W3C Announces Plan To Deliver HTML 5 by 2014 110
The World Wide Web Consortium has proposed "a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C's lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016." Instead of working toward one-specification-to-rule-them-all in 2022, features that are stable and implemented in multiple browsers now will be finalized as HTML 5.0 by 2014 with unstable features moved into HTML 5.1 (developed in parallel). In 2014, the commonly implemented parts of HTML 5.1 will begin finalization for 2016, with the unstable parts moved into HTML 5.2 (wash, rinse, repeat). Additionally, things like Web Sockets are being moved into their own modular standards (sound familiar?) for "...the social benefits that accrue from such an approach. Splitting out separate specifications allows those technologies to be advanced by their respective communities of interest, allowing more productive development of approaches that may eventually be able reach broader consensus."
Just in time (Score:4, Insightful)
Just in time for the first HTML6 browsers.
Re:Html5 is FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Which bit is the Fear, which is the Uncertainty and which is the Doubt? Or are you just using FUD as a synonym for "bad" for no apparent reason?
The reality... (Score:2, Insightful)
And by 2019, all the browsers on the market may actually support it consistently, just like they did with HTML2, HTML3, HTML4! (that was sarcastic for the sarcasm challenged).
Seriously, the world wide web and HTML itself are just a series of horrible bits of sticky tape which no longer stick to anything and string that is very frayed. It's like a train in India (most of the passengers on the outside). It only works by some remarkable coincidence of the same order of magnitude of how life managed to evolve on this planet. Every client interprets it differently. Every client displays it differently. Every server serves it differently. Security was an afterthought. HTML5 suddenly being ratified and published isn't going to make these problems go away.
For ref, this is not because I don't get it. I've been kicking out web applications on and off for 16 years. Even desktop development with Swing is beautiful compared to this crapfest.
Someone just needs to fix it (no XKCD 927 here please :).
Re:That quickly? (Score:4, Insightful)
WHATWG manages the HTML "living standard". WHATWG HTML living standard is basically the venue in which interested parties, most notably all of the major browser vendors, hash out agreements on what will be supported in the future.
W3C has HTML5 (and apparently now plans for HTML5.1, etc.) which seems certain to trail far behind the WHATWG living standard.
If you think of the W3Cs standards as appropriate targets for relatively conservative web developers while WHATWG standards are for people building browsers and other infrastructure to work toward (plus, with a lot of caution as to particular browsers support status for individual features, more cutting edge web developers), it kind of makes sense.