How To Contribute to HTML5

If you're reading this article, you're already interested in emerging web standards, and probably have some ideas to contribute.

You may already know a little about how W3C and WHATWG sculpt these standards, from crude brainstorming to refined implementation.

Thanks in part to Ian Hickson's WHATWG splinter, much of that refinement comes from careful examination of use-cases, rather than idealist theories of markup.

And that's where you come in: you're a web developer, so you have plenty of use-cases up your sleeve -- many of which others have surely encountered, some of which others probably have not encountered, but any of which might easily prove relevant to standardization. This is the beauty of the decentralized Internet, from the other side: not that people get stuff from anywhere (as in the OSI model), or even serve stuff from anywhere (as in the cloud), but, more than that, anyone can create all rules, and for everyone. You drive the standards; so why not make them, too?

Well, you're in luck, for there's a site designed to help anyone contribute to these standards: movethewebforward.org. 

Start at the top, which assumes you use web technologies but not necessarily how they're improved, or even how browsers really work. Scroll your way through each section, leveling up until you reach the bottom, which tells you -- now that you know all about web standards -- which specific conversations to enter, and how to make the best of your particular skills.

Exciting site at an exciting time for the web. Check it out and add your two cents to the web for years to come.