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Microsoft Suggests Carving Up HTML 5

Posted by timothy on from the slice-and-dice dept.

dp619 writes "HTML 5 is extensive and may take years to complete. Microsoft's solution to hasten its development is to carve it up. The company wants to divide HTML 5 into sub-specifications overseen by different working groups. Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson said that HTML 5 features including its Canvas APIs, offline caching of Web applications' resources, persistent client-side data storage, and peer-to-peer (P2P) networking connection framework would be useful outside of HTML. The WC3 seems to be receptive to the idea and says that a consensus is forming among working group members to do just that."

7 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. If Anyone Else... by WED+Fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If anyone else were to suggest this approach, you'd all be saying, "Makes sense."

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    1. Re:If Anyone Else... by Nurgled · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't really care who's suggesting it; I've been thinking similar things myself. The amount of content in HTML5 is getting ridiculous. If none of it can be declared final until it's all done then there's going to be uncertainty surrounding it for a long time to come, and that'll either put off implementors or lead to the spec hanving to be backward-compatible with earlier drafts of itself and it'll be years before there's interop between browsers.

  2. Re:Embrace, Extend! by tbannist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well we should carefully consider whether it's a trap or not. I mean Microsoft isn't always wrong, but they have a strong track record of evil. It bears examining their proposal closely to see if you can spot the evil machinations.

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  3. RISKY but wise by gcnaddict · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are a few risks. The biggest one is if any of the teams slip behind or run ahead of schedule. If that happens, pieces will begin to fall out of sync.

    however, the biggest benefit would be to web developers if this goes through as planned. I'd appreciate a properly modularized HTML5 myself.

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  4. If it were anyone but Microsoft by jollyreaper · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If anyone else were to suggest this approach, you'd all be saying, "Makes sense." If it were anyone else but Microsoft, we might be willing to extend them the benefit of the doubt.
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  5. Kitchen Sink by Chelloveck · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On the one hand, I want to say that this sounds reasonable, despite it being suggested by Microsoft.

    On the other hand I want to say... WTF?!? Why does a markup language need all that crap anyway? Persistent local storage? What does that have to do with page markup?

    I'm not saying that these other things are bad or unnecessary. Just that they shouldn't be part of the HTML spec. Just like CSS and JavaScript are both widely used with HTML, but are defined in their own separate complementary specs.

    I suppose the real reason for the kitchen sink approach is pragmatic. As explained in TFA, no one has volunteered to take over individual parts. But if nobody cares enough to commit to that, maybe nobody really cares about the result either and those other parts are unnecessary? I say keep HTML as a markup language, add hooks for other things, and let those other things be specified if and when someone actually cares enough to do it.

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    1. Re:Kitchen Sink by hixie · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'd love to be able to make the Web browser developers not implement anything but what the spec says. However, they don't obey us. :-)

      Better to have a spec for them to follow than to say "no, implement the rest first!" and have them make up their own thing.