CSSWG Tools

The CSSWG uses some tools to make our jobs easier. Here they are!

Meeting Tools

Tools particularly useful during (f2f or telcon) meetings:

• This csswg-wiki GitHub (obviously). Editable by all CSS WG participants.
• We use the W3C’s IRC server for backchannel communication and for minuting during meetings
  • We use multiple IRC bots: Zakim, RRSAgent, github-bot
    • Scribing conventions
    • A blog post on some of the conventions we use on IRC, with a scribing focus
  • IRC Logs are available for our IRC channels
• Excalidraw and W3C Etherpad in case you need a virtual whiteboard during a meeting.
• your W3C Calendar which has all the CSS WG phone conference and f2f meetings.

• Interop Browser Data Provides crawler data from Chrome/Microsoft Edge about CSS properties, values and top sites utilized

• CSS Editor’s Drafts, FXTF Editor’s Drafts, and Houdini Editor’s Drafts are automatically generated and available with publishing history.
• GitHub issues in csswg-drafts, fxtf-drafts, and css-houdini-drafts are used to track spec issues.
  • Older spec issues are found in the mail archives, and might be additionally tracked in CSS Tracker, FXTF Tracker, Bugzilla, and this wiki.)
  • Issues in these github repositories are permanently archived in public-css-archive, public-fxtf-archive, and public-houdini-archive
  • See also Spec Maintenance Tracker.
• To use GitHub effectively:
  • in your w3c account go to “Connected accounts”, make sure your github account is linked otherwise it will not show up on the CSSWG participant list and a bot will flag your pull requests
  • Get yourself invited to the w3c GitHub organization, and accept the invite. You can make your membership public if you want. This (plus the account linking above) should mean you’re automatically added to https://github.com/orgs/w3c/teams/w3c-group-32061-members (where you can check whether you’re in the groups). The invite should be doable by any W3C staff. (TODO: Is this step still needed?)
• Spec sources are maintained on Git/GitHub and are written in Bikeshed.
• W3C Mailing Lists: specifically
  • www-style used to be used for for all CSS spec-related discussion, now moved to GitHub issues,
  • public-houdini for the Houdini Task Force spec (joint with the TAG)
  • The CSSWG private list for administrivia only, no spec discussions occur here.

Editing Publishing Testing

• Specs are written in Bikeshed (install instructions, or use curl or the web form)
• A fresh spec should be started from the module template.
• Bibliographic data is sourced from SpecRef, which is automatically loaded into Bikeshed.
• Automatic publication to /TR is now available, on an opt-in basis:
  • Enabling a new auto-publishable spec
  • Debugging if publication fails
• Note: A few very old specs specs still use
  • Bert’s post-processor which is no longer maintained
  • the older module template
  • See spec-processor for tips.
  • Ask Tab, fantasai, or ChrisL for help if you need to edit these.
• WordPress login for our official blog
• Web Platform Tests is used to store and run test suites.
• https://wpt.fyi/ shows current testsuite results and links to sources.
• https://wpt.live/ is a runner for all the WPT tests.
• Disposition of Comments tool Provides a GUI for easy editing and exploring DoCs.