No More Version Numbers For HTML
An anonymous reader writes "HTML5 will be the last version of HTML that carries a version number. Ian Hickson, a Google engineer and editor of the HTML5 standard, announced that the language will be transitioned to a 'living standard' without version numbers. A bit like Chrome, if you will."
If you never finalize it's not a standard. This sounds like a Microsoft move to me.
POST!
You'll get pages that becomes invalid with time despite they were valid before. That sounds like a very stupid idea.
Until you name the revision by dates, which is basically the same thing as giving version numbers...
Now we'll have beta quality software and beta quality standards. Another engineer brainwashed.
...I can always render the latest HTML in Netscape Navigator. Right?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
People will still need to differentiate between implementations of HTML that have different features...do they expect us all to just use the latest and hope nothing breaks?!
Blar.
Wow, so now my browser has to interrogate every single element on a page to determine what's supported BEFORE going to plugins etc.
Yikes...
Microsoft got tired of people asking when they were going to fully support HTML 4....
Now everyone will be able to say "We support HTML" even though nobody fully supports all aspects of the spec. Just like today, only nobody will be able to point their finger at any sort of milestone that they missed, so companies that drag their heels in standards compliance end up looking better.
How is this a benefit again? It seems to me that we need smaller, more frequent milestones, not elimination of those milestones.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
So, in the future it's impossible to figure out what browser supports what? Because, after all, browser support is dragging behind years even now. Or is that the very goal of Google? Make Chrome the de facto standard, and force everyone else to play the catch-up game?
Seriously, don't do this "living standard" crap. At the very least use minor version numbers to identify a given set of standards. Don't force me to guestimate how a web page I write today is going to behave in browsers 5 years from now; let me specify what behaviour I want.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There will be no way to pressure browser developers to be compliant with "NGHTML 4.7" if we can't even talk about it because it lacks a name. It'll also be hard to enumerate features of releases, to decide what version of the standard we're talking about and have programmatic support for that, etc.
This eliminates most of the benefits of having standards to begin with.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
So instead of versions, we'll have a big vector of flags, where each flag indicates whether or not a particular HTML feature is required, supported, etc.? And a given web page will work with a given browser only if their two flag vectors are compatible?
This is stupid. Standards exist for a reason.
Go straight to the source instead.
Do they mean the browser Chrome? As in Google Chrome 8.0.552.237?
Is 8.0.552.237 not the version?
Really? That's weird because I thought browsers were waring over who could get HTML 5 features out first, who had the most, and showing them off.
But I might be totally crazy.
And what is this jet you speak of? Javascript, CSS, DOM? If these are jets, then someone put the turbines in backwards, pasted the wings on with glue sticks, and is using banana peels as fuel.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
yes, it'll matter because the back end is still HTML. And not everything that creates and renders HTML is dreamweaver, firefox or iexplorer. And while management practices do not matter, specifications and implementations DO matter. Most especially, for those that rely on accuracy. product comparisons, and compatibility.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Since when did Google become the keepers of the HTML spec?
I think a randomly changing feature-set sounds like a bad idea. HTML is supposed to be a standard, not something which just changes without any real control behind that.
This is like agile programming run amok -- let's expect the customer to have to upgrade to the latest nightly build. That'll work!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Their justifications for the decision are here:
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_does_.22Living_Standard.22_mean.3F
GET!
+1 to everyone who thinks this is stupid. In particular given how significant HTML is to the web-as-we-know-it surely there must've been some consultation before making a call like this? With a cacaphony of "NO" coming through here (and very little, if any, support) one has to wonder....
-.-. --.-
We are in the hands of morons. A constantly evolving standard is bad news for everybody except maybe a few companies that sell HTML development tools. Fast forward 10 years, and we will not be able to read half of the web, and will need 10 different browsers to see our usual choice of sites. There is a reason for versioning. Keeping up with a website will be a pain. I guess I should not complain, many people will have a job thanks to this.
It's a typical problem, the browsers battle it out first, then applications and sites tend to pop up. Which makes it a bit awkward at times.
From what I can tell, they're opting to keep the aspect of HTML which is more or less the most broken under the justification that they've always done it that way, regardless of the fact that HTML5 was mostly supposed to be changing that. A new set of standards that both modernized and theoretically was implemented by all the browsers.
It's more or less inevitable that what's going to end up happening is a rehash of the Netscape versus IE battle of the 90s and a return to fragmentation. It might not be intentional, but if the standards keep changing it's going to be a real challenge actually cruising the web.
I broke the cardinal rule and read TFA. From TFA:
"Hickson mentions that the group will be dropping the HTML5 name immediately, but it we have not received a confirmation that this will happen over at the W3C as well."
So WHATWG will no longer be using numbers? WHATWG can call it "Hullapuhjelpus" as far as I'm concerned as long as W3C still continues using version numbers. Version numbers provide excellent reference points to featuresets and are useful to implementers, developers, and end users alike.
From the WHATWG Blog:
"However, shortly after that we realised that the demand for new features in HTML remained high, and so we would have to continue maintaining HTML and adding features to it before we could call "HTML5" complete, and as a result we moved to a new development model, where the technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document that defines the technology as it evolves."
Because there's demand for new features you no longer want to use a numbering scheme? Many standards are evolving. Why not just increment the minor version when new features are added? HTML version 5.1 added this cool thing, 5.2 this cool thing, etc.
If we're dumping version numbers then why bother calling it Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9? Why not just call it "Internet Explorer"? We all know that each of those versions render pages the same, right? Hmm. I just realized that I invoked Internet Explorer in a discussion about standards. Mea Culpa.
How does removing the version number help the people who need to implement and work with the standard?
You'll get pages that becomes invalid with time despite they were valid before.
That is a result of backward-incompatible changes, not the absence of version numbers.
What was said is that the moving spec in development is now called HTML, when a snapshot is taken it will be called HTML5, next HTMLX.X.X or any other name. The WHATWG spec is not a finalized document, HTML5 will be snapshoted sometime
Ian Hickson, a Google engineer and editor of the HTML5 standard announced that the language will be transitioned to a 'living standard' without version numbers. A bit like like Chrome, if you will."
The HTML standards committee takes eternity and a day to finalize anything.
Which is how and why workable solutions - like Flash - that evolve outside the committee gain traction.
20% of peak hour Internet traffic in the states was a content-protected Netflix stream before Netflix offered a streaming-only service. HVEC - aka H.265 - will be ready in about two years. High Efficiency Video Coding / HEVC / H.265 : Beyond H.264
Half the bit rate of H.264 for content of the same quality...
Now browsers only have to support moving targets.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
HTML 2/3/4, XHTML/1, and CSS/1 were all small, simple, understandable standards. Then the web got popular - in part because web standards and technology were so simple. Once the web had exploded, every damn company wanted to stick its oar in. CSS 2 took years, is overly complicated, but still just barely manageable. Look at CSS 3 - everybody's special wishes are in there - the thing is immensely complex and as a standard, frankly, it is therefore nearly useless. HTML 5 is much the same - too many special wishes and fancy features. One needs to take a weed-whacker to it and to CSS, to restore some degree of simplicity.
Think of it this way: why is there a competition to see how well browsers score on the ACID tests? The standards ought to be simple enough that any decent browser scores 100%. The fact that this is not the case is proof that the standards are far, far too complex.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.