W3C Finalizes the Definition of HTML5

hypnosec writes "The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that it has finalized the definition of HTML5 and that it is ready for interoperability testing. HTML5 hasn't been given the status of standard yet but it is feature complete now, giving developers a stable target to develop their web applications. The W3C said in the announcement 'HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform" and that it provides an environment which can utilize all of a device's capabilities like videos, animations, graphics and typography. The HTML5 specifications still have a long way to go before they hit the Recommendation status. HTML5 will have to go through a round of testing that looks specifically into interoperability and performance after which time it will be given a Candidate Recommendation title."

Comments

Mayan Calendar was right

[Shikaku]

Mayan Calendar was right, it is the end of the world..

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Smallpond]

At least for Adobe.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[mcgrew]

But... I feel fine!!!

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Mayan Calendar was right, it is the end of the world..

I don't know, are you certain they are going to be able to port Duke Nukem Forever to HTML5+WebGL in those few days remaining?

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I predict that Adobe will still have an Edge over their competition.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[l0ungeb0y]

Wow -- you are so sharp and witty and so absolutely right! Adobe has nothing to offer but Flash!!!

It's not like they own Phonegap for creating naive Mobile Apps with HTML5 and JS, or have their HTML5/jQuery Edge App, or do anything at all but try to promote Flash! Because Adobe is all about Flash! It's just Flash Flash Flash, all day and night for Adobe. They have no other products and boy -- are they going to get it because here comes HTML5, our lord, savior and messiah and boy -- HTML5 is gonna kill Adobe!

Adobe is so dead -- hurr-durr!

FFS -- some days ./ users just make my had effing hurt so much.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see this happening. There is a lot of user-generated content, mostly games and animations that are often uploaded to third party websites, like Newgrounds. I don't think that any website on its right mind is going to allow Joe Developer to upload unverified javascript to their servers and post them publicly.

While it might be true that Canvas2D can display Flash in the enterprise environment, I don't think it can be a substitute for hobbyists who just want to publish their content. Not at this point anyway

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[almitydave]

Somehow I read that as "Adobe makes money by selling souls..."

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[StripedCow]

Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere. In fact, I'm not sure if it will run tomorrow on my own system.
That's called progress?

HTML5 is so complicated from a browser implementor's point of view that we can say without doubt that there is absolutely NO implementation that adheres to the standard. And there probably never will be.

W3C should have made HTML5 simpler and more internally consistent, not more complicated. Primitives need to be simple.

In fact, HTML seems to be targeted at the novice, while forgetting about the needs of experienced developers.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Darinbob]

Until HTML5 takes over and becomes the major headache for everyone. Seriously, it's not even HTML, it's HTML plus other frameworks (codecs, javascript, etc). As much as flash is annoying, at least it's a real application and not a an ad-hoc collection of technologies making a misguided attempt to turn the browser into an application platform.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Fear the Clam]

...It's just Flash Flash Flash, all day and night for Adobe...

Of course not. They have Adobe Reader, too.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[master5o1]

And PhotoShop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Edge, and other tools that don't end up requiring Flash to exist.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[_4rp4n3t]

cough Edge cough

Oh well done - you got the joke.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Ambassador Kosh]

Actually mobile browsers are not the most advanced. Chrome and Firefox for the desktop are definitely more advanced than their mobile counterparts. The gap is fairly small at least usually.

IE ... well lets just kill that one already.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[cribera]

Qt brings you the best of world worlds. Please check http://blog.qt.digia.com/

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[VortexCortex]

Sigh, it's 2012 and when I write a piece of software now, I'm still not sure it will run everywhere.

When were you ever sure of that?

Since the 1980's when I learned C, would have said 70's, but I wasn't alive then. My C "hello world" program I wrote in 1986 on a hand me down 80286 still compiles and runs just fine on x86, x86-64, Power PC, Itanium, ARM, MIPS -- You know what? Show me a processor without a C compiler so it WON'T run on, that would be a much shorter list... That's just one example. My 1990's era hash table implementation is only now under threat of replacement because C++11 finally has one, but for over two decades my code has been operating flawlessly without modification, given I use the correct compiler flag. It's not like old C standards die.

Native applications are anything but a guarantee other people will be able to run them, they are strictly bound to the same exact device they were written for...Meanwhile, web applications run on anything from a PC to a phone

I can see that you know absolutely nothing at all. You are now aware that there are OSs that run on anything from a PC to a phone thanks to cross platform native languages like C. Indeed the "native applications" that are supposedly "strictly bound to the same exact device" are the very ones that are enabling you to run your "web applications ... on anything from a PC to a phone". Thanks for wasting yours and others time -- me? My (native) code's compiling -- Note: that's a one time cost per platform, not compiled each page load like your "web apps". Native code saves electricity, and is thus more green than web apps.
:-P

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Waccoon]

The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another

Yeah, in the face of Flash, all those loud-mouthed open-source guys (and other companies) did a fine job of making some good old fashioned competition.

