Test the Web Forward Shanghai!
We’re pleased to report that the seventh Test the Web Forward on August 17 & 18 has wrapped up successfully. The Shanghai development community is very passionate about the Web as the event attracted nearly 350 web developers on the first day and 150 on the second day. By the end of the event, 1003 tests and 35 bugs were submitted, setting yet another Test the Web Forward world record!
The event took place at Parkyard Hotel, funded by Baidu Cloud Group and kicked off on Saturday afternoon. With a scheduled start time of 2:00pm, people began to arrive at 1:00 and formed a long queue to get registered. We set up a signature wall where people signed their names to make the commitment to making the Web better and of course, took photos. We also prepared lots of gifts for attendees, including Test the Web Forward T-shirts, HTML5 stickers, tags, W3C mugs and Baidu radiation-proof stickers. Developers loved these things.
The event started with two special guests: Mr. Chen Shangyi, VP of Baidu and Mr. Hou Ziqiang, Member of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Dean of Institue of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. They delivered the message on the importance of Web Standards to China government and industry.
The next speaker was Paul Cotton, HTML5 Work Group Chairman. Paul gave an update on the latest progress of HTML, shared the roadmap and introduced the process of publishing a W3C spec. During the Q&A session, Paul clarified the misunderstanding between W3C and WHATWG. Paul personally believes that the relationship between W3C and WHATWG is a partnership. Although they don’t have a release process, they have a mutual goal that Make a better Web.
The lightning talks were next, where the experts introduced themselves, gave quick reviews of several specs, and recruited new test writers for their favourite specs. People joined six groups to write tests for HTML Drag and Drop, IndexedDB, File API, CSS Transforms, Grid Layout, Backgrounds and Borders. Jian Zhang from Adobe China wrapped up the day with sessions on How to Create W3C Tests.
Each group had 5 reviewers.
The evening wrapped with a great buffet. Developers enjoyed the yummy food and nice environment. Everyone was ready for hacking the next day!
On Sunday, the test hacking began. Zhiqiang Zhang from Intel China and gave an informative talk on How to Write Good Tests and How to File Good Bugs.
As is customary, we used a Chinese tanggu drum to signal when tests were completed and to get people motivated to submit more tests. The drumbeats began pretty quickly when a young developer had the first test of the event approved.
During the whole event, we saw everyone concentrated and fully involved. Experts were extremely busy assisting developers and reviewing their tests.
Although contributing to make the web better was rewarding in itself, the awards and raffle prizes made it even more fun. Prizes included US$1000 cash for the outstanding individual contributor, an iPad Mini, and several Kindles.
Outstanding Service Award: Mr. Min Zhang won the first place with 319 Drag & Drop tests!
Best Bug-hunter : Tina filled 8 bugs for Webkit, Safari and Mozilla!
All in all, the event resulted in the creation of 1003 tests! And with those tests, 36 new bugs were found and submitted across multiple browsers.
Special Thanks
We have to say Thank You Baidu for successfully hosting the event at Shanghai and to Intel for super technical support! We were excited to see that people made new friends, improved their knowledge of web standards testing, and we continued moving the Web forward a little bit more.
