2026-06-03

headingoffset is now in Firefox Nightly!

This one is up there as the top 3 most challenging proposals I’ve made to standards due to social/politically/legacy baggage.

This is something that anyone who’s battled with user generated content heading structure and the confusion around <section> spec and the non-existent HTML5 content outline algorithm, would have much to say about.

Start: https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/3499#issuecomment-544745912 → https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5033

On another, more trying proposal I made, a respected standards person commented that “your problem is that you only think about your own use case”—the use case I have with building github.com. I remember feeling very hurt. Part because it is true that I don’t have the capacity to imagine uses cases outside of what my work demanded at the time, part because I felt like I failed to meet an expectation that is put upon people for attempting to engage in standards discussions.

WHATWG claims that they want a diverse range of opinions, but often times tenured standard/browser engineers neglect to adjust their responses according to the different ways people contribute.

The same thing happened in Web Components spec meetings, in which I attended to provide input for developer experience and needs. I inadvertently got challenged on browser implementation limitations, and to that I could only shrug and shrink. I didn’t have the confidence to say “that’s not in my wheelhouse, I’m here to provide expert opinion as an application developer for github.com.” Instead I buckled up.

Having learned this and knowing what I know now, I would still rather not attempt these things again. Being able to stand firm on my position is one thing, but being unconstructively engaged with is another—One I would not tolerate anymore.

Well, I guess this could have been a post. But a post is so much more serious and might get linked to and discussed much more than this stream of consciousness. I will just hide here.

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