Slashdot Mirror
How HTML5 Will Change the Web
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond the codec and plug-in wars to examine nine areas where HTML5 will have a significant impact on Web development. From enabling more interactive graphics, to tapping local file storage, to geolocation, HTML5 is rife with rich capabilities — and may even improve our ability to secure applications delivered via the Web, Wayner writes. But the most important impact of HTML5 will be its ability to simplify Web development itself: 'HTML5 offers one language (JavaScript), one data model (XML and DOM), and one set of layout rules (CSS) to bind text, audio, video, and graphics. The challenge of making something beautiful is still immense, but it's simpler to work with a unified standard.'"
The link you really wanted where everything is on one page: http://www.infoworld.com/print/128080
HTML5 may offer a unified way to do things...but that does not mean that the other ways will just vanish. It will be a long time before HTML5 completely displaces Flash or Java applets, assuming that such a thing even happens. Frankly, I doubt that the popular browsers will even have a reliable implementation of the standard until at least 2013, so HTML5 won't really offer developers anything unified for a while.
Palm trees and 8
It will be adopted by progressive advertisers to achieve even greater degrees of annoyance per page
I've seen the future and it's having a 50% off sale for the first 100 customers to click now!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
HTML5 will help change the Web, however, the true change that will come to the Web is finally when the Semantic Web will take off; unfortunately no one knows when or if it ever will.
Michael
http://s1.sfgame.us/index.php?rec=58163
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Will there be possible to have "CanvasBlock" on future browsers or are we stuck with CPU eating html5 animations?
ahh, the summary is wrong both from a W3C DOM standards perspective, because java is listed as the 2nd language supported by the W3C. the summary is wrong from a second perspective in that language bindings to HTML5-compliant web browser engines such as XulRunner and WebKit have been available for years. if Microsoft actually intend also to follow the HTML5 process properly, then it can be said that MSHTML, through its COM interface, also offers other language alternatives for decades rather than just years.
now it's a sad fact that nobody really *knows* that you can get at HTML5-compliant web browser engines and use DOM functions (3000+) and access DOM properties (20,000+) through XPCOM, or Glib/Gobject or COM, but it's perfectly possible. the best demonstration of this at its most extreme limit, taking advantage of absolutely all HTML5 W3C DOM features, is the http://pyjs.org/ pyjamas project, which abstracts the differences between these three major web browser engine types (XulRunner, Webkit and MSHTML aka Trident) and presents a single uniform API. on top this uniform API, normalising the discrepancies between the three engine types, an entire Desktop GUI Widget Set API has been created.
so the statement that there is "one HTML5 language: javascript" is just nonsense. for further examples of accessing HTML5 DOM using python, some of which will lead through to links to Ruby accessing HTML5 DOM such as AppCelerator, see http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebBrowserProgramming
One language (JavaScript) to rule them all, one data model (XML and DOM) to find them, one set of layout rules (CSS) to bring text, audio, video, and graphics and in the darkness bind them.
Why do I have a bad feeling about this?
No left turn unstoned.
Nope, HTML5 really makes the whole situation worse too, because rather than being a forward thinking spec, it takes everything that's been done wrong over the years, and makes it part of the standard. Then it adds in a load more stuff that appears half thought through (the video tag that doesn't do what it was originally intended for- standardised video), the semantic section tags, which only cover a tiny subset of the sections a site tends to have and which appears outdated before it's even launched (i.e. no comments section tags).
The ideology behind HTML5 is rather than create a new spec that tells people how things should be done, make a spec that takes everything bad people have done and make it standard, so that those incompetent developers are now adhering to the standard.
Overally it means more ambiguity, more jumble in the spec, stuff that might (has?) become obsolete before it's barely even used and that sort of thing.
HTML5 will change the web alright, back to the philosophy of hack it together any which way, who cares about lack of maintainbility, interoperability, accessibility and so forth. This seems an extremely backward way of doing things when web apps are getting ever more complex, and average Joes who publish are publishing via web apps anyway mitigating the need for them to get their hands dirty with markup.
HTML5 just doesn't come across as a professionally written spec, you compare it to other specs out there and it looks like it's been slapped together by a bunch of kids with no real experience of large scale software development.
That is almost EXACTLY what I said to the publishers I work with when they asked me about the support for ad servers and HTML5 (which has no support, no surprise).
I haven't actually seen the creative assets yet, so I don't know if its a campaign designed at actually selling a product (most likely is), or just keeping the brand image out there. My guess is what ever the ad is it will be interactive with the user. I've run a few small tests for amusement to see what could be done to enhance the advertising experience (sorry web users, they are going to get more integrated)- It can do some pretty neat stuff. But I digress.
In either case, I agree making a campaign that eliminates IE just to use some technology that is in its embryonic phase is stupid. Not to mention when it is probably geared to people who already have a Mac. But that could also be the point. You already have a devoted user base, might as well advertise to them to sell them the latest product... Like an iPhone 4g.
Granted I do use Firefox and Chrome via my PC... So maybe I'll buy a Mac after these ads. j/k
The answer is No, YouTube has not switched, and has no plans to switch, from Flash to HTML5.
They can't because some browsers (most notably Firefox and Opera) will not support H.264, yet nearly all of their content is already in H.264. Thats game over right there for YouTube converting to HTML5. Maybe in 5 years or more, and only when all major browsers support a single codec.
"His name was James Damore."
HTML5 will improve security
While I love many things about HTML5, the idea of throwing out rendering libraries and starting again from scratch does not necessarily fill one with confidence about the security of the tools. Sure, less reliance on plug-ins means less opportunities for 3rd party security holes. But doing everything in the browser code itself also means that the potential attack vectors have more direct control over the machine. Plus any new library is going to have security vulnerabilities for a while.
