The Homepage for the JavaScript Specification

Yulia Startsev | March 18, 2019 | WEB DESIGN AGENCY MIAMI | No Comments

Screenshot of the TC39 website

Ecma TC39, the JavaScript Standards Panel, is proud to announce that we get shipped a website for subsequent updates to the JavaScript specification. This is actually the first part of a two-part task aimed at improving our information submission and documentation. The website provides hyperlinks to our most significant documents, as well as a listing of proposals that are near completion. The goal is to help people find the details they need in order to understand the specification plus our process.

As the website is currently an MVP and extremely simple, we have plans to increase it. These plans include a group of documentation about how we work. We are going to experiment with other features as the require arises.

The website provides part of work that began this past year to better understand how the community was getting at information about the work around the JavaScript standards. We did a series of in-person selection interviews, followed by a widely distributed study to better understand what people struggled along with. One of the biggest requests was that we post and maintain a website that helps people get the information they are looking for.

Resource needs

Both most requested items with regard to sources were Learning Resources and a Web site. These two are linked, but need very different types of work. Since this particular clearly highlighted the need for a website, all of us began work on this right away.

Aggregated tags in response to the question “ What would you like to see as a source of the language specification process? ”

We identified different types of customers: Learners who are discovering the standards for the first time, Observers of the specification that are watching proposal advancement, and Research Users who need a central place where all of the significant documents are available. The website was designed around these customers. In order to not overwhelm people with details, the MVP is specifically centered on the most pertinent information, namely plans in Stage 3 of our procedure. Links are contextualized in order to assist individuals understand what documents they are looking at.

Stage 3 Suggestion List

The web site is very simple, but gives us the starting point from which to move forward. We have been continuing to work on documenting our own process. We hope to make more of these types of documents publicly available soon and also to incorporate them into the website with time.

Developer frustrations

The survey surfaced several issues that have been impacting the community about JavaScript. Three of the top 4 frustrations were related to things that might be alleviated by building a website. One that had not been directly related but heavily highlighted was that the unclear advancement associated with proposals. This was also surfaced within GitHub issues. This is challenging to solve, but we are currently working by means of ideas. For the time being, we have added a web link to the most recent presentation of each suggestion. We also have a checklist within the TC39 Process document that is at this point being added to some proposals upon GitHub.

Aggregated tags in response to problem “ Is there something we can learn better, or that you find particularly annoying right now? ”

Included in the survey, we collected emails to get in touch later, as we were uncertain how many responses we would get. The particular goal was to better understand particular concerns. However , we had an overwhelming quantity of feedback that pointed us within the direction we needed to go. Right after reviewing this, we decided towards keeping this personal information and to demand feedback publicly on a case-by-case schedule. Thank you to everyone who took part.

We are looking forward to your own feedback and comments. This task was community-driven— thank you to everybody who made it possible!