Well, Google just saved me from writing a million Wiki pages myself. I was intending on putting as much of the knowledge I have about web development into my wiki, but with this new project, theres no way I’m going to bother.

Google has just released the Google Doctype Project for general consumption and used. Under a very liberal Creative Commons license, this resource is sure to be one of the most useful you’ll find on the web.

What is Google Doctype?

Google Doctype is an encyclopedia of the open web. The open web is the web built on open standards: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and more. The open web is a beautiful soup of barely compatible clients and servers. It comprises billions of pages, millions of users, and thousands of browser-based applications. You can access the open web with open source and proprietary browsers, on open source and proprietary operating systems, on open source and proprietary hardware.

Google has built its business here, on the open web, and we want to help you build here too.

Google Doctype Overview

What does this mean? Basically, this is going to be a huge resource of various documents that details all sorts of things about building websites. From code to design to publishing. It provides all the information you need to create your site, and then it provides all the tools you need to test your code actually works on as many different platforms as possible.

Why create Yet Another Web Reference?

Short answer: because none of the existing resources fit our needs exactly.

For example, many sites offer articles on web development, but few allow continuous improvement once the articles have been written. They are “set in stone,” stamped with today’s date, discussed briefly, and then forgotten. As the open web evolves, we would like to keep articles section of Google Doctype as up-to-date as possible, for as long as possible. This requires collaborative editing.

Many sites offer browser compatibility charts, but few back up their compatibility claims with repeatable tests. Google believes strongly in the value of test cases and automated regression testing. All of the tests in Google Doctype can be run individually or in groups, using the JSUnit automated testing framework. This allows us to update our charts quickly and easily as new browser versions come out. It also allows you to test in your own browser to see exactly what the compatibility claims mean.

Many sites offer developer resources for the open web, but few sites make those resources available under open licenses. You can read, but you can’t download. Or you can download, but you can’t redistribute. Google makes it easy to download the entire encyclopedia and take it with you, publish it on your private intranet, or package it for redistribution.

Google Doctype Overview

This is looking to be a very valuable resource already. The fact that its released under a very liberal Creative Commons license already makes it a lot more useful than anything I have seen from anywhere else on the web. As long as you give attribution, you can pretty much do anything you want with these documents. Including republish them commercially. Expect books to appear using this resource as a foundation.

For me personally, one of the most useful references will be the DOM reference. I know the Mozilla Gecko DOM pretty well, but damn IE makes things hard. It doesn’t help that I don’t really consider myself an ECMAScript/JavaScript guru. But having a resource like this will definitely make plowing through the DOM a lot less tedious for me. Combined with the CSS reference, things can be achieved rather rapidly compared to my previous page turning of the books weighing down my desk.

Yet another reason I’m such a Google fanboy.