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Google Introduces HTML 5.1 Tag To Chrome
darthcamaro (735685) writes "Forget about HTML5, that's already passe — Google is already moving on to HTML5.1 support for the upcoming Chrome 38 release. Currently only a beta, one of the biggest things that web developers will notice is the use of the new "picture" tag which is a container for multiple image sizes/formats. Bottom line is it's a new way to think about the "IMG" tag that has existed since the first HTML spec."
I thought we already had this with the img tag's srcset attribute. Do we really need a new tag?
So it's in the guise of "standardisation", except in name only. There is no standard is the new standard.
And it does mean you need to keep on updating your web browser or you get shut out of steadily ever more websites that used to work just fine with the exact same browser last week. It is in fact fashionable to look at user agents and not merely complain, no, simply present a "we don't like your browser, fuck you" page without so much as contact information to the website owners or anything.
This includes websites that present little more than text with illustrations. That's right, among the websites that are harshly shutting out browsers for not having quite enough of this new html5 sauce are those that could've done perfectly well with just the features html3 provides. If this is called progress, you can keep it.
So now we have a relabeled "TIFF" container?
Tagged Interchange File Format (TIFF) has been around since the 1980s; the Amiga had a nice version, and I used them in a very old document system for the US Navy. The file could hold multiple instances of the same data, in different formats. A picture could be JPEG, GIF, a PDF bitmap, ..., for example, and the platform displayed/printed whatever it could.
HTML 5 isn't even a standard, yet, for all that everyone is yapping about it. It's still a draft.
Well, why did you move to a modern multi GB / GHz / TB / Gbps machine, "oughtn't 640K to be enough for anybody ?"
... the use of the new "picture" tag which is a container for multiple image sizes/formats ...
... and it will only require 50,000 words in which to send it.
John
The 5.1 label was just to separate it out, the intention of most was to have it live so that there is no new version. As you probably know already, most the major stuff is not directly under HTML5 but are side groups which either are under HTML5 or they are separate but are treated like they are part of HTML5 (openGL or web sockets for example.) New tags like MAIN, DETAIL, FIGURE or PICTURE, well those ended up in HTML5 but were not around or changed quite a bit. Firefox still doesn't support DETAIL even though it has had decent documentation for quite a while now (it didn't for a long time...)
The mature people involved realized that version numbers do not mean a whole lot because vendors market themselves as supporting "STANDARD X.Y" but lack full support or correct support (MS being a great example.) There is little practical reason for versions because they do not mean a whole lot and real world developers have to work around mixed user support anyway.
If you don't like the PICTURE tag, try to get HTTP 1 & 2 to finally finish the drafts on image sizes so we can do the content negotiation on the server; where it belongs. The whole reason this came about was there was no smart way to get IMG to handle it and there is a use case where CSS media queries (which is not really css 3.x either) do not work. You should be using CSS but when you can't PICTURE is what you use if you can't configure your server (I would suggest some JS that sets a cookie until the browsers finally start sending the info.)
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It's a bit more complicated.
The big standards organisation is W3C. They only call it a standard after everyone agrees on what the standard is and there are implementations in the field that prove that the model works. In that sense they are a bit like the IETF. Part of the IETF motto (TAO): "We believe in rough consensus and running code".
So in the case of HTML5, all browsers will implement the parts of the HTML5 they want to first and only when there are multiple implementations of a feature/part of the HTML5 standard, everyone agrees on what that part of the standard should look like and the documents are ready will W3C rubber stamps it a standard.
So you can already use it before it is a standard. Most parts, by now probably pretty much all of it, of the specification is stable. They are just changing documents to improve working and adding clarifications.
Using the implementations is actually encouraged, because the vendors want to see how it is being used to know if the specification actually works in the way it was intended. Or if it is just to complicated to work with.
Then you have the WHATWG, which is a number of browser vendors (Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, Webkit/Blink) sitting together creating new HTML5 ideas and standards documents. Those standards documents can eventually be used as a basis by the W3C.
The WHATWG was formed when the W3C, a long time ago, said: all HTML will be XML based in the future. And basically said: HTML is a document format. The WHATWG said: no, way. Let's start a new group of people, because we don't want to deal with strict XML and we actually make it possible to let the web be an application delivery platform.
So really HTML5 pretty much is done. All the browser implementations are done, except for support of certain parts or features.
HTML 5.1 is just a working document title. It is just a set of new features being added to HTML 5 which will end up as part of HTML5.
Fun fact about the picture element is: it did not come out of the WHATWG or W3C or browser vendors, it came out of a community of webdevelopers to create 'responsive images'. A problem that didn't have a good solution yet.
Responsive images is about downloading a the right size of image based on the device it will be displayed on.
New things are always on the horizon
With Blackjack! And Hookers!
ftfy. thanks for the hard laugh xD
use of tables for top-bottom layout was the one thing css should have relied on and even promoted, but they chose to bury it, and brought up that bizarre bottom-top layout model that barely mimics what tables already did in a natural way. it was about semantics, thay said. but, hey! now you got plenty of semantics! we have col_sm_4, and even col-md-1!!
Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the internet, he is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.
Not to spoil your rant, but the picture tag is defined here: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/draf...
Notice the hostname.
Many /.ers don't know what the word "rhetorical" means.
They only have heard it in the phrase, "It was a rhetorical question." So they think its definition is "something you don't agree with".
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Most of the HTML5 specifications gets developed here first:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/we...
Then eventually after a long process will end up here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/
However Picture-tag actually came from the community first, not the W3C or the vendors directly:
http://responsiveimages.org/ only later did it become http://www.w3.org/community/re... and later became part of the HTML5-specification.
New things are always on the horizon
your comment is a good way to incite off-topic controversy and deflect attention from the **content of my post**
which is actually important stuff...think about what I've presented and stop being a grammar nazi
Thank you Dave Raggett
Microsoft is not a part of WHATWG. They have cooperated with it's members, but are not adhering to the standard. And for good reason it seems, since they avoided the CANVAS specs worried that items in it were not royalty-free and sure enough Apple patented it and numerous other issues.
WHATWG is just as incompetent as W3C. The only way to reach a reasonable standard is for dialog and not bullying. Google has done nothing but bully over the last five years, making WHATWG more dangerous than helpful. Chrome itself has numerous behaviors that are counter-productive specifically to differentiate itself and cause a divide instead of a method of progress.
I firmly believe that those who are deciding these standards should be working as independant contractors, following an ethos and not being paid directly by any one player. Otherwise, there seems to be a lot of bias going on because so many rely on Google (from advertisements or direct payments), and we should not be trusting Google if we want an Internet without massive invasions of privacy.
Last night I finally started reading an old book, HTML: The Definitive Guide, 3rd. ed., published in 1998. "HTML is a young language, barely five years old," it begins, "but already in its fourth interation. Don't be surprised if another version appears before you finish reading this book."
I smiled to myself. If only he had known that HTML 4 would stay with us for eleven years, and that when 5 came out, they said they wouldn't update the version numbers anymore.
But the book was right: another version came out before I finished it.