Privacy-first principles: Get $10 credit today with Fathom Analytics. Find out more.

Manifesto: Rules for standards-makers

  1. Interop is all that matters

  2. There are tradeoffs in standards

  3. Software matters more than formats (much)

  4. Users matter even more than software

  5. One way is better than two

  6. Fewer formats is better

  7. Fewer format features is better

  8. Perfection is a waste of time

  9. Write specs in plain English

  10. Explain the curiosities

  11. If practice deviates from the spec, change the spec

  12. No breakage

  13. Freeze the spec

  14. Keep it simple

  15. Developers are busy

  16. Mail lists don’t rule

  17. Praise developers who make it easy to interop

Help needed for "Manifesto: Rules for standards-makers"!

The following is missing from this set of principles:

Summary: Each design principle can have a brief summary, these could be a couple of lines or a detailed paragraph outlining how this principle is used or measured, e.g.

- principle: Strive to be universal
summary: Our aim is to be a resource that is helpful to everyone. We do this by strictly adhering to principles of progressive enhancement…

Tip! You may be able to find the missing information at the source URL:
http://scripting.com/2017/05/09/rulesForStandardsmakers.html.

It would be great if you could contribute and update this set of principles with anything that's missing!

Ben Brignell maintains principles.design as an open source resource.

Ethical Analytics

Get a $10 credit for Fathom Analytics.
Fast, simple and privacy-focused website analytics.

Find out more

Community

Talk on Twitter, Mastodon & contribute on Github.

Thanks to the contributors to this project.