W3C specs that won't melt your brain

Let's face it, some of the W3C specs produced by the different working groups weren't meant to be read by the average developer or web designer. You'd be better off watching a flower bloom than wrapping your head around the various concepts that are presented in the different documents. I recently spent a short amount of time going through different specifications in the HTML and CSS working groups and to my surprise there were a few that are straight forward and make for really great references if you're looking to gain a solid understanding of the concepts. Besides, it's these specs that ultimately make it into the browser (sometimes, r.i.p FileSystem API).

The following is an opinionated short list of the specs I find are easy enough for beginner and intermediate designers/developers to wrap their heads around. As I look through more of the specs I'll update this list.

HTML5 - http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/sections.html#sections
CSS Selectors Level 3 - http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-selectors/
CSS Selectors Level 4 - http://www.w3.org/TR/selectors4/

CSS Counter Styles Level 3 - http://www.w3.org/TR/css-counter-styles-3/

Compositing and Blending Level 1 - http://www.w3.org/TR/compositing-1/

CSS Masking Module Level 1 - http://www.w3.org/TR/css-masking-1/

CSS Transforms Module Level 1 - http://www.w3.org/TR/css-transforms-1/

Geofencing API - http://www.w3.org/TR/geofencing/


If you think there is a spec that I missed suggest it in the comments section and I'll take a look.