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W3C Says Don't Use HTML5 Yet

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stop-dragging-yer-feet dept.

GMGruman writes "InfoWorld's Paul Krill reports that the W3C, the standards body behind the Web standards, is urging Web developers not to use the draft HTML5 standards on their websites. This flies in the face of HTML5 support and encouragement, especially for mobile devices, by Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others. The W3C says developers should avoid the draft HTML5 spec (the final version is not due for several years) because of interoperability issues across browsers."

3 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Keep up by LinuxAndLube · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I also have a message, for the W3C: FUCK YOU

    If they cannot keep up with the real world (and they cannot, as proven time after time after time), then that's their problem.

  2. Re:More evidence of the W3C's increasing irrelevan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    no one seriously thinks authors shouldn't use widely-implemented things like canvas or video with suitable fallback

    Um, I do.

    First off, Canvas is fucking redundant and never should have been created in the first place. SVG has existed since 2001. Canvas is a crappy JavaScript-only version of Canvas with half the features stripped out. There's no reason to use canvas in the first place - just use SVG. Most browsers support it and even if they don't there's good plugin support. And it's an actual released standard.

    HTML5 video is completely fucking useless, because:

    1. You can't stream video. (No, not a file, I mean live video.)
    2. You can't full screen HTML 5 video. (The spec forbids this as a security flaw.)
    3. There is no standard format, leaving you to encode an unknown number of versions. Hell, even if you stick with just H.264, you still need to encode to multiple profiles if you want to support everything.
    4. You can't seek in videos in anything remotely near a reliable manner. You know how you can link to a certain time in a Youtube video? Not possible in HTML5.
    5. You can't switch to lower/higher-bandwidth versions while the video is playing. This makes HTML5 useless for mobile devices - to the point where Apple uses proprietary QuickTime features to enable web video on the iPhone.

    The HTML5 spec as is stands today is useless. The features it does offer above HTML4 already exist and are handled better via existing specs or plugins. Pretty much anything that isn't canvas or video isn't implemented anywhere, making the features entirely useless instead of done better elsewhere.

    So, yeah, I'd agree: wait for HTML5 to mature some. Right now it's useless.

  3. Re:Flies in the Face of Common Sense Too by PietjeJantje · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Meh, argumentum ad hominem. In other words: game over.