Web compatibility, that a site serve consistent and functional content to all Web clients, is an issue that affects the Web and with it the many companies that make products of and for the Web. The Web was founded and thrives as an open platform. Locking out select clients, deliberately or accidentally, is a losing strategy for the Web.

There are a number of Web client companies, that is browser and device makers like Mozilla, Microsoft, and Blackberry, that invest time and resource in their own Web compatibility efforts. Web compatibility is table stakes for any Web client and is an area in which I think we should all collaborate for the betterment of our products and the Web.

At Mozilla, the Web compatibility team spends a portion of our time designing ways in which to collaborate with our volunteers and, more broadly, with the Web community. While there are many communities for Web developers, the people who work on Web compatibility are a different group who currently do not have a place to gather online.

I am pleased to introduce webcompat.com as a gathering place for the Web compatibility community. To be clear, this site is not yet complete. It needs to be built out. However, it did not seem right to build out the site without providing the opportunity for input and collaboration from the Web compatibility community. Our initial thoughts for the site are:

• planet blog roll (already live at planet.webcompat.com – add your blog/feed or contribute to the site via the github repo)
• compatibility specific documentation, such as known good frameworks, tools, and best practices
• tools and resources to assist with Web compatibility work, like a site scraper that includes tools to identify broken user agent detection, vendor specific CSS property usage, and non standard DOM property usage

If you work on or care about Web compatibility, webcompat.com is being built for you. Moreover, we want to hear about what you want from this site. The Mozilla Web compatibility team is available to talk:

• on our compatibility@ mailing list
• on irc.mozilla.org/webcompat
• via Twitter @MozWebCompat
• at our public Monday, 1pm PT meeting (meeting details)

Join us! Let’s work together to ensure the mobile Web remains realizes its potential as an open platform.