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W3C Announces Plan To Deliver HTML 5 by 2014

Posted by samzenpus on from the accelerate-the-plan dept.

The World Wide Web Consortium has proposed "a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C's lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016." Instead of working toward one-specification-to-rule-them-all in 2022, features that are stable and implemented in multiple browsers now will be finalized as HTML 5.0 by 2014 with unstable features moved into HTML 5.1 (developed in parallel). In 2014, the commonly implemented parts of HTML 5.1 will begin finalization for 2016, with the unstable parts moved into HTML 5.2 (wash, rinse, repeat). Additionally, things like Web Sockets are being moved into their own modular standards (sound familiar?) for "...the social benefits that accrue from such an approach. Splitting out separate specifications allows those technologies to be advanced by their respective communities of interest, allowing more productive development of approaches that may eventually be able reach broader consensus."

10 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. That quickly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow, let's not rush into anything here guys.

    1. Re:That quickly? by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Besides, what happened to HTML5 being a versionless "living standard"

      WHATWG manages the HTML "living standard". WHATWG HTML living standard is basically the venue in which interested parties, most notably all of the major browser vendors, hash out agreements on what will be supported in the future.

      W3C has HTML5 (and apparently now plans for HTML5.1, etc.) which seems certain to trail far behind the WHATWG living standard.

      If you think of the W3Cs standards as appropriate targets for relatively conservative web developers while WHATWG standards are for people building browsers and other infrastructure to work toward (plus, with a lot of caution as to particular browsers support status for individual features, more cutting edge web developers), it kind of makes sense.

  2. Just in time by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just in time for the first HTML6 browsers.

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    1. Re:Just in time by Sarten-X · · Score: 4, Funny

      It doesn't matter what version of HTML you're using. Someone will always want the tag.

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  3. Re:Html5 is FUD by Spad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Which bit is the Fear, which is the Uncertainty and which is the Doubt? Or are you just using FUD as a synonym for "bad" for no apparent reason?

  4. Browser vendors decide the specs? by Eraesr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So basically it's the browser vendors that eventually determine what goes in and what stays out? How much of an influence will Internet Explorer have on this?

  5. HTML5: by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    The Duke Nukem of markup languages

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  6. Re:The reality... by VGPowerlord · · Score: 4, Informative

    And by 2019, all the browsers on the market may actually support it consistently, just like they did with HTML2, HTML3, HTML4! (that was sarcastic for the sarcasm challenged).

    Are you making fun of the fact that Firefox still can't center the text in a table using the <col> element 14 years after HTML 4.0 came out? :|

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  7. No... you can't. by HerculesMO · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And this is a huge problem for me as well, as I'm working on a project hoping for something better out of HTML5.

    Streaming video with sensitivity to bandwith is something not available in the HTML5 spec at all. It's a simple "video" tag, which offers very little flexibility. h.264 will be the standard, VP8 is effectively dead. And that's fine, but when you have a situation where you want to auto adjust the quality based on bandwith (ala Silverlight "Smooth Streaming" or Flash), you can't do it in HTML5.

    There's a project in works called MPEG DASH to do something around this, but that project is moving slower than molasses. I think people are content to keep using Flash or Silverlight, but in reality.. developers really want better options and HTML5 is already an archaic standard in a lot of senses.

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  8. uh oh by archen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm really worried. I've actually said the W3C should do everything they're going to do. It's not like the world is gaining sanity, which means I'm the one going insane.

    I'm wondering what they'll be doing for the doctype declaration though, since it doesn't indicate any version (which is short sighted in my opinion)