I'm not saying HTML5 is insecure. But let's not kid ourselves: there will be a year or two of scrambling to fix new attack vectors.
The ______ Agenda
ZOMBO
The answer is No, YouTube has not switched, and has no plans to switch, from Flash to HTML5.
They can't because some browsers (most notably Firefox and Opera) will not support H.264, yet nearly all of their content is already in H.264. Thats game over right there for YouTube converting to HTML5. Maybe in 5 years or more, and only when all major browsers support a single codec.
But Google is also offering (or is in the process of offering) all YouTube videos as WebM, and the next versions of Firefox and Opera will have WebM support, and the dev channel of Chrome already has it. They really want to switch to HMTL5. I'm sure at this point they'd prefer IE and Safari to support WebM as well, but obviously they have the storage to keep every video as H.264 and WebM.
Why are we using HTML5 and not XHTML 2?
XML abuses aside, XHTML is superior to HTML5.
HTML5 requires a more complex parser than XHTML ever will. XHTML can be validated for correctness, HTML5 is more difficult to do so.
I honestly don't understand the reason for following the HTML route. XHTML is already in an industry understood format that tools already exist for.
The market rarely reflects a superior technology. I still support XHTML. HTML5 is messy, ugly and a kludge.
All that needs to happen is to transfer some of the newer tags of HTML5 into XHTML. Perhaps we can borrow from the microformat peeps? Afterall, it's supposed to be modular.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
***HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage***
Once or twice a decade I encounter a "They can't possibly be serious" moment. This is one of those occasions.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Your information is out of date. Youtube is not going to use H.264 in the future, they're going to use WebM - which is Googles own format they've been pushing especially hard lately. http://www.youtube.com/html5 Opera, Firefox, and Chrome all have WebM support, and Internet Explorer has ways to add in support too. The only major browser that is out of the loop at the moment is Safari.
More likely from the XHTML2 workgroup. I know a guy from that workgroup, and he has nothing good to say about HTML5. He did a really nice XForms presentation on ApacheCon once, though. Apparently, with XForms you can write Google Maps in a day or so. Really cool, but not part of HTML5.
The current versions of all the major browsers can now dynamically download fonts. We can finally stop putting display text in images. Opera, Safari, Chrome, Firefox (3.6 or greater) and IE are all on board with this. By IE 9, they'll even be using the same font format, Web Open Font Format. (Except for the iPad, which, for some weird reason, currently requires fonts in SVG format. But even the iPad understands "@font-face")
Few sites are using this capability yet. We are, as a demo. Try our steampunk search engine with authentic Victorian fonts.
Seems to be a minor thing simply wrong in every single point...
Point #1 is flat wrong on this count:
If drawing images is your goal, then the Canvas object may be powerful enough. But if you want to build specialized 3-D worlds like the ones found in the more sophisticated Flash and Shockwave games, you may be pining for the old days...
Erm... Maybe WebGL isn't officially part of HTML5, but it's there, and Chrome is implementing it. And personally, I'd much rather force people to download a decent open source browser than a decent proprietary plug-in -- there's alway Chrome Frame if you really need it.
Point #2:
some developers deliberately disabled the Flash plug-in to avoid the headaches and overhead of rendering heavy Flash content. That won't be an option in the future.
Bullshit. It'd take less than ten minutes to put this jQuery in a Chrome extension: $('canvas').remove();
Point #3:
Game programmers might store descriptions and artwork locally, saving the time of downloading the information again and again.
That's what HTTP caches are for, and they work for XHR, too!
Please, no one do this. Ever. HTML5 storage is for storing data. When you use it for caches, you add that much more stuff we might inadvertently back up, that much more cache we can't automatically purge (to claim disk space) or expire (from disuse), and you're doing more work to duplicate functionality HTTP already has.
Point #4:
The so-called microformats in HTML5
I'm confused... microformats don't require HTML5, do they?
Point #5 is fine, though it doesn't mention potential privacy concerns.
Point #6:
Google's new format will see some usage, for example in YouTube, but will never reach anywhere close to the ubiquity of H.264.
Erm, do you know something we don't? Last I checked, YouTube is still H.264 -- in a Flash container, no less.
Point #7, I don't care about.
Point #8:
This claim of better security, though, is a bit of a wild guess. The devious minds may use their malice aforethought to take advantage of the nice integration, perhaps drawing PayPal logos with the Canvas object...
So phishing will be easier? Big deal. Hasn't Flash been the biggest vector for actual client-side pwnage for awhile?
Point #9:
Now, if only HTML5 came with the nice collection of tools that Adobe makes for Flash.
Adobe has said they plan to target HTML5.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
That's a wise choice I'm not sure others will follow. If possible, it's always best to use the oldest specs that are still supported that will actually do what you want the page to do.
As to chickens and eggs, the egg came first, as any palientologist or biologist will tell you. Chickens aren't the only animals that lay eggs. It's ok if your egg lays dinasaurs, as long as the dinasaur is well trained.
Free Martian Whores!
No, it will make the situation better. It takes the real web into account, and standardizes behaviors that are already in use out there. At the same time, the spec is much clearer and easier to implement correctly because it also specifies error handling and such. In other words, the opposite of your FUD.
No, the spec has been written to be clear to implementors how they should implement it properly.
Ok, so Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera have no real experience from large scale software development? Heh.
Clever signature text goes here.
HTML5 will change the web alright, back to the philosophy of hack it together any which way, who cares about lack of maintainbility, interoperability, accessibility and so forth.
This has been the philosophy of the Web ever since HTML was first (mis)used to create applications rather than mark up textual data. What is this "back" you're referring to?