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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.'"

31 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. As always... by ojintoad · · Score: 4, Informative

    The link you really wanted where everything is on one page: http://www.infoworld.com/print/128080

    1. Re:As always... by Bratch · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is why I read the comments before the article.

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    2. Re:As always... by noidentity · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is why I read the comments before the article.

      You must be new here. Nobody reads the article.

  2. "Offers one way of doing things" by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:"Offers one way of doing things" by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As you point out, developers will use a library that resolves the incompatibilities for them. More precisely, they will seek software the levels the field between browsers -- software that already exists, in the form of applets (Flash and Java) and HTML4/JS/etc. libraries. My point was that the current way to deploy applications on the web is not going to disappear just because HTML5 comes out, and that incompatibility between browsers will only ensure that the current methods stick around even longer.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:"Offers one way of doing things" by Lumbre · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Frankly, I doubt that the popular browsers will even have a reliable implementation of the standard until at least 2013

      I doubt IE will ever have a reliable implementation for anything. HTML5 surely aims to simplify web development, but MS aims to use their proprietary BS, tags, and implementations. Just look at their box model. Look at all the extra time we have to take to develop for IE users.

      Plus, there are accessibility issues we have to overcome. We also need to develop for that small fraction of the population who use text browsers, those who are blind and have text read to them, those who don't install Flash (for good reason), those that disable JavaScript, etc.

  3. Of course by ch-chuck · · Score: 3, Funny

    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!!

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  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  5. I love flashblock by anss123 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Will there be possible to have "CanvasBlock" on future browsers or are we stuck with CPU eating html5 animations?

    1. Re:I love flashblock by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You most certainly can block it -- it resides nicely between two tags. The bigger question is, will asshole web developers use canvases in places where straight up text would have worked just fine, and force us to deal with their CPU eating abominations for no good reason at all?

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:I love flashblock by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're joking, but I actually foresee this being used very widely to block copy/paste and web scraping.

  6. summary wrong on two counts about "one language" by lkcl · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  7. Where have I heard this before? by shikaisi · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

    --
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  8. Re:One standard does not mean one interpretation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:HTML5 Will Help Change The Web by Yvanhoe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Semantic web will take off when AI agents will be elaborate enough to fill in all the metadata thet humans don't care about (because they are still better than computer at rebuilding the context of an information). Right now user-entered information has this form : "#GoReds : Arrived at the stadium at 10AM woohoo!" and semantic web expects them to do something like

    "<user id=1983744 nick="#GoReds"/> : Arrived at the<location><reference>ElisParkStadiumSouthAfrica</reference><tag>stadium</tag></location> at <datetime><timezone>SouthAfrica</timezone><time>10:00:00</time></datetime> woohoo"

    The core assumption that users cared about filling correct metadata was wrong outside the research community (and even outside the IT research community). It will take off but you need software to fill in what was assumed users would do.

    --
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  10. Re:It Won't by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
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  11. Security? by cgenman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. CHANGE IS ALREADY HERE by Digana · · Score: 4, Interesting
  13. Re:It Won't by drewness · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  14. The one real data model: XML by improfane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:The one real data model: XML by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful
      In the past, whenever someone has recommended XHTML on Slashdot, there are generally been cries of "It's too much work to make it validate!" Now, that might be true for Joe Average who just wants to put up a simple personal website (but he's more likely to use a CMS anyway), but if you're an experienced developer, than I for the life of me can't understand how writing valid XHTML can be considered too hard.

      Closing tags, for example, should come naturally. Do you leave parentheses out when you're writing in a scripting language? Emacs at least at NXML-mode which shows you immediately if you've made a mistake that will not let the document validate.

      And anyone who has had to extract data from a webpage ought to adore valid, semantically-meaningful XHTML, because it makes the process effortless whereas HTML requires specialized, not always accurate libs and a lot of work.

    2. Re:The one real data model: XML by Jeremy+Visser · · Score: 5, Informative

      There is nothing stopping you from using well-formed XML in your HTML5, or serving your document as application/xhtml+xml (explicitly stated in the HTML5 spec). Serving HTML5 as proper XML is dubbed "XHTML 5". It uses the same doctype. All the new tags -- video, audio, section, header, etc. are supported, but obviously the lax markup features of HTML5 (like being able to omit most tags) no longer apply.

    3. Re:The one real data model: XML by XanC · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes it can. Firefox (at least) does so. If it gets to the end of the page and find it's invalid, THEN it throws up the error, even if it's already rendered part of it.

    4. Re:The one real data model: XML by mortonda · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why are we using HTML5 and not XHTML 2?

      XML abuses aside, XHTML is superior to HTML5.

      Go read http://diveintohtml5.org/

      Essentially, the argument is, make it easy for the users - the web programmers, not the browser programmers, and to allow the browsers to incrementally implement the standard, rather than an all or nothing that no one will do. . Telling the browser to error out when the html is not correct or supported is user UNfriendly. HTML5 provides a graceful way to handle it.

    5. Re:The one real data model: XML by horigath · · Score: 5, Informative

      HTML5 includes an XML model which is optional—much like the previous HTML 4/XHTML 1.x system. I expect many developers to use the XHTML syntax in their HTML5 projects for all of your reasons. Meanwhile, the proposal for XHTML 2.0 was unsuccessful because it was created almost completely without regard for what browsers and coders were already doing—it's incompatible with previous formats, where HTML5 was designed in part to gracefully extend the old formats and incorporate emergent practices already in use on the web.

    6. Re:The one real data model: XML by Xest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The issue isn't that it's not possible, the issue is that HTML5 seems to tend towards HTML markup over XML markup.

      Effectively it pushes bad practice as standard because there really is no benefit to HTML markup other than the ability to write sloppy markup, which is stupid.

      People publish using tools nowadays, leave markup to the professionals (not that writing well formed XML is hardly a difficult job). If people can't understand how to write well formed XML markup then they've got no chance of understanding CSS and Javascript so might as well give up and use a web app to publish for them anyway.

      Best to support the people who actually write web apps to make it easier to write better web apps, than to support sloppy developers who use HTML markup "because it's easier".

    7. Re:The one real data model: XML by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Informative

      HTML can be loaded incrementally, XHTML can't, as you can only validate the document when you have all of it.

      You don't need to validate an XHTML document in order to start rendering it.

  15. What could possibly go wrong? by vtcodger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ***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.

    --
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  16. Re:It Won't by DarkXale · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  17. He doesn't mention fonts by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  18. Re:One standard does not mean one interpretation by hkmwbz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    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.

    Overally it means more ambiguity, more jumble in the spec

    No, the spec has been written to be clear to implementors how they should implement it properly.

    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.

    Ok, so Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera have no real experience from large scale software development? Heh.

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