MDN/Archives/Projects/Development/CompatibilityTables/Vision

FOR DISCUSSION: This document not finished elaborating, you can see the feedback in the Vision document in Google Docs

Vision

Serve feature compatibility information across multiple outlets and formats without data duplication

1. Introduction

The production vision document is about making a consensus about the features and limitations of the product. It should help us by providing a common vocabulary to help better communicate throughout the phases of the project.

Project Vision document defined by the Scrum Alliance and Agile Manifesto as a guideline to structuring work without overdoing it.

1.1. See also

• Compatibility Data product vision (this document)
• Compatibility Data: A Shared Resource (2015 slides deck)
• Functional dependencies analysis
• High level feature prioritization worksheet
• Tribal knowledge

1.2. Preface

Compatibility data are one of the key feature of MDN. It allows users to know more about the reliability of any web standard features and to ease the use of web technologies.

Currently, the data are gather and maintain "by hand". Thanks to our awesome community we have some good data. However, this is hardly sustainable as the number of technologies is growing as well a the complexity of the implementation. We start to face some difficulties to stay up to date and to provide and improved content around those data.

 For Web Developers,
 Who wants to know if they should use a technique,
 The BrowserCompat system is a specialized web service,
 That provides compatibility data
 Unlike caniuse.com
 We'll be able to have a usable maintenance flow serving reports in multiple formats

1.3. Production vision summary

An overview, summarizing this document

Target group	Needs	Product	Value
Software Developer who has an immediate need for information, and want to know about a User-Agent feature support, and standardization status Software Architect, or Blog Author, writing technical document about recent technologies and how to use Technical writer (“contributor”) and/or translator who work on improving web developer documentation and wants to get better tools Browser vendor representatives who want to update their product support data Third-party developer involved in a product who want to use compatibility data within their software (“Third party”)	Import data we currently host in Wikitext format Display up-to-date User-Agent feature details and support information, consistently Easing contribution, translation, and access to data Easing moderation of contributions (i.e. prevent spam)	Specialized web service serving feature support data in multiple languages (e.g. English, French, German, etc.) and formats (JSON, HTML) Dashboard that allows maintenance and moderation of the data being contributed Search engine to ease browsing feature based on various criterions such as Author, Feature, Feature Support, Spec. Maturity, Browser, Browser Version, etc. Contribution workflows to allow multiple third party contribution to the data.	Improve value of MDN by serving reusable utility to support Web Developer Industry Improve resiliency of MDN site infrastructure Simplify maintenance tasks related to feature support updates Support Mozilla mission by providing a canonical resource about cross compatibility of standards web technologies

Note: This table is purposefully rough-grained, giving an overview of what we’re building, what it’ll do, and for whom.

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2. Business Opportunity/Problem Statement

Not finished yet, see Vision document in Google Docs