Seriously. The alternatives to Flash were Java, millions of mal-ware infested media players, and eventually Silverlight. Everything either outright sucked, was mis-applied, or was too late to market to matter. Today, HTML5 is literally the only thing to go up against Flash, and HTML5 pretty much sucks. Just playing audio is a major challenge. just audio. That's pretty damn sad. The most revolutionary thing HTML5 has to offer is... a frame buffer? Really? It took this long?

Everyone else was wetting their pants about some mythical standards-compliant angel to come from the heavens and save us all, but they all either refused to work on it, or was too busy bitching over the proper color of the bike shed. No shit Flash took over the market.

I like Flash, despite its problems, because it actually works and works well. If it swamped the market, that was the fault of the market not responding and making something better.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seriously, it's not even HTML, it's HTML plus other frameworks (codecs, javascript, etc)." So what? Does this offend you on a philosophical level? W3C already tried the "pure" approach with XHTML, and it was universally hated."

By who? In the business world it's still the standard even with the advent of HTML5, even over XHTML5 because it's the only professional HTML spec to date that actually caters to the needs of system developers who actually build the systems people use day in and day out. Because it's great for interop, and because data flows from it trivially and seamlessly from many data sources with XSLT.

The only people who seemed to whinge about it are Joe Public because it was too complicated for them but guess what? Joe Public isn't writing markup anymore, he's using Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress and so on to publish anyway.

Don't even try and pretend HTML5 is what developers need, it's an absolute fucking headache, it's the worst HTML spec since the HTML3 days or proprietary extensions and the amount of issues you have to deal with regarding browser compatibility relating to it are a thousand fold what they were with XHTML1.

About the only developers who seem happy about it are the browser developers who apparently don't get basic concepts like separation of concerns and whom stepping away from what they know (spaghetti markup) is too much for them, and a handful of rank amateurs who also don't get how to write great software.

"The web browser is a real application, and HTML5 represents nothing more than a standard way of providing instructions to that application."

Great except implementation is anything but standard, because despite some of the browser vendors being the driving force behind HTML5 they've still completely and utterly failed to implement it consistently.

"I'm not suggesting there is no value to Flash, but perhaps we can agree that there is room out there for more than one way to develop a web application?"

That depends, do you understand why your claim that XHTML was/is universally hated is patently false? If not then no we can't agree because you have absolutely zero knowledge of the will, needs, and concerns of the bulk of back end developers today.

HTML5 is a step backwards for most developers, working with it absolutely stinks of the peak of the Netscape/IE browser wars through to the IE6 days where you had to fight for hours to get a simple thing to look and work right across browsers.

Re:Mayan Calendar was right

[Xest]

Your last paragraph sounds great, I agree it's a nice thing to aim for in theory, but have you actually worked on any serious cross-platform HTML5 projects in practice? It's a fucking nightmare.

I actually really, really hate Flash such that I've always refused to learn it and still refuse to, but we've actually had to resort to Flash on some projects because it's still the easiest way to implement cross-browser unified web experiences. HTML5 projects work poorly across different browsers and platforms.

HTML5s only real strength seems to be for building mobile web pages, on the desktop HTML5 still works and looks completely different between Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, but even on mobile it's hardly the unified development dream we were sold it to be by WHATWG - far from it. Web development now, with HTML5 is more awkward than I remember it being for many many years because of the countless inconsistencies.

The fundamental issue is that like you say, "they might be wonky sometimes" but how is that different to older versions of (X)HTML? HTML5 is just more of the same - more features that don't work right/consistently between platforms, but because there's so much of it, if you try to use any sizeable number of new HTML5 features then you'll end up with more of an inconsistent clusterfuck than ever before. Or in other words, nothings changed, you could always use a minimal set of HTML/CSS features and get a page to work on all devices, and as you added more the inconsistencies grew, that's still the case, HTML5 doesn't change that, it just adds more inconsistencies to fuck things up with.

Honestly, your last paragraph is noble sounding but you're ultimately just parroting WHATWG's marketing blurb, and they simply didn't manage to live up to the hype they sold in practice with the production of HTML5. The end product is really quite a train wreck, partly because the spec was badly produced, partly because no matter how good the spec, browser vendors are still utterly shit at their job, and shit at achieving a decent degree of interop between each other's offerings.

