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No More Version Numbers For HTML

Posted by timothy on from the now-they'll-have-threat-level-colors dept.

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."

14 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Not a Standard. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you never finalize it's not a standard. This sounds like a Microsoft move to me.

  2. terrible idea by godrik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  3. Thanks google by tokul · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now we'll have beta quality software and beta quality standards. Another engineer brainwashed.

    1. Re:Thanks google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's The Google Way, eternal beta.

  4. Um... by FatSean · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. Living Standard? by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Problem by Improv · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  7. Linked blog article is fluff with no insight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Go straight to the source instead.

    1. Re:Linked blog article is fluff with no insight by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Indeed, and as that article points out, this change in naming applies ONLY to what the WhatWG was calling "HTML5", not to be confused with what W3C calls "HTML 5." For anyone that's been following this, or has read Zeldman's HTML5 book, knows, "HTML5" and "HTML 5" can refer to entirely different sets of standards.

      The W3C, as far as I can tell, is still taking "snapshots" of WhatWG's "HTML" spec and numbering them, and the W3C is still the primary authority when it comes to official web specifications.

      This change really isn't as big of a deal as people here seem to think, and the original article does confuse the issue.

  8. Their justification FAQ: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Their justifications for the decision are here:

    http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_does_.22Living_Standard.22_mean.3F

  9. it just seems appropriate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    GET!

  10. Er, Why use Version Numbers At All? by swsuehr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Er, Why use Version Numbers At All? by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Informative

      How does removing the version number help the people who need to implement and work with the standard?

      It doesn't, it's a fucking disaster. I'll give a concrete example. I used HTML 5 audio on a site with a Flash fallback for browsers that didn't support it. All is good and well. One day, I start getting complaints that the audio is broken. Turns out that a) the HTML 5 spec had changed and b) Firefox had changed to match in a minor point release. Firefox 3.51 worked, Firefox 3.5.2 didn't, as I recall. The new API was indistinguishable from the old API in as much as all the same objects and functions were there, but a return value had changed. So, even with the best practice method of feature detection, anybody writing to the old API was screwed.

      So I fixed it up by removing the HTML 5 audio and made the decision to wait until HTML 5 was published in its final form. Something that I should have done to begin with really, it's madness to use HTML 5 at the moment as it's just not finished yet. You don't know what is going to change.

      And now they want to do away with a "final" version altogether? Gee thanks, guys! How am I going to be able to trust it to be stable enough to rely on ever again? What's going to stop the same thing from happening over and over again?

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  11. Version numbers not related to issue by DragonWriter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.