The W3C HTML Working Group, led by Apple and Opera,
has posted the first public working draft of HTML Design Principles. These include:
- Support Existing Content
- Degrade Gracefully
- Do not Reinvent the Wheel
- Pave the Cowpaths
- Evolution Not Revolution
- Solve Real Problems
- Priority of Constituencies
- Secure By Design
- Separation of Concerns
- DOM Consistency
- Well-defined Behavior
- Avoid Needless Complexity
- Handle Errors
- Media Independence
- Support World Languages
- Accessibility
These are all good, though I can think of a few others, most importantly, "Avoid proprietary technologies" and "Allow free, open source implementations."