I do agree with the GP, between current browsers being such a quagmire of shite as the codebases have become ever more screwed up with the addition of new features over the years, and the fact that HTML and related technologies were never really designed with the complexity of webapps people ask for in mind today, we'd be far better off if we just kept HTML as a web document format, and created a new set of technologies for web applications. I've mentioned it before, it could still interop with HTML, using say, app:// as a new protocol running alongside HTTP allowing linking and so forth between HTML pages and apps to work seamlessly, but ultimately the web isn't going to move in the direction people want it to move in unless some ground up technology like this is built.

Incorrect

[Bogtha]

It is by no means finalised. This is like a beta. It's feature complete, now they've got to shake out the interoperability bugs between implementations. During this phase, they can discover that there are flaws or omissions within the specification, which will entail changes to the specification. When they have multiple interoperable implementations, then it will be finalised.

Re:Incorrect

[Synerg1y]

How is this different from past revisions? That's just how it is, if you don't read the spec, and go to use a datetime input and wonder why it doesn't work in ie7, well... hopefully you can google the answer. I remember when css3 first rolled around, it featured tons of almost mission critical enhancements, and about 10% of browsers actually took advantage of it, so you had a bit of double coding going on: css3 code for newer browsers, same / similar / lack of design feature in older browsers. Since then, support has gone to more like 95% or so with new versions of firefox, chrome, safari, IE that are all css3 compliant.

Re:Incorrect

[Billly Gates]

Ha!

Good luck trying to get these corps who just blew $10,000,000 upgrading to IE 8 in the last 6 months to throw out their investment because some geeks want cool translucent and animated css 3 divs. Try convincing old people and those who got hit hard in the great recession who are underemployed and work at Walmart (20% of the workforce still!) who are stuck with XP and IE 8 and can't afford a new computer?

HTML 5 is going no where until 2019 or 2020 when Windows 7 hits EOL sadly.

Maybe I am a pessimist but after seeing how the horrible IE 6 lived on for year after year last decade I see why change what works? IE 8 is more secure and doesn't crash as easily so there will be pressure to hold onto IE 8 longer than IE 6.

Intranet apps today still do not follow w3c. Only old MS standards.

typical

[ssam]

I have only just finished reading the HTML4 spec.

Quick!

[Krojack]

Someone get a copy of this over to Microsoft's IE dev dept!

versioning will never fix fundamental flaw

[PJ6]

HTML and anything like it is the wrong thing to put a standards body on. Authoring (human "readable") is a level in the abstraction chain where innovation and competition is supposed to occur, not this ponderous shit. Sticking with HTML as the standard has easily set us back ten years from where we could have been, and I fear it will continue to stifle innovation for decades to come.

Re:A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox...

[zarlino]

You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.

Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing

Re:A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. There are many new additions with HTML5 and the codec choice was just one major visible fight among countless small decisions on tags, attributes, DOM, etc.

Write once, runs anywhere ?

[Taco Cowboy]

If my memory still serves me correctly, one of the promise of HTML5 is "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" .

I dunno about you, but as a developer, I still find that "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" promise not-yet-fulfilled

Wonder if this final draft will bring about the final fulfillment of that promise?

Re:Write once, runs anywhere ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find that "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" promise not-yet-fulfilled

Qt is pretty good about that, assuming you don't use any OS-specific API calls. True, Qt won't run on every tablet/smartphone ever made but it covers Windows, Mac, and Linux pretty well.

Re:Write once, runs anywhere ?

[cribera]

I still find that "Write Once, Runs Anywhere" promise not-yet-fulfilled

Qt is pretty good about that, assuming you don't use any OS-specific API calls. True, Qt won't run on every tablet/smartphone ever made but it covers Windows, Mac, and Linux pretty well.

MOD PARENT UP PLEASE.

However, you forgot to add ANDROID support.

Check https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/android-qt

And in 2013, iOs tier1 support ins in the pipeline, as well as Android (Necessitas project is still Beta, but apps built upon it are pretty solid already).

HTH

Re:Write once, runs anywhere ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want software that runs on as many machines as possible, write it in NES compatible 6502 assembler.
Virtual machines for those are more supported than Java, Flash and HTML combined.

Re:Write once, runs anywhere ?

[Daengbo]

Like Java -- "Write once; debug everywhere."

Re:A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox...

[tyrione]

You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.

Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing

Which won't happen. The patent holders have too much invested in hardware to cut off their noses to spite their face.

Re:W3C Testimonials Members list on HTML 5 funny

[mikael_j]

While every standard has its issues I'm really hoping your hatred of XML/XHTML isn't the usual one. That is, that the "problem" with XHTML and XML is that parsers simply refuse to deal with broken XML/XHTML*, as far as I'm concerned that's a feature, not a bug.

* I've heard complaints about this many times, the core complaint seems to be "well, now I have to write markup that's actually standards-compliant and that's just too hard! I want HTML that will render even if it's horribly broken!"