Have you ever thought why you are building or reading specifications, on why and how you will proceed on the development of a simple or a complex application? I will give you not one but five reasons:

1. You will not loose time on developing something that will be then altered
   
2. Your customer and you will compromise on final deliverables
3. You will have a solution approach model
4. The customer will not ask more than those that are written down
5. You both know what you do!

A specification is an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service. Before even starting writing the specifications is that there is not only one type of them, but again ... five. These are:

1. Functional Specifications
2. Graphical User Interface (GUI) Specifications
3. Technical Specifications
4. Platform Server and Client Specifications
5. Maintenance Specifications

It sounds a lot of work, even before start working, but trust me, it saves much of your time!!!

Interesting: IEEE, Wikipedia: Web Standards, W3C

Todays flavor: Molten Lava Cakes