Notice: The WebPlatform project, supported by various stewards between 2012 and 2015, has been discontinued. This site is now available on github.

Plan for Zurich Doc Sprint, August 28, 2013

Intro Talk, general

Hello, and welcome to the first Swiss WebPlatform.org Doc Sprint!

You are making (a small part of) history!

<Play the WPD video>

We first need to say a big "thank you", for coming here today and offering to lend a hand with creating documentation, building up WebPlatform, and generally contributing great things to the web community. We want this to eventually be the definitive client-side web documentation site, and we can’t do it alone.

I’ll keep this short so that we can get on with things. I first just want to say a few words about how to get started, what you can do, and who to go to for help. At this point, those who have used WebPlatform.org before can go off and do their thing.

Afterwards I’ll also deliver a set up talk, to help those who have never used the site before to get going quickly and easily.

So, find somewhere comfortable to sit, grab a drink, log on to the Wifi, and let’s get going!

Work plan

So, the main focus groups we have for today are:

  • The HTML elements group
  • The CSS property references group

We decided to provide two focus areas to choose from because well, some people hate CSS, and some people find HTML boring. Please choose one of these areas to focus on. Even if you are not interested in writing documentation at all, there will still be a good deal to do, in terms of testing, code example writing, and more.

Of course if you want to do something other than these two, you can be in the third group, which is technically titled:

  • The “do what you want” group ;-)

HTML elements

There are a lot of HTML elements we want to cover on WebPlatform, and we have only really investigated the tip of the iceberg so far.

To get started with HTML elements:

  • Read the HTML element milestone plan at /WPD/Projects/HTML_Element_Milestone, which includes ideas of what to work on.
  • Read our guide to creating HTML element pages at /WPD/HTML_Element_Guide.
  • Choose what HTML elements you want to work on, and let us know — we’ll track who is working on what, so that there are no overlaps.
  • Get started.

CSS Property references

We’ve worked on a lot of the CSS property pages already, but we need your help to get closer to finishing the job!

To get started with CSS property references:

  • Read our guide to creating CSS property reference pages at /WPD/CSS_property_guide
  • Read the CSS project plan, at /WPD/Tasks/CSS_Property_Milestone
  • Have a look at our CSS Web Platform Wednesday docs at /Meta:web_platform_wednesday for ideas of what to work on. The “Past reports” section at the bottom contains more ideas.
  • Choose a set of CSS properties you want to work on, and let us know — we’ll track who is working on what, so that there are no overlaps.

Do what you want

If you don’t like the idea of working on CSS or HTML docs, please have a think about what else you’d like to do. You could:

  • Write some code to fix your most hated WebPlatform bug
  • Work on a useful extension/template mod/other addition to WebPlatform
  • Work on some different documentation than CSS and HTML (there’s a lot to do)
  • Work on some graphics/styling that will improve the look of the site

Please let us know what you want to work on, and we’ll keep track of your progress.

People you can go to for help

  • Chris Mills, Mozilla
  • Andre Jay Meissner, Adobe
  • Mike West, Google
  • Rodney Rehm, Rockstar

Working practice, and getting help

Different people work better in different ways. Therefore, how you work is entirely up to you, as long as you are happy and productive! We’d suggest that people working on similar subjects first of all introduce themselves if they don’t already know each other. Then think about whether to work solo, or pair up: some people work alone best, some people might work better if they pair up (one creative to write code examples and one person to write the doc/researching, perhaps?)

Some of our attendees could also act as tutors too, sometimes, as well as writing some docs.

We are planning to keep help methods pretty low fi for the doc sprint. If you want help, ask someone next to you, raise your hand, or just go and grab one of the organizers. And please, don’t be worried about the quality of your English when talking to us non-natives. My Swiss German is non-existant!

You can see a list of online help and communication mechanisms at /WPD/Help. These will be more useful when we leave here, and start contributing at home, in the future.

Beginners: getting started

So, those with prior experience can split off at this point and start working: this talk is mainly just for those who have not used the site before.

To get started, you need to:

Media Wiki crash course

See WPD/Style Guide/Wiki markup crash course, gives a good short syntax reminder.