. Peter-Paul Koch of Quirksmode fame, Ronald Mansveld, and Niels Leenheer of HTML5Test are working with Doug Schepers of the W3C to aggregate compatibility information from across the web and display it on Web Platform Docs.

The Syndics revisited. This time, it's the fabric of the web.

Okay, one last cheesy mashup featuring the work of Dutch masters of the Golden Age, just to tie up the analogy above, and hopefully put an end to all the silliness of the last three blog posts:

The real Syndics did show up, but left abruptly when we told them the Linen API wasn't standards-track. [The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild, by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, courtesy of the Rijksmuseum.]

So, even if we couldn't finish the cake, we certainly took a big bite out of the work on Web Platform Docs. As this post goes to press, the CSS properties are being finished and the last loose ends of that project are getting tied up. We look forward to developing a new JavaScript reference and over-hauling our HTML elements and attributes in up-coming doc sprints. We hope you'll join us!