In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter mission failed because of a bug, where onboard software represented output in one standard of measurement, while a different software module needed data in a different format. Alex discusses many other examples of how the lack of industry standards can result in problems, such as early rail systems having different gauge widths in different states, impeding travel.
Alex works with the Web Platform Working Group, whose charter is to continue the development of the HTML language, improving client-side application development, including APIs and markup vocabularies.
He shares with us details of the upcoming HTML 5.1, a refinement of HTML 5, showing us the great validator tool that makes it easier for developers to ensure that their markup is meeting standards, and the test the web forward initiative to help uncover bugs and compatibility issues between browsers.
You can learn more about Google and Web development at the Web Fundamentals site.